#factoids

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[esotheria-sims]

This one's for you, @lunelfy! 💜

I've been sitting on your ask for a very long time, wondering how to reply. My BaCC sims don't say an awful lot (I'm lazy to write dialogue, lol), but there is this other fun worldbuilding idea I've been mulling over: Factoid sheets.

Basically, little all-in-one info dumps where I can toss any extra info that gets overlooked or goes otherwise unexplained during my gameplay. I'm still trying to come up with a format that I can stick with, but for now, I think I'd like them to be sorted by themes. The sheet above tells us a little more about the paintings adorning the walls of Whitestone Castle, which is the residence of my BaCC's royal family, the Moonfeathers.

With apologies for the ridiculous delay, I hope you enjoy! ^^

[stephensmithuk]

The Sign of the Four: The Statement of the Case

CW for the end of this as it includes discussions of child murder and detailed discussions of capital punishment.

Turbans have never been particularly common in the United Kingdom; these days, they are most likely to be worn by West African women or those who are undergoing chemotherapy.

It was the norm for a married woman to be referred to as "Mrs. [husband's name]", especially on something like a dinner invite. Historically, in the English common law system the United States also uses, a woman's legal identity was subsumed by her husband on marriage, in something called coverture. In some cases, a woman who ran her own business could be treated as legally single (a femme sole) and so sue someone - or be sued. This practice was gradually abolished, but did fully end until the 1970s.

@myemuisemo has excellently covered the reasons why Mary would have been sent back to the UK.

As you were looking at a rather long trip to and from India, even with the Suez Canal open by 1878, long leave like this would have been commonplace.

The Andaman Islands are an archipelago SW of what is now Myanmar and was then called Burma. The indigenous Andamanese lived pretty much an isolated experience until the late 19th century when the British showed up. The locals were pretty hostile to outsiders; shipwrecked crews were often attacked and killed in the 1830s and 1840s, the place getting a reputation for cannibalism.

The British eventually managed to conquer the place and combine its administration with the Nicobar Islands. Most of the native population would be wiped out via outside disease and loss of territory; they now number around 500 people. The Indian government, who took over the area on independence, now legally protect the remaining tribespeople, restricting or banning access to much of the area.

Of particular note are the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island, who have made abundantly clear that they do not want outside contact. This is probably due to the British in the late 1800s, who kidnapped some of them and took them to Port Blair. The adults died of disease and the children were returned with gifts... possibly of the deadly sort. Various attempts by the Indian government (who legally claimed the island in 1970 via dropping a marker off) and anthropologists to contact them have generally not gone well, with the islanders' response frequently being of the arrow-firing variety. Eventually, via this and NGO pressure, most people got the hint and the Indian government outright banned visits to the island.

In 2004, after the Asian tsunami that killed over 2,000 people in the archipelago, the Indian Coast Guard sent over a helicopter to check the inhabitants were OK. They made clear they were via - guess what - firing arrows at the helicopter. Most of the people killed were locals and tourists; the indigenous tribes knew "earthquake equals possible tsunami" and had headed for higher ground.

In 2006, an Indian crab harvesting boat drifted onto the island; both of the crew were killed and buried.

In 2018, an American evangelical missionary called John Allen Chau illegally went to the island, aiming to convert the locals to Christianity. He ended up as a Darwin Award winner and the Indians gave up attempts to recover his body.

The first British penal colony in the area was established in 1789 by the Bengalese but shut down in 1796 due to a high rate of disease and death. The second was set up in 1857 and remained in operation until 1947.

People poisoning children for the insurance money was a sadly rather common occurrence in the Victorian era to the point that people cracked jokes about it if a child was enrolled in a burial society i.e. where people paid in money to cover funeral expenses and to pay out on someone's death.

The most infamous of these was Mary Ann Cotton from Durham, who is believed to have murdered 21 people, including three of her four husbands and 11 of her 13 children so she could get the payouts. She was arrested in July 1872 and charged with the murder of her stepson, Charles Edward Cotton, who had been exhumed after his attending doctor kept bodily samples and found traces of arsenic. After a delay for her to give birth to her final child in prison and a row in London over the choice the Attorney General (legally responsible for the prosecution of poisoning cases) had made for the prosecuting counsel, she was convicted in March 1973 of the murder and sentenced to death, the jury coming back after just 90 minutes. The standard Victorian practice was for any further legal action to be dropped after a capital conviction, as hanging would come pretty quickly.

