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Just found out a fun fact that I felt like sharing.

The phrase "Blood is thicker than water" is generally used to express the importance of blood ties, implying that family is more important than friends/romantic partners... Turns out, it actually means the opposite.

The phrase is actually an abriviation of the quote, "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Which means that the blood shed by soldiers on the battlefield creates a stronger bond than the genetic ties between a mother and child.

So... "Blood is thicker than water" literally means that friends are more important than family, which is a fun thing to throw back in the face of anyone who's basic enough to use that quote. (And in the case of romantic relationships, you can always point out that while blood is thicker than water, semen is thicker than blood, so they win too.)

More interesting facts are welcome. I shall share some more when I get bored. ^_^

Yup I'd heard that one before, it often was used in religious contexts too.

Speaking of which, you guys owe all those poor virgins you've been sacrificing to Satan an apology. The phrase 'virgin blood' is supposed to have really meant blood from people who had never sworn themselves to any god, something you'd usually do with a small cut in a blood oath.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact source I had on this one and a Google search for any related terms is obviously going to be somewhere between useless or mind scarring.

How about instead I share the fact that the Greeks never bothered to name or recognize the color blue? Ancient philosophers would have described the ocean as having the color of brightness and movement.

The Sea Was Never Blue - This whole article is kind of a mindfuck.

Reading this hurt my brain so I'm just going to assume that Ancient Greeks were colour blind. ^_^

According to Plato, the primary colors were black, white, red, and 'brilliant and shining'.

I have never gotten that one in a box of crayons.

During the second half of the fifth century BCE, Democritus argued that the nature of colours depends on the interaction between visual rays, daylight and the atomic structure of objects. He considered brilliance to be a factor as important as hue for defining colours.

Moreover, in explaining the various colours as mixtures of a basic set of four (white, black, red and green), or as mixtures of the primary mixtures, he considered the mixture of red and white (corresponding to the golden and copper-colour) plus a small amount of green (adding a sense of freshness and life) to give ‘the most beautiful colour’ (probably gold). He regarded purple as a particularly ‘delightful’ colour, on the grounds that it comes from white, black and red, the presence of white being indicated by its brilliance and luminosity.

Pink and green != gold. None of this makes any sense. What color is acid?

Also, btw, Covid-19 has no color at all, because it's smaller than the wavelength of light.

The receptor for blue is one of the latest additions to our genome. When we got it we lost over 800 genes related to smell. There are even some languages who still don't have a word for blue. Welsh is an example.

Well I'd like to thank whoever it was who decided to trade 800 smelly genes for the colour blue. I am quite fond of it. ^_^

Think I mentioned this one in another thread, but will repeat here because I think it's cool.

Remember how your granny always used to tell you, "Get your elbows off the table! It's rude!"

Well, that weird little taboo has an interesting origin. During the 17th and 18th centuries, British sailors would often go into taverns and conscript/abduct people to serve on British ships. Apparently they specifically targetted people who ate with their elbows on the table, because that was a sign that a man had previous experience sailing. (Sailors would have to eat with their elbows on the table to hold their bowls in place during stormy weather.) Eventually word got out and men were advised not to eat with their elbows on the table.

So, the reason that you shouldn't eat with your elbows on the table is because you might get conscripted into the British navy. Good to know. ^_^

The word Barbarian dates back to ancient Greece. It was used for people who did not speak since their languages sounded like &slquo;BarBar&srquo; to Greek ears. So if you call somebody a Barbarian you accuse them of not speaking Greek.

The word Gringo derives from Grigo, meaning a Greek.

So (at least in antiquity) you were either a Gringo or a Barbarian but not both.

Mordor from LotR is based on Tolkien's experiences on the WW1 battlefield in Flanders.

Thomas Beddoes was one of the Preeminent physicians of his time. He founded the pneumatic institution where he tried to cure diseases by inhaling gases.

First attempts (e.g. trying to cure pneumonia by inhaling cow's breath (yes!)) did not work out so well.

However it got more interesting when Beddoes hired Humphry Davy who would become perhaps the greatest chemist of his time.

Davy almost killed himself when he studied the effects of inhaling carbon monoxide.

Some things worked out better. Davy discovered the effects of nitrous oxide. This was a big deal because for the first time surgeries could be performed with anesthesia.

Davy himself used the NOX mainly for aehm... recreational purposes. And, he invited his writer friends as well, these included now-famous romantic poets such as Willam Wordsworth, Percy Shelly and others.

From time to time Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited. Who had a heroin addiction anyway because those were the days. When Coleridge took NOX with Davy while on heroin the result was a really bad trip. Thereafter he started to produce his darker works which made him wfamous, including the Rime of the Ancient Mariner ...

