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Useless facts

Darb

Lantern Swinger
Reading the posts about the AIB and potential candidates being concerned over what they need to know, it reminded me of my Fleet Board in 1980.

The most useless facts I remember from that event both stem from a grilling I had at the hands of a member of the White Mafia on the subject of the Naval Catering Manual (BR7?).

The useless facts are:

1. It takes 71/2 minutes to boil a cabbage.

2. When a bottle of champaigne is cooled to the correct temperature, the cork is under the same pressure as the back wheel of a London bus, namely 64 pounds per square inch.

It forever baffled me that a Seaman Officer would be required to have such knowledge, but there you are.

What other useless facts have others learned?
 
Aaah, useless facts they may be, but you remembered them all this time later!! How much of the real "seaman officer" niff naff have you remembered?

That's the thing about useless facts, they may be useless but they are usually interesting in themselves.

Here's mine: "the speed at which a tyre will aquaplane can be determined with the following equation 8.6 x the square root of the tyre pressure".

Useless, but fascinating!

G
 
The Human Bowel ruptures at around 4 PSI (a bloke on a north sea oil survey ship did an experiment on himself....please don't ask me why....too much time on his hands and too much access to low pressure air lines....)
 
St John's Wood is the only station on the Underground Map not to contain any letters from the word "Mackerel".

And before any pedant points out that St is actually Saint and contains an "a", it is written St on the map.

So there!
 
When I was in the RNXS I was taught to use a TP, just before they were phased out!

When I started my current job almost a quarter of a century ago, I was told that I might need to help a customer apply sealing wax to an envelope. Know how to do it but have never needed to show a customer. Still, it's available upon request!
 
According to the international rules of porn, if a woman has a tribal/celtic tattoo on her lover back just above her 'builder's bum' the more likely that she's a dirty bar steward!
 
gizawetofyagoffaskin said:
The useless facts are:

1. It takes 71/2 minutes to boil a cabbage.

2. When a bottle of champaigne is cooled to the correct temperature, the cork is under the same pressure as the back wheel of a London bus, namely 64 pounds per square inch.

It forever baffled me that a Seaman Officer would be required to have such knowledge, but there you are.

The reasons an Officer needs to know these are as follows.

1.When requesting some scran in the middle of the middle watch if they know this snippet,the chief chef cnt fob him off saying that it would take too long to knock something up.

2.Champers is often drunk at Cock and Arse parties in the Wardroom and this snippet is a real corker for impressing the Admirals Daughter!!!!
 
Men fart an average of 17 times a day, and women fart an average of 9 times a day.

If you fart constantly for 6 years, 9 months and 23 days you would produce enough gas to explode an atomic bomb.

The longest ever penis recorded by scientists is 13.5 inches.

Humans are only second to cats for having the dirtiest mouths.

It takes about 40 muscles to smile, but only 4 to pull the trigger of a decent rifle.

Beard hair grows at twice its usual rate when you're in a plane.

Around 15 men each year have their penises chopped off by their wives and the highest proportion of men who suffer this are Italians.

You use more calories eating celery than there are in celery itself.

More than 2,500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed products.

Semen is one of the most fattening substances known to man.

An average of 76 people a year die playing twister, and about 23 of which are through playing the nude version!

Linda McCartney has sold more vegetarian ready made meals than Paul has sold records.

In the course of the 18 year run of Cats on broadway, 3,247 lbs of yak hair was used for wigs.

The shortest war in history was between England and Zanzibar in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

65 people become $millionaires every day.

The average human will eat one pound of insects in their lifetime.

You are more likely to be killed by a rogue champagne cork than a poisonous spider.

By the time a person is 18, they would have spent 12,000 hours in school, but 14,000 hours watching television.

Woman blink nearly twice as much as men.

Humans share one third of their DNA with lettuce!

You could comfortably fit the entire population of the planet into a cube with sides 1km long.

Apporximately 69% of all Internet content consists of pornographic material.

Porn sites generated $970 million in revenue in 1999.

Charlie Chaplin once came third in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like competition.

Every 20 minutes a hapless person treads on a land mine.

The average adult falls asleep seven minutes after turning out the light.

6,000 new computer viruses are released every month.

Over one trillion matches were being produced every year at the beginning of the last century.

Elvis Presley had a twin brother.

Zeuxis a Greek painter in the 5th Centrury BC laughed hismself to death while looking at one of his paintings.

A Roman leap year had the same number of days as ordinary years but January 23rd lasted for 48 hours.

After being decapitated a human can still see for 20 seconds! (Not sure how 'they' worked this one out!).

Under EC law it is legal to have sex with inflatable dolls in the street.

Winners at the 2001 Ig-Nobel Prize ceremony for eccentric researchers, inventors and scientists include an American who claims to have invented anti-flatulence underwear, a Lithuanian who set up a theme park dedicated to Stalin, and two Indians who discovered that nose-picking is commonplace.

Right-handed people live on average, 9 years longer than left-handed people.

Human stomachs produce a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks to stop it digesting itself.

Humans are the only animals to sleep on their backs.

More boys than girls are born during the day, but more girls are born at night.

Julio Iglesias once had five gallons of water flown from Miami to L.A. so he could wash his hair.

