Random possibly useful fact

[lutra]

The horn of a rhino is made of keratin. The same stuff your hair or nails consist of.

["couldbecousin"]

The horn of a rhino is made of keratin. The same stuff your hair or nails consist of.

  Gelatin is made from animal collagen, pretty gross actually. 


  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin

[lutra]

^ T'is pretty gross indeed.. and um, is used in a løt of products.

Plus ja, the rhino uses gelatin to fix his (nose-) hair to make it look like a pointy (upright) horn.   

[midlifeaspie]

The horn of a rhino is made of keratin. The same stuff your hair or nails consist of.

  Gelatin is made from animal collagen, pretty gross actually. 


  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin

Indeed.  That's why I don't eat the stuff 

[TheoK]

Some German prepositions now ruling the dative used to rule the genitive just 100-150 years ago. A modern German says vor dem Winter but in the 19th Century it was vor Winters.

Some Swedish prepositions also ruled the genitive, like till. Swedish hasn't had other than the nominative and the genitive for several hundred years, but it's still in use in some expressions, like att vara någon till lags, which literally means "to be someone to the law's" or "to be someone to the mood's"=pleasing someone, do as someone wants.

I came to think about this, since no Latin prepositions seem to rule the dative. They either rule the accusative or the ablative. A few also rule the genitive.

[TheoK]

In Classic Latin iocare means "to joke", just like its modern cognates, though in Vulgar Latin it means "to play".

[lutra]

Did you know that Jamie Oliver is a connaisseur of the better herberies?

[TheoK]

I maybe posted this before, but it's interesting if you're into linguistics etc.

Latin often didn't need a verb to express something.

Ex: Sic semper tyrannis. There's no verb in it, just two adverbs and a noun. Sic means "so", "thus", "just like that". Semper means "always". Tyrannis is dative plural of tyrannus - "tyrant", "oppressor".

By the way: verba is latin for "word", so adverb means "to the word", not "to the verb".

They also often didn't need conjunctions. For instance dico scribo would be "I mean and write" in modern English.

[Queen Victoria]

Not a fact, but an idea:



Sensory balloons: dry beans, coffee grounds, hair gel, flour, baby powder, rice, water, etc.

[TheoK]

The French often use the word "revolver" even for brownings.

The French have no words for 70 and 90.

The French call the submissive part in a male gay couple for "she".

[TheoK]

American citizens don't need a license for bringing their guns to Sweden, if they're here on vacation. This must be one of the most blatant cases of Swedish laws discriminating the majority of citizens in the country.

No, wait, another one came to mind: since 1972 the two highest Swedish decorations can only be awarded to foreigners. It's "unequal" to give those decorations to Swedes 

[TheoK]

A rule of thumb for when a chlorate based pyrotechnic composition is optimal is that you can feel a disctinct smell of hydrochloric acid when burning it.

[TheoK]

Egg is cognate with Latin ovum, which is most likely related to avis, bird.

It is believed that the Proto-Indo-European word for egg was *h₂ōwyóm and for bird *h₂éwis.

[odeon]

Final call to board the flight from Montreal to Canada.

["couldbecousin"]

Final call to board the flight from Montreal to Canada.

  OMG the plane!  Don't miss your flight!  Run!  RUN!