What I learned today!

[_Markk]

I thought it would be cool to have a ongoing thread, Shades and folks willing, to post cool facts or unique facts that we ( the poster) have never known or thought of...

Today I learned that, among the many stores, shops, and entities... there is a Best Buy store in the Pentagon...it hosts 23k workers on any given day, and has 17 miles of hallways, yet because of the design, any location can be reached on foot in 7 minutes or so. (America's Book of Secrets...Military History Channel)

[_Res Ipsa]

I learned that nearly all movie and TV shots of alleys in New York City are shot in the same alley. Manhattan has only a few alleys, only one of which is particularly photogenic. It’s called Cortlandt Alley

[_Markk]

I bet Law and Order, and Blue Bloods spend a lot of time there?

http://gothamist.com/2018/07/12/cortlan ... hp#photo-1

[_moksha]

The FBI intensively scoured that alley for a bullet shell by an unsub (see naval warfare). NCIS Probie Timothy McGee also shot a suspect there and fortunately the bullet was recovered before the end of that episode.

[_MeDotOrg]

A practical application of E=mc2:
On August 9, 1945, one gram of matter was converted into energy over Nagasaki, Japan.

After the first thermonuclear detonation at the Bikini atoll, several new elements were created due to heretofore unseen temperatures on earth. The code name of the thermonuclear program was Project Panda. Consequently many of the physicists lobbied hard for one of the new elements to be called Pandemonium.

I'm not kidding.

[_Markk]

I never knew that James Arness (Matt Dillion) and Peter Graves ( James Phelps) were brothers.

Peter Graves (born Peter Duesler Aurness; March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010) was an American film and television actor. He was best known for his role as Jim Phelps in the CBS television series Mission: Impossible from 1967 to 1973 (original) and from 1988 to 1990 (revival). His elder brother was actor James Arness ( Gun Smoke) (1923–2011). Graves was also known for his portrayal of airplane pilot Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 comedy film Airplane! and its 1982 sequel Airplane II: The Sequel. Wiki

[_Jersey Girl]

I never knew that James Arness (Matt Dillion) and Peter Graves ( James Phelps) were brothers.

Peter Graves (born Peter Duesler Aurness; March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010) was an American film and television actor. He was best known for his role as Jim Phelps in the CBS television series Mission: Impossible from 1967 to 1973 (original) and from 1988 to 1990 (revival). His elder brother was actor James Arness ( Gun Smoke) (1923–2011). Graves was also known for his portrayal of airplane pilot Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 comedy film Airplane! and its 1982 sequel Airplane II: The Sequel. Wiki

I always knew that!

[_Markk]

I am a big Gun Smoke fan and I never knew that.

I learned today that Shaquille O'Neal wanted to be the next "Too Tall Jones" for the Dallas Cowboys, but a skinny guy that looked like Dan Patrick in high school took out his knees, and so he decided basketball was the way to go.

Bet you didn't know that, and I bet you could also care less :) (source...Dan Patrick show interview)

[_Res Ipsa]

Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein during the Year Without a Summer. The monster is interpreted by some as the roving bands of hungry farmers caused by the rain and cold temperatures. It took Shelley two years to finish the book, so she had ample opportunity to view the effects of disrupted weather.

[_Markk]

I learned this morning, thanks to Res Ipsa, there was a "year without a summer"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

"In June 1816, "incessant rainfall" during that "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and John William Polidori, and their friends to stay indoors at Villa Diodati overlooking Lake Geneva for much of their Swiss holiday.[31][33][34] They decided to have a contest to see who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Lord Byron to write "A Fragment", which Polidori later used as inspiration for The Vampyre[35] – a precursor to Dracula. In addition, Lord Byron was inspired to write the poem "Darkness", by a single day when "the fowls all went to roost at noon and candles had to be lit as at midnight".[31] "

And I found that if it was not for the "year without a summer" there most likely would not have been a Book of Mormon or the LDS church...or this discussion board.

According to historian L. D. Stillwell, Vermont alone experienced a decrease in population of between 10,000 and 15,000, erasing seven previous years of population growth.[5] Among those who left Vermont were the family of Joseph Smith, who moved from Norwich, Vermont (though he was born in Sharon, Vermont) to Palmyra, New York.[32] This move precipitated the series of events that culminated in the publication of the Book of Mormon and the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[19]