Cotton was hanged at Durham County Goal that same month. Instead of her neck being broken, she slowly strangled to death as the rope had been made too short, possibly deliberately.

Then again, the hangman was William Calcraft, who had started off flogging juvenille offenders at Newgate Prison. Calcraft hanged an estimated 450 people over a 45-year career and developed quite a reputation for incompetence or sadism (historians debate this) due to his use of short drops. On several occasions, he would have to go down into the pit and pull on the condemned person's legs to speed up their death. In a triple hanging in 1867 of three Fenian who had murdered a police officer, one died instantly but the other two didn't. Calcraft went down and finished one of them off to the horror of officiating priest Father Gadd, who refused to let him do the same to the third and held the man's hand for 45 minutes until it was over. There was also his very public 1856 botch that led to the pinioning of the condemned's legs to become standard practice.

Calcraft also engaged in the then-common and legal practice of selling off the rope and the condemned person's clothing to make extra money. The latter would got straight to Madame Tussaud's for the latest addition to the Chamber of Horrors. Eventually, he would be pensioned off in 1874 aged 73 after increasingly negative press comment.

The Martyrdom of Man was a secular "universal" history of the Western World, published in 1872.

[ianosmond]

I love the word "factoid" and its meaning shift, because we can trace it near exactly, and mostly within my own lifetime.

The word "factoid" was created on June 1, 1973. Well, okay, the book was written before then, but that was the publication date of Norman Mailer's "Marilyn: A Biography", where he said that Marilyn Monroe was a person whom people just liked to make up stories about. Just as a humanoid has the shape of a human but is not a human, a factoids have the shape of facts, but are “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.”

I first encountered the word "factoid," when I was almost six years old in December of 1979, in the first issue of 3-2-1 Contact Magazine, a science magazine for kids, associated with the kids' science TV show 3-2-1 Contact, by the same people who did Sesame Street.

On page 10, they had their regular feature, "Factoids." It said, "What are factoids? They are weird little facts that are stranger than strange, truer than true. Use them to wow your friends, amaze your family, and dazzle your teachers."

Six and a half years to go from "creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion" to "weird little facts that are stranger than strange, truer than true."

[that-gay-jedi]

Did a goldfish sponsor this ad??? Did the goldfish who sponsored this ad commission a self-portrait for it???

[Image description: a screenshot of an ad encountered on Tumblr titled "Informed insults." The ad has text that reads, "If you're about to accuse someone of having the attention span of a goldfish, it might be time to rethink your insult!" and a drawing of a goldfish made in rainbow outline. The fish appears to be eyeing the viewer with a look of judgment and displeasure on its fishy face. A button underneath the ad reads, "Learn More." End of image description.]

[kpopwerewolf]

HEY TOMMY HERE

Gimme a daily random factoid NOW

/pos

In linguistics, there's a feature called nominal number, which is the method by which languages indicate the number of the noun being referenced. (English is boring. It only has singular and plural.) Of these, the most uncommon feature is trial: a feature that refers to exactly three of something.

Sorry it's a bit late :) /silly

[bixiebeet]

A 2012 article about our favorite crew. I feel like a lot of this information has become more widely known since this was published. But it’s still really interesting! Especially the bonus fact (scroll to the bottom) noting that Beverly Hills Cop also came out in 1984.

Also the Ghostbusters theme had serious competition for an original Oscar theme song. (Ray Parker Jr. lost to Stevie Wonder in this category.) And does anyone else remember the song lawsuit with Huey Lewis?? Again, some interesting info.

[maneaterwithtail]

Ok “Crazy Horse” was a dude that was a very skilled military leader/fighter.

The most interesting aspect is that in his culture there were a BUNCH chances for people to tell stories of their accomplishments, and he chose not to.

