Sulfur mustard or yperite was first used around the town of Ieper(Belgium) in 1917, during World War I.
It is still in use today in countries like Iraq. :(

Americans consume approximately 130 lbs of sugar per year. That is the equivalent of 1,767,900 Skittles.

King Abdullah II of Jordan is a fan of Star Trek and had a small non-speaking role on “Investigations,” a 1995 episode of the TV series Star Trek: Voyager.

In 1988, Cosmopolitan published an article claiming that HIV could not be transmitted between individuals using the missionary position.

In Saudi Arabia, women can fly planes but it is illegal for them to drive cars.

The richest US congress person is Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. His wealth averages $464,110,000

In the 13 states that have passed laws to legalize medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010, deaths due to opioid overdose fell 25%.

The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, known as Xerox PARC, developed the graphical user interface (GUI), laser printing, WYSIWYG text editors, and Ethernet. And perhaps more importantly developed object oriented programming.

At the same time that Apple was suing Microsoft for stealing the "look and feel" of their GUI they were defending themselves against a similar suit filed against them by Xerox.

commented: Lol +0

The average salary for NCAA football coaches in the US is $1.64 million. The average salary of US university/college professors is $73,000.

The dinosaur "Dreadnoughtus" had a 37 foot-long neck, a 30 foot tail, and weighed an estimated 65 tons.

When the Bastille was stormed during the French Revolution, only 7 prisoners were being held at the time. One of them was Whyte de Malleville, an Irishman.

Men in the US receive on average 63% longer sentences than females for the exact same crimes. source

Three out of four cars that Rolls-Royce ever built are still on the road. Source

Vault Wagon produce more sausages than cars (I'm not sure if that is just last year or more as a whole).

6.5% of all people who have ever been born are alive today source

Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was a notorious bank robber in the Great Depression era US. While unpopular with bank executives, he was enormously popular with the public because of his habit of destroying mortgage papers at the banks he robbed.

Harald Gormsson was a king of Denmark and Norway who ruled circa 970 CE and united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. One theory to explain his nickname is that he had a bad, or "blue", tooth. Another is that he had a fondness for blueberries which stained his teeth blue. His reputation and nickname (Bluetooth) are the reason for the naming of the modern wireless protocol. The runes for H and B when overlaid form the Bluetooth logo.

Stephen Hawking is worried that the Higgs Boson might become unstable.

"This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming."

He has, however, pointed out that for that to happen would require a super-collider with a diameter larger than the Earth so it's likely such an event will not be man-made.

In the US, forty people die per day on average by overdosing on pain killers. Zero people die from marijuana overdosing.

Ya but marijuana is evil and a scourge against all societies RJ. Plus, men will grow boobs and become gay if they smoke it. LoL, that's what the doctors a generation ago were telling people.

I have bad news for you. When they get to be my age, all men get saggy man boobs (moobs) :(

LoL, yeah but that's not from the pot is it? Or is it!!!!

On a serious note; during my time as an adult, I've never understood the laws that prohibit pot. I've written a university paper on prohibiting pot and really, by my accounts, keeping it illegal is more detrimental on society, especially in most of the States. My studies also showed that there are multiple billions of dollars funneled into the war against drugs, on pot alone, in the United States and just over a billion dollars here in Canada (per year). Plus, I'm of the opinion that a person should have the right to do whatever they wish to their body and mind as long as it doesn't affect the well being of others. I get discouraged easily by the absence of thought when it comes to marijuana, especially when people are so quick to say it's evil, dangerous, or other false associations.

Oh and by the way, I don't even smoke the stuff.

Many of the studies (now debunked) that indicated the health hazards of using pot were done by "scientists" with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. These industries stand to lose a shitload of money if people started using something that can be grown in the backyard instead of a little pill which is drastically overpriced. At the risk of derailing this thread, I have to mention a preposterous comment made on behalf of the Canadian Medial Association recently. The comment was that we should be stick to proven medicine rather than using a substance that hasn't passed serious study. This is absurd for several reasons including

  1. pot has been used by humans for thousands of years
  2. we all know that many modern drugs are fast-tracked without proper independent study & review, often with serious, sometimes deadly consequences
  3. serious study was, for years, illegal for no good reason

In 1993, Juan Bernaus was sentanced to 3 years in prison in Argentina for switching the "Ladies" and "Gents" signs on public toilets.

What a lad.

Finland has more islands than any other contry: 179,584

A programmer is an organism that can turn caffeine into code.

pot has been used by humans for thousands of years

So have leeches, and a whole bunch of folk medicine which has been proven to be either useless or harmful.

we all know that many modern drugs are fast-tracked without proper independent study & review, often with serious, sometimes deadly consequences

Occaisonally but not as often as people think, many many people and lots of money is spent and lots of laws have been written trying to prevent this from happening but it is hard because it costs about a billion dollars to bring a drug to market and taxpayers aren't willing to pay for it (just look at the on going cuts to science & medical funding) so we have to depend on large drug companies.

serious study was, for years, illegal for no good reason

Not really, just a bureaucratic nightmare. There have been lots of experiments using various illegal drugs (cocaine, LSD, ectasy, pot etc..). Many show promising results -> almost all illegal drugs can be useful as medicines for the right conditions (the question is really are they better than the alternatives?). Although as with all medicines it is preferable to purify the active ingredients rather than use the raw form because it is easier to control the dosage for optimal effect (different cannabis plants have different concentrations of THC so it is hard to determine the exact dosage in a given quantity) and to reduce unwanted side-effects from unnecessary contaminents (eg. many of the chemicals in cannabis smoke are likely to be carcinogenic like those in tobacco smoke).

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