Clark Gable was listed on his birth certificate as a girl.

Johnny Vaughan was born at the precise moment that England scored the winning goal in the 1966 World Cup final.

Bernard Manning did his National Service in the Military Police and one of his duties was guarding Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess in Spandau.

Elvis Presley's hip-wiggling started out as a srage fright. He was so nervous, that his legs would shake.

John Lennon shoplifted in Holland the harmonica he used on Love Me Do.

Mel Gibson broke the school record for the most strappings in a week - 27.

Tom Cruise and Robbie Williams were both voted least Likely To Succeed at school.

Sir Winston Churchill smoked an estimated 300,000 cigars in his lifetime.

Michelangelo's cook was illiterate, so he drew her a shopping list, which today is priceless.

The arhcitect who built the Kremlin had his eyes gouged our by Iavn The Terrible so that he would never be able to design another building like it.

Pirates wore earings because they believed it improved their eyesight.

Cher's parents married and divorced each other three times.

Mike Myers (a.k.a. Austin Powers) is descended from William Wordsworth.

If you shouted for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would produce enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Volleyball is the most popular sport at nudist camps.

Banging your head against a wall uses a 150 calories an hour.

On average, a drop of Heinz tomato ketchup leaves the bottle at a speed of 25 miles per year!

If you mouth the word "colourful" to someone, it looks like you are saying "I love you".

The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable".

The fastest sevice in a restaurant in the world is 13 seconds from the order to the food on the table.

Wayne Static (from staticX) uses glue to stick his hair up.

The letter combination 'ough' can be pronounced in nine different ways.

Every time you lick a stamp you consume one tengh of a calorie.

Permanent marker is not actually permanent.

The shortest poem ever goes 'Adam, hae'em'.

To convert milli-inches to micro metres you must times by 25.4

There is an average of 3000 ft. of electrical wiring in every car.

During the battle for Stalingrad, the German army lost more men attacking a single house defended by sergeant Pavlov's platoon than it did occupying Paris three years later. Pavlov survived the war and became a monk.

Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were freshman roomates at Harvard.

Kermit the Frog is left handed.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

The Earth is hit by lightning 100 times a second.

Typewriter is the longest word that can be made using only the letters on the top row of the keyboard.
 
No..................................
95% of £5 notes have been in contact with cocaine.

If you buy a lottery ticket at 7pm on Saturday, you are more likely to die in the hour before the draw than you are to win.

No word in the English language rhymes with the word unicorn.

The easiest way to become a millionaire is to convert £4 sterling into Turkish Lire.

The Guiness Book of Records lists 'The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick' as the hardset tongue twister.

The most dangerous part of a plane journey from the UK to Australia is the drive to the airport.

An average of four people a year in Britain are killed by writing instruments.

Three serious accidents a year in Britain can be attributed to pencil sharpeners.

Last year, 43 British adults died in their bathtubs.

27 million porn mags are sold in the UK each year.

Britons eat on average 2.2 curries a week - spending £2.8 billion every year.

Lambeth council in south London owes £850 million (as of 1999) - this is more than the national debt of Guatemala.

During December 1998, Barclays Bank's cash machines in the UK dispensed a total of £1.24 billion in notes.

The average British motorist is overcharged by 50p a year for their petrol due to faulty pumps.

Accidents in the UK home for 1996: 343 injured putting on their socks; 112 hurt reading a newspaper; 41 hospitalised by marbles; 34 hurt by cardboard; 12 hosipitalised by paperclips; 11 accidents involving bathroom scales; 6 hurt using talcom powder; 2 hurt by tea cosys.

In 1870, British boxing champ Jim Mace and an American challenger fought for almost 4 hours without landing a single punch!

On 3rd March 1991, the Queen needed 3 stitches in one of her fingers after she tried to break up a fight between two of her corgies.

During World War 2, the British Minister of food considered a plan to feed the population with black pudding - secretly made from surplus human blood bank donations. The idea was thankfully rejected.

In the last 10 years, 8 people in Britain have been killed by cows.

During the 1978 fireman strike an army unit rescued an old lady's cat from a tree and then run over it as they drove away.

50% of male Internet users in Britain have viewed pornography on the Internet.

On average, in the UK per year:

488 people are injured by zips;
3,078 people are injured by slippers;
315 people are injured by photo frames;
and 70,000 are injured by dogs.
 
The shortest measurable period of time is between a women asking does she look fat in this to the point a man fails to answer correctly and her being upset.

The second shortest period of time is that between the gangway touching the jetty and the WAFU's needing to get off to "catch transport"
 
Up to the age of 28, 3 and 1/2 tons of shite goes through you, and you use one complete pine tree in toilet paper.

(Do you think they took into account matelots+Guinness+vindaloos?
I don't)
 
The reasons an Officer needs to know these are as follows.

1.When requesting some scran in the middle of the middle watch if they know this snippet,the chief chef cnt fob him off saying that it would take too long to knock something up.

2.Champers is often drunk at Cock and Arse parties in the Wardroom and this snippet is a real corker for impressing the Admirals Daughter!!!!

Thanks Andy, after all these year, I can now sleep soundly :D
 

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