Did You Know?

We all have subjects we're passionate about and would eagerly share facts about when asked, so I'm asking!

Share a fun fact/piece of trivia about one of your interests

I'll start:
In 2016, a user wanted help finding an "evil farming game" they remembered where you supposedly kill your wife and then have avoid suspicion by hiding her body and continuing to farm like normal. The lost media community formed a subreddit, discord server, and chased leads for years! Then... in 2021 it was finally realized that the game was something Joel from Vinesauce came up with during a stream as a joke. The user who started it all fell asleep while watching said stream, and it became a false memory. Oops!

Your turn!

GREAAAT idea for a thread that's so funny.

Did you know kelp is a keystone species? Kelp alone can turn a barren underwater patch into an incredibly biodiverse place! Hosting hundreds of other species by itself. It's incredibly important, but sadly kelp forests are threatened in many parts of the world due to overharvesting alginate is a compound that's HIGHLY in demand right now. It's on every fucking thing, especially food and cosmetics. It's not bad to use products with alginate per se, but some places have problems regulating harvest in a sustainable way. The most sustainable way to harvest algae is by just picking up what the current drifts into the shore (it's also super easy!), bc that's what came off the plants naturally just by the action of the waves. The most harmful way is by taking a crowbar and diving down into the roots and prying the entire plant off by the "foot" it uses to attatch itself to the bottom.
But kelp forests are SUCH beautiful ecosystems, I highly recommend looking up gifs and videos bc no picture can capture its beauty!! it's really all in the movement. Once an area is populated by kelp a TON of other animals move in. Molluscs, gastropods, echinoderms, fish, sharks, even my favorite OTTERS call kelp forests home! So by protecting kelp you protect actually hundreds of other species!!

Charles Schulz stopped using a character in Peanuts because a fan sent him a letter about how annoying she was LMAOOOO This is the letter he sent back!!

I'm going down a spiraling rabbit hole about tragopans and I NEED to get this off my chest so I can focus so HI LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TRAGOPANS!!!
Tragopan is the COOLEST genus in the family of Phaisanidae, or pheasant type birds!! There's five species in it and theyre all NEAT AS FUCK!! Why would this be?

this is a temmick's tragopan!

They don't look like much, right?
Well, the thing is, both of those are female! and tragopans are HIGHLY sexually dimporphic species in which the males steal all of the spotlight (as is common with birds!)
Not only are they very brightly colored and intrincately patterned per se:


Same kind as the last one, just male!

But theydies and gentlethem, that's not all the fun tricks these birds are packing! see those wrinkly wattle looking things around the male's head? well those are INFLATABLE and super colorful!

EVERY single species has these amazing little like. Bib things and, my personal favorite, THE LITTLE HORNS!! they use those in their mating displays, wiggling them around, it's very cute. You can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exnECsBqf34
If you thought these were cool, look up the other species! all of them have really beautiful patterns, and watching the timeline of how they unfurl and deploy them is sick af imo

LOVING the facts here!! I never knew the evil farming sim turned out to be a joel vinesauce related false memory that's so funny

here's a funfact i love, in 1184 Glastonbury Abbey was destroyed by a fire and conveniently in 1191 they found the tomb of King Arthur and Guinevere! Obviously since King Arthur the historical figure is so far removed from the mythological King Arthur there's no way this could be a real discovery. Historians agree that there likely was a real tomb there and the iron cross that read "Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia" (Here lies interred the famous King Arthur on the isle of Avalon) was likely a fake to make the tomb look as if it were Arthur's. The whole reason for this was to draw in tourism! People had ceased making pilgrimages there after the fire so having a new relic for them to come visit brought in more pilgrims and therefore more donations to fix the abbey.

Later, the bodies were exhumed, paraded around, and then reburied in a fancier tomb underneath the altar of the main chapel on site. This was done by King Edward I who came from Norman aristocracy. After the Norman invasion, the Britons were scattered and mostly fled to Wales and Cornwall and greatly opposed the Normans. King Arthur is an old Briton legend, which is why he is referred to as King of the Britons. The Britons took King Arthur very seriously, and some believed the legend that he would return from Avalon to rule England again, which would mean a restoration of England to the Britons. The Normans greatly opposed this, so finding King Arthur's corpse and parading it around was a deeply political move. They were basically saying here's your great king he's dead as a doornail which means there's no one to oppose my rule.

After Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, Glastonbury Abbey was abandoned (after the abbot was drawn and quartered on top of Glastonbury Tor, yikes!) and fell to ruins. Much of the materials left were taken by townsfolk for building material, leaving just skeletal structures of a few buildings, the kitchen in tact, and the vague outlines of the other buildings. The finding of King Arthur's grave has placed Glastonbury as a possible site for the isle of Avalon by Arthurian historians as well as proud locals. Glastonbury Tor (big giant hill) has also been proposed as a possible site for Camelot, and supposedly the battle of Camlann was fought in the area as well. While all of this is mythology, it's a very fun bit of myth that the town has adopted gladly. There are shops and murals and signs that proclaim Glastonbury as Avalon, and it has become a hotspot for spiritualism and healing.

Here are some pictures of me on both sites (original and final) of Arthur's grave as well as pictures i took of the ruins: