Today I Learned… #2

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The money thrown into the Trevi fountain is collected every Monday and goes to feeding Rome’s poor communities. They collect around 4,000euro a week.
 
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The following disasters all took place between 1987 and 1989:

Herald of free enterprise
Hungerford
King’s Cross fire
Piper Alpha
Clapham train crash
Lockerbie
Boeing plane crash on M1
Hillsborough
Marchioness sinking
 
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I hardly dare to confess this because I’m so ridiculous but … my late Mom loved the Cliff Richard song ‘Travelling Light’ and as I was humming it yesterday it suddenly dawned on me - he’s travelling without any luggage!! I always thought the title meant something to do with an actual light guiding him!! 😂😂😂(I’m 64 and a Nan and it’s took me nearly 60 years to work it out!!!! 🙈
 
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You can change the motion field on Ring doorbells. Mine’s been going off constantly due to my autumn wreath lifting in the wind. Serious first world problem, I know.
 
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That Shaun the Sheep is called Shaun because it's a play on shorn. I honestly felt so stupid when I realised🤦‍♀️:LOL:
 
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Attatching a tripod stand to a Dell curved monitor is the absolute pits of tit.

It's hard to put into words how vexing it's been. It stays on the chuffing tripod now it's on.
Forever and ever.
 
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There is a “ring” of seismic activity around the Pacific basin which is where most earthquakes (especially strong earthquakes) and most volcanic activity occurs. These earthquakes can cause the earth to drop by several feet.

(this a bit a of a detective story about how anthropologists and scientists reconstructed the history of a massive earthquake in the US from folk history, written records miles away in Japan, and a dead forest.)

In this “ring,” in the Pacific Northwest in America, two large tectonic plates (thousands of miles) meet - this area is called the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Written history from that part of America hadn’t recorded anything about it, as the area’s written history doesn’t go back very far.

In Japan, however, written records do go back very far - and they have records of a tsunami in early 1700 despite no earthquake having happened nearby.

Back in the Pacific North West, along the coast, there is a “ghost forest” on the shore, which is basically a bunch of dead cedar stumps. The assumption initially was that they had died over time. But in the 80s, paleogeologists found evidence in the soil that their deaths had been caused by a sudden drop in the ground level causing them to be submerged in seawater. Looking at the rings in the tree stumps, they were able to date them all to just before the Japanese tsunami. Crazy to think that “forest” had been dead 300 years but was still hanging around.

They now think what happened is there was a huge earthquake in that zone, which caused the massive tsunami that travelled all the way to Japan, and another huge tsunami that travelled east into America.

To really cement it, this lines up exactly with various stories passed down through generations in different Native American peoples in the area - of a huge earthquake and tsunami that wiped out several villages, with some recording it as reaching as far inland as 80 miles. Through shared details in the Native American spoken records (e.g., it happening when people were going to bed), and the written records in Japan, they were even able to estimate the time at which it occurred - about 9PM -and calculate the time it took to get to Japan. Some people think this massive event is the root of Native American myths in the area of a fight between a thunderbird and a whale - the description of it does line up with what the earthquake and tsunami would have been like.

I just think it’s absolutely insane how by looking at the earth, dead trees, and histories of different people thousands of miles apart, scientists and humanities researchers were able to reconstruct something that a) was mostly missing from written records and b) happened three hundred years ago. All this led seismologists to a much greater understanding about the zone & to realise there is a chance something like this could happen again in that area over the next 50-100 years. 🤯
 
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Thanks to the Rant thread, today I learned you can buy "travel candles". Mind blown there's candles that are for travelling only. Here's me thinking I'm a rockstar having noisy wick candles. Didn't realise I could have one in ASDA with me! 🤣🤣🤣
 
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Today I learned that the stuff butter is wrapped in has foil in the middle and will set your microwave on fire if you try to melt your butter in there 🙃
 
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That dogs love it when you laugh, recognise it as a play emotion and will go out of their way to make it happen. So the next time you laugh at something your dog is doing, it’s probably intentional 🥹
 
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