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

...

I read that as, "Davy himself used the NOX mainly for aehm... rectal purposes."

No, but Beddoes did actually use "cow's breath" from both ends of the cow.

The first computer program was written by Ada Lovelace almost 100 years before the first computer was built.

The northernmost point of Sweden is closer to China than to Portugal.

OK one more: The country that has the longest border with France is Brazil (thanks to French Guyana)

@MadHattersDaughter might like this. ^_^

The phrase "Mad as a Hatter" comes from 17th century France where hat makers commonly used mercury as hat lining, which of course led to high levels of mercury poisoning. A lot of hatters developed symptoms of irritability, tremors and a wondering mind, which led to the strange illness being dubbed the "Mad Hatter's Disease".

Oh I thought it was lead, but just read up on this and discovered that mercury nitrate was used in curing felt.

For a second I was like... "No, why the fuck would the hatters get lead poisoning? You can't make hats out of lead." ... Then I reread my post and realized I said "led" instead of "lead"

Edit: ... Nope, I was wrong, you're an idiot, not me... Also led was correct. ^_^

Ha, how do you make hats out of mercury? I mean it's a liquid ;) Lead was actually quite commonly used in hat-making, not in the actual hats though. In renaissance arts and crafts lead was basically everywhere because relatively good fine tools can be manufactured cheaply out of lead.

A lead fun-fact is that it can replace calcium in your bones. People who have a habit of drinking bootleg spirits from lead stills have a significantly higher chance to die of cancer and may suffer from nervous system problems, but on the plus side they suffer fewer fractures.

Here's a fun story about lead. ^_^

Maria Coventry, Irish Countess in the 1700s. A famous society hostess and considered one of the greatest beauties of her time. Unfortunately, she did suffer from acne, but she had a solution. Venetian ceruse, a skin whitening product that was very popular at the time, which she uses to cover her face. The only problem was, Venetian ceruse was a lead based makeup, which of course caused skin eruptions, making the acne even worse, and forcing her to use even more of the makeup to cover the increasingly worse skin.

So, more makeup led to more spots, leading to more makeup, leading to more spots, leading to more makeup... Until she died of lead poisoning at the age of 27. ^_^

The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off

Lead is for amateurs.

Oh God... If it was used as a cure for erectile dysfunction, what the fuck did it do to the horses? O.O

Since horses cannot vomit and usually keel over and die when they eat something poisonous or develop a gas bubble, ot likely does not have a happy ending.

Horses can't vomit? I'm learning lots of new things. ^_^

Here's another fun phrase origin. "The cat's out of the bag."

This one also originates from 17th/18th century Britain (we were a rather dastardly lot.) ^_^

Anyways, English merchants would often take livestock to market for sale, and one commonly sold creature was live piglets. As imagined, they could get quite wriggly when being carried around, so the merchants would often put them in a sack to carry them. Now, some rather dishonest merchants would run a scam where they would sell someone a piglet, but when they went to put it in the sack, they swapped it for a cat. The scammers would then run off with both the money and the piglet, and the buyer wouldn't realize that they'd been scammed until they got home and literally "let the cat out of the bag." ^_^

Honey is the only food to never expire.

Don't think sugar expires either. ^_^

It depends on the type of sugar but you are correct. Brown sugar for instance turns hard when the moisture in it evaporates. Normal sugar lasts around 2 years, but will never actually spoil.

Here's a fun one. Emperor Caligula wasn't actually called Caligula.

His real name was Gaius Caesar Germanicus. Caligula was just a nickname he was given as a child.

His father was a military leader, and from the age of three, he would accompany his father on military campaigns. He was given a little soldier outfit, including a pair of miniature soldier boots. The other soldiers found this amusing and nicknamed him "Caligula" meaning "Little boots".

It was actually his successor Claudius (Caligula's uncle) who decided that his name be recorded as "Caligula" as an insult to him. Essentially, it would be like if Biden had a bunch of hackers go through the internet, delete every single mention of the name "Donald Trump" and replace it with "Orange Man" or "Tiny Hands"... Apparently it worked very well since we still call him "Little Boots" to this very day, with most people thinking that his actual name was "Little Boots" ^_^

Hippopotamus milk is pink ^_^

Ah, finally the explanation of where strawberry milk comes from.

Or perhaps even "strawberry" "pudding".

... Okay, well this just blew my mind.

Killer whales aren't whales. They're dolphins.

This just in... Hand grenades are not really hands!

And french fries do not speak French!

Dolphins are a family of the whale order, so killer whales are both whales and dolphins.