general knowledge everyone knows (but you!)

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
No, DB, it's like cow.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know that now!

I think I know why I thought if was boff. When I was a kid, the BBC used to have a sports presenter called Frank Bough, pronounced 'Boff'.

It's his fault.

[ChipWrecked]

I think Americans have corrupted the 'ough' spelling.

I have a friend in Atlanta whose surname is Haugh. They pronounce it 'ha'. When he visited Scotland with his family the Scots laughed at them for not being able to pronounce their own name. "It's 'Huff', Yank!"

[Bostaevski]

bough
cough
rough
through

[B840]

You know those license plate covers that say "alumni of some school". For a long time I thought it was pronounced like "a-loom-min-ni"

[Jay Riall]

[ QUOTE ]

Until recently, I had no idea that prunes are dried plums. I just assumed they were completely different fruits!

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for enlightening me, I had no idea before!

[Jay Riall]

One of my friends (nearly 20) thought that doing a girl doggy style was putting it up her arse.

[Blarg]

Your friend probably just has a gay dog.

[Duke]

1. I just learned that there was some band called the Food Fighters, and then immediately found out that there was no D at the end of Foo. They gave an excellent performance.

2. I have no idea what a lot of math classes are referring to. What in the hell is pre-calculus, aside from arithmetic? Calc 1, 2, 3.. I have no idea where they draw the line. Is Calc 1 limited (har har har) to derivatives? Trigonometry? I can't believe that an entire class is dedicated to sines and cosines and random stuff related to triangles, so I'm lost as to what it actually contains. Note that this isn't a case of me sitting on the outside and not knowing anything about math, as I took a lot of math classes in college, and calculus was the first one.

[Dominic]

Recently (in the last few years), I made a quick experiment to prove to myself why the Earth has seasons. You see, I knew intellectually that it's because the axis of our planet is tilted. But reading that did not make me a believer.

I mean, the Earth takes 1 year to revolve around the Sun, right? And the Earth also spins on its axis once every day. So I couldn't really see how a small tilt would create Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern H.

So I took a small globe and "revolved it around a lamp in the middle of the room. I also gave it a tilt of approximately 26 degrees, just like the Earth.

Wow! SEEING it in action, it all made perfect sense to me.

Whichever hemisphere is currently tilted toward the Sun experiences more hours of sunlight each day, and the sunlight at midday also strikes the ground at an angle nearer the vertical and thus delivers more heat.

Thus explains the seasons!

I'm up there with Newton, I tell ya.

[quirkasaurus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The simple rhyme that I always use:

"Thirty days has September...April, June and November.
...

Just sing it to yourself one day and you'll never forget it.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Thirty days has September, April, June and November."
"Thirty days has September, April, June and November."
"Thirty days has September, April, June and November."
"Thirty days has September, April, June and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, June and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, May and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, May and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, May and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, May and December."
"Thirty days has September, April, May and December."

[/ QUOTE ]

....exactly!!!! and pretty soon it's even worse:

thirteen days has december, Willie Mays, and forever...