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Do You have any Interesting but, Not Very Useful Facts


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4 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

True, especially in the days of Empire, P.O.S.H. Was written on the ticket, hence the term.

John.

No, unfortunately not John.  The Etymology dictionary says:

posh (adj.)

by 1914 (1903 as push), of uncertain origin; no evidence for the common derivation from an acronym of port outward, starboard home, supposedly the shipboard accommodations of wealthy British traveling to India on the P & O Lines (to keep their cabins out of the sun); as per OED, see objections outlined in G. Chowdharay-Best, "Mariner's Mirror," Jan. 1971. The acronym story dates from 1955.

More likely from slang posh "a dandy" (1890), from thieves' slang meaning "money" (1830), originally "coin of small value, halfpenny," possibly from Romany posh "half" [Barnhart].

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13 hours ago, Crawfie said:

Heard this the other day.....

Not sure if it's pukka but I  thought it was interesting.

In the old days of printing , the letter stamps ( is that right?) were placed in a cabinet for easy storage .

The capital letters were in the top of the cabinet .

The others letters in the bottom.

Hence UPPER CASE and LOWER CASE.

 

The cabinet was called a fount, pronounced font. If you dropped your fount, it was said to be pied.  When you'd picked it all up you had to sort all the type pieces into their correct compartments in the fount. Because the type pieces are a mirror image of the character they print, it's particularly difficult to sort lower case b from d, or p from q. Hence the expression "to mind your p's and q's". I don't know why we don't mind our b's and d's.

Pete (a craft printer in the 1960s)

Edited by stillp
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13 hours ago, Crawfie said:

Heard this the other day.....

Not sure if it's pukka but I  thought it was interesting.

In the old days of printing , the letter stamps ( is that right?) were placed in a cabinet for easy storage .

The capital letters were in the top of the cabinet .

The others letters in the bottom.

Hence UPPER CASE and LOWER CASE.

 

More a wooden eggbox than a cabinet, as we usually think of it.

image.png.24af8a686be13e86c9a8d2c521b2a42d.png

Capitals, being less used, were stored in the case furthest away, the Upper Case.

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All the attributions of "Cock and Bull" to competing pubs are conjecture.    There seems to me to be another origin.

"A load of old cock" is used to describe 'fake news', and while that is attributed to "Cock and Bull", more likely it comes from "Poppycock" with the same meaning, which is derived from the Dutch "pappekak" for, er, a soft bowel motion.

And "bull"  or "bulling" is the military term for both devoted attention to detail in the polishing and cleaning of uniform, and to obsessive and unnecessary ritual in military procedures.

So in line with "stuff and nonsense", "cock and bull" is another binomial phrase that is used to denigrate something.

 

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1 hour ago, Tony_C said:

M6 inverted?

 

1 hour ago, john.r.davies said:

Now, there's a challenge!

screw.jpg.563036cd298fbe643db8fb077b04dfcc.jpg

Edited by RobH
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20 minutes ago, peejay4A said:

Nowhere near right yet. 

Pete - I'm not surprised having googled the answer
Ian

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"Route 9W is a north–south U.S. Highway in the states of New Jersey and New York. It begins in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as Fletcher Avenue crosses the US 1–9, US 46, and the Interstate 95 approaches to the George Washington Bridge, and heads north up the west side of the Hudson River to US 9 in Albany, New York."

Edited by RobH
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23 hours ago, wjgco said:

 

 

Not many prople realise that Holland is not a country.

As you both well know, the country is 'The Netherlands'.

Holland is a region in the West of The Netherlands.

 

Schiphol, means Main Port.

The area on which the airport is built used to be a port

Not a lot of people know that

I did  !!!   The airport there also claim to have the tallest ATC tower but as its foundations are below sea level it isn't. 

By the way surely the Queen is the most travelled person. she was globe trotting even before she became queen and a long time before boaty mc boatface attenborough started his trecks around the globe. 

Hoges 

Edited by Paul Hogan
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5 minutes ago, Paul Hogan said:

The airport there also claim to have the tallest ATC tower but as its foundations are below sea level it isn't. 

Ooh that sounds contentious. When did height of buildings have to take into account distance above sea level?   That would make everything in Tibet the tallest as they start 16000 feet up before you put one brick upon another.  :D

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Hi Rob, Its what the director there told me.    I forget what the actual height of the tower is but  if it was just compared to other ATC towers then he assured me that it would be the tallest tower. in Europe  if not the world.     Now we wait for people to google ATC towers! 

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3 hours ago, Deggers said:

"Oh, so "Wagner" isn't spelt with a "V"?" 

As near as makes no difference. The actual question is:  “Mr Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?” .

 

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The theoretical number of settings on the German wartime Lorenz cipher machine is approximately the number of atoms in the visible universe, squared.

Edited by peejay4A
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36 minutes ago, peejay4A said:

The theoretical number of settings on the German wartime Lorenz cipher machine is approximately the number of atoms in the visible universe, squared.

Didn't know that

I guess it's quite a big number, anyone care to offer the number of noughts involved?

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