The Fun Facts thread

Fun fact: The Caribbean Sea is part of the Atlantic Ocean.

Vindication!

The largest city in the continental U.S. is Jacksonville.

Train_of_Thought said:

The largest city in the continental U.S. is Jacksonville.

 Fun fact: Jacksonville will soon be part of the Atlantic Ocean.

I guess it'll be the largest city in the Caribbean, as well, then. ;-) 

The Banana Boat Song, made famous by Harry Belafonte was co-written by Academy Award winning actor, Alan Arkin.

STANV said:

The Banana Boat Song, made famous by Harry Belafonte was co-written by Academy Award winning actor, Alan Arkin.

 There are two versions of the song. One written by Lord Burgess and William Attaway, and performed by Belafonte and the other which incorporates the chorus of another Jamaican traditional song "Hill and Gully Rider" written by Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Alan Arkin and performed by them (as The Tarriers), which was a bigger hit than Belafonte's version. This one was later also a big hit for Shirley Bassey. 

Old time airplane engines often used a starting system called the Coffman Engine Starter.  The four ("4")* gauge blank shotgun cartridge was ignited to force a piston (separate and apart from the engine cylinders and pistons) to move forward.  The auxilary piston moving in turn causes a gear to spin and ultimately causes the engine to turn over.  See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffman_engine_starter

Also see:  

*- four ("4") gauge shell has a bore area that is a little more than double a twelve ("12") gauge shell.  Four ("4") gauge has a bore diameter of 26.72mm versus 18.53mm for the twelve gauge.  See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_(bore_diameter)

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Excerpt from the above link:

Coffman engine starter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Coffman engine starter (also known as a "shotgun starter") was a starting system used on many piston engines in aircraft and armored vehicles of the 1930s and 1940s. It used a cordite cartridge to move a piston, which cranked the engine. The Coffman system was one of the most common brands; another was the Breeze cartridge system, which was produced under Coffman patents. Most American military aircraft and tanks which used radial engines were equipped with this system. Some versions of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine used in the British Supermarine Spitfire used the Coffman system as a starter.[1] The Hawker Typhoon also used the Coffman system to start its Napier Sabre engine.

Cartridge starters used on a number of jet engines, including such engines as the Rolls-Royce Avon, which were used in the English Electric Canberra and Hawker Hunter, used a high gas volume cartridge driving a turbine instead of a piston.

Some Snowcat and similar vehicles used in extreme low temperatures were historically equipped with cartridge start.

*- four ("4") gauge shell has a bore area 

Train_of_Thought said:

The largest city in the continental U.S. is Jacksonville.

My dad would ask: But do you know the second largest?

My question is: What city in Alaska or Hawaii is larger?

This is The Fun Facts Thread

Not The Trivia Thread

No questions, only answers.

When Dante wrote (in Italian) "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter" he was referring to this thread.

Gainesville, FL was a hotbed of rock & roll back in the '60s.  Steven Stills, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Don Felder of the Eagles all hail from Gainesville.  Fun fact -- Don Felder was Tom Petty's guitar teacher in Gainesville.

jamie said:

 Grisaille a popular technique perfected by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1780-1867 and used by many academic painters as an underpainting later covered by glazes. 

The Eagles and Steelers were temporarily merged in 1943.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steagles

Brief excerpt from above link:

The Steagles was the team created by the temporary merger of two National Football League (NFL) teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles, during the 1943 season. The teams were forced to merge because both had lost many players to military service during World War II. The league's official record book refers to the team as "Phil-Pitt Combine",[1] but the unofficial "Steagles", despite never being registered by the NFL, has become the enduring moniker.[2]

Also in 1943, US pennies were struck in steel (rather than copper) due to wartime shortages of copper.  See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_steel_cent

40s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was actually a brilliant and influential inventor:

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/21/inventor-changed-our-world-and-also-happened-be-famous-hollywood-star/

DaveSchmidt said:

Train_of_Thought said:

The largest city in the continental U.S. is Jacksonville.

My dad would ask: But do you know the second largest?

My question is: What city in Alaska or Hawaii is larger?

I believe  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area  answers both.

bub said:

40s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was actually a brilliant and influential inventor:

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/21/inventor-changed-our-world-and-also-happened-be-famous-hollywood-star/

 I love this information!. I'm a fan of old black and white films and she was an intriguing woman. The end of the story is perfect. 

Train_of_Thought said:

I believe  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area  answers both.

Danke!

bub said:

40s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was actually a brilliant and influential inventor:

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/21/inventor-changed-our-world-and-also-happened-be-famous-hollywood-star/

 there is a documentary of her life that I believe is available on Netflix. 

The Conway sidekick and the Mel Brooks-cast prick

Was a Korman

If you've ever had an x-ray, you can thank Wilhelm Rontgen who discovered them on this day in 1895.  The attached picture is the first known radiograph of Rontgen's wife's hand.

Many Mets fans must know this but here' a fact that amuses me to no end.  Former MLB player and Mets studio announcer Todd Zeile is a direct descendant of John Adams and John Quincy Adams.  He's just so . . . not Adams-like.  But who in the modern era would be?  

The Bronx is the only one of NYC's five boroughs located on the Continental United States.

-s.

Fun fact: Marble Hill, a small neighborhood contiguous with the Bronx, is politically part of Manhattan. It was originally part of Manhattan Island, but was separated by the construction of the Harlem Ship Canal in 1895. About 20 years later the Harlem River on the other side of Marble Hill was filled in and it became part of the Mainland. But it remains politically part of New York County and Manhattan  

Fun fact: The farthest upper right-hand corner on that map is the part of the Bronx where I grew up.

Fun fact: it's the 52nd anniversary of the publication of the first Issue of Rolling Stone magazine. John Lennon (OK boomer) was on the cover.

bub said:

40s Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr was actually a brilliant and influential inventor:

https://www.marketplace.org/2017/11/21/inventor-changed-our-world-and-also-happened-be-famous-hollywood-star/

Fun fact: today is her birthday.

If you're looking at this site using wifi, you can thank her. One of her inventions was a frequency-hopping technology to allow guided torpedoes to hit their target without being jammed.

That frequency hopping is used in Bluetooth and wifi today.