I imagine axebear doing something similar to that with what he wears

Nice to know

[zzedar2]

TIL Norman Rockwell was a fan of Jackson Pollock.

[leaslichoma]

Factoid: Nearly 4 Million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens

Actual fact: UFO researchers did a poll on several hundred people, and interpreted the results to mean that nearly 4 million Americans have likely been abducted by aliens.

I think I've seen this factoid used to demonstrate how the average person is supposedly so stupid and can't be trusted, though I don't remember where.

You can read more about the poll results here:

[therxtking]

The Retchen's 'season' is february, just february, but heat cycles for does continue year round.

Caniquus all only breed in the summer due to their gestation period, so their foals are born in the spring.

[comradekatara]

ppl who are like “there’s no way sokka’s art skills would improve, he’s ontologically bad at art” ummmm. dude. you realize that this is the mary sue of hobbies, right? this guy could out-westley westley. he would develop an immunity to iocane powder in less than a week because he’s just that prodigious. he became a kyoshi warrior who could best their leader in a matter of hours, and this was the first time he had ever trained in his life with an actual teacher and opponent. he mastered the sword in one day, if we’re to take piandao’s word for it (and considering his name is literally sword, he is clearly an expert). sokka looked at the rough schematics for hot air balloons after the eminent inventor in the world had spent who knows how long not able to get his idea to actually work like “uhhh…. this may sound obvious, but have you tried a lid???” he has borderline supernatural aim with a boomerang. he was dropped into a haiku battle knowing nothing about the form, and not only beat the leader of ba sing se’s premier haiku club, but also chose, completely unnecessarily, to make each verse rhyme. if he actually sat down and practiced drawing, maybe with some instruction from a trained artist, or easier beginner’s materials than ink and a brush (you’ve all seen my art, and I still cannot paint with ink and a brush), I think sokka would easily be able to produce a work on par with (if not superior to) the mona lisa by the following morning.

[stephensmithuk]

The Sign of Four: The Science of Deduction

A morocco case is a stitched leather pouch, with a strip of leather through the holes that can used to secure it and or as a handle. Also a strip of leather like that is called a thong. No sniggering. Or snickering if you're American.

Beaune refers to Beaune wine, from that part of the French region of Burgundy.

Cocaine had become a widely popular drug, with stuff like coca wine (i.e. cocaine and wine combined) being available to buy. However, public opinion was turning against the drug. The British would ban it in the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920, even for medical use - the US still allows it as a local anaesthetic, although it is rarely used for that purpose.

Today, under British law, cocaine is a Class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, sitting with heroin and ecstasy among others. This means that possession carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison or an unlimited fine; fines are more likely for a first offence. "Possession with intent to supply" (a fairly subjective determination), supply or production can get you life.

Wigmore Street, near Marble Arch, is about a twenty minute walk from 221B Baker Street.

These days, spoil from street excavations is required to be placed in a designated area and barriered off.

Fifty guineas would be a lot of money back in 1888.

Self-winding watches had been around since the late 1770s, but they were rare until the wristwatch gained widespread popularity among men as a result of the First World War.

The Victorian era saw a massive expansion in the number of pawnbrokers. Many poor people, unable to get loans from banks, were reliant on them for easy credit to tide them over. It was common for someone to pawn their "Sunday best" clothing on a Monday, reclaim it on Saturday once paid, wear it to church or chapel (the latter being the term for nonconformist places of worship) and then start the process over again.

However, despite the stigma of doing it (see "The Beryl Coronet"), middle-class and rich people also would use pawnbrokers when desperate.

From 1872, regulation increased on pawnbrokers with maximum interest rates set. Uncollected "pledges" could be sold after a year and seven days if under ten shillings. If over ten shillings, they had to be sold at public auction, although the pawnbroker was allowed to set a reserve price for them.

[degen-gamer]

the past 🤝 the present

[courtingwonder]

Diagram And Description Of Ascenders In Typography Design

[gablehood]

historian: -writing about sums of money in the past-

me: alas how will i ever have context for the value of currency at that time

historian, about to immediately hit me with the wages of a skilled tradesman in that era: