Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Some random facts and trivia

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In the Harry Potter books, Dementors are deadly, magical, wraith-like creatures. Rowling has revealed that they represent depression and that they were based on her own experience with the disease. The remedy to lighten the effects of a Dementor is chocolate.
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J K Rowling is the first person to become a billionaire (U.S. dollars) by writing books and in 2007 was runner up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
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When Star Trek was first planned, NBC execs asked Gene Roddenberry to get rid of the “guy with the pointy ears” because they were worried about his “satanic” appearance. 
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The word “tattoo” derives from the Polynesian word “ta” (“to strike”), which describes the sound of a tattooing spike being knocked on skin. The first recorded references to the word “tattoo” is in the papers of Joseph Banks (1743-1820), a naturalist aboard Captain Cook’s ship. Before Captain Cook brought the word to Europe, tattoos in the West were known as “prics” or “marks.”
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In 2010, 25% of Australians under the age of 30 had tattoos.
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When three-letter airport codes became standard, airports that had been using two letters simply added an X.
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During the Cold War, the U.S. considered airdropping enormous condoms labeled "Medium" on the Soviets.

To elaborate:
Following World War II, Frank Wisner helped found the Office of Policy Coordination. Officially, its mission was refugee assistance and working with the International Red Cross. Its actual mission involved covert actions against the Soviet Union. Wisner was a wily, charming, Southern aristocrat who was forever changed when he witnessed the brutal Soviet occupation of Romania. His office invested heavily in psychological warfare, which was still a relatively new concept. Ideas that came from the office included delivering American toiletries across the Iron Curtain (to demonstrate superior Western standards of comfort) and airdropping enormous condoms labeled “Medium” onto the Soviets, to demoralize them against an anatomically superior American army. (Sadly, this plan was never carried out.) 
://mentalfloss.com/article/30880/11-things-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-america%E2%80%99s-spymasters


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