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Facts That Don't Get You Anywhere

Have you ever wondered why you knew certain bizarre facts that are so useless that if told to other people all you'll ever get are weird looks? Things like who invented serial comic strips or the fact that Donald Duck was actually banned in Finland because he didn't wear any pants! Well, we at RS are pretty interested in them and thought the readers should check them out as well!

The tenth President of the United States, John Tyler Jr. was born in 1790 and served his term from 1841 to 1845. As of March 2011, two of his grandsons through his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler (who was born in 1853) are alive. We are talking about six presidents before Lincoln here and this is pretty unbelievable.

When you think about it that way, Cleopatra actually lived closer in time to us than she did to the creation of the Pyramids. The pyramids were constructed during 2630 BC- 2611 BC and Cleopatra was born in 69BC, the time difference between the pyramids and her birth is actually less than her existence and ours.

Around 70,000 years ago, the human race was on the verge of extinction, as a genetic study shows. The population of the entire world shrunk to as low a number as 2,000 with people living in tiny numbers in parts of Africa, who went on to repopulate the world and now we boast a population of nearly seven billion.

Moving away from history for a bit, it is pretty astonishing to find out that Sherlock Holmes never actually said the phrase 'Elementary, my dear Watson' In any of the books. He did say 'elementary' and 'Dear Watson', but did not say them together.

Now like we all know, Karl Marx was the father of socialism, and the entire Soviet Union was constructed under his principles, but Marx never actually set his foot in Russia.

Before he started destroying the world, Adolf Hitler was TIME 'Man of the Year' in 1938. Also, Richard Nixon became consecutive 'Man of the Year' in 1971 and 1972. This just goes to show that not everyone makes the right choices all the time.

If you're wondering who invented serial comic strips in newspapers, it was Joseph Pulitzer back in 1895 who did The Yellow Kid in New World newspaper.

Source: Wikipedia

By Orin


We Are Ugly But We Have The Music

We were told that we were inadequate. We were told we were incompetent. We were told we were stupid. We were told that we were blind. That we lacked imagination, verve, joie de vivre, panache and another French thing we can't spell. We mostly agreed. We're men after all.

What got our tickers into a fix was that we were told that colours came in more than twelve. This is wrong. Faber Castell does not lie! Such criminal allegations against Faber Castell must be answered.

What we're talking about here, are nail polish colours. They make no sense to a normal trichromatic man. Our eyes aren't suitably equipped to tell the difference between red and, well red.

Observe, as we extrapolate:

Java Mauve So is this a coffee coloured purple? Purple, three-day-old coffee with a fungus mould on it? What? Our lack of imagination was said to be a direct cause of us not being able to comprehend what this colour looked like. One of us said purple and he was wrong. Another said brown and he was wrong. So, we said purple brown and we were still wrong.

Even Google failed us. It showed us a cup of joe. Apparently another name for this colour is Mallow Bean.

Chocolate Moose Uh… Uh… Uh… Like a deer or something?

Black Cherry Chutney In our defence, we thought they were talking about a restaurant. An Indian restaurant. So the comments we made were not racist. And yet we are punished for it.

We imagined this colour as a disgruntled Apu with a black eye. That is not racist right? I mean come on. Chutney!

Big Apple Red Isn't Manhattan supposed to be filled with concrete? So we thought it was a sidewalk-dirt gray from Lower Manhattan. The women pointed out the Red in the name.

We're so confused. Gray red? Red gray? A horse?

Atomic Orange Fukushima! No? Darnit.

Sienna Minivan! Again? Why?

At this point, frustrated at our failure to correctly name a colour, horse or moose, we asked that we be given visual aid.

We were shown one example of a nail polish colour. Pearl purple. It was white.

So, we decided, that since nail polish seems to come in arbitrary colours that have no connection to the actual colour, we'd suggest a few colours of our own.

Chanachur Yellow It's green. It's chic, embodies earthiness and trees and has no connection to Yellow, the song. It says that you, as a person, suffer from self esteem issues.

Tejpata Brown Which is blue. A very light blue mind. Not to be confused to Darchini Brown, which is a startling shade of pink. Tejpata Brown signifies youthful authority and says that you are a rebel without a stable relationship.

Crowpoop Green This particular shade of orange signifies dexterity and resourcefulness in the face of anorexia. The zing of this colour says to the world, hey, look at me, oh please just look.

Offwhite Paper White This nail polish is very popular among the goth and emo community for its dark, dark shade of black. It says that you were a mistake on your parents' part and need a haircut.

Mongrel Blue Neel Kutta, as it is known among the educated, this colour of purple nail polish lends your fingers that sense of weight and clumsy buttery-ness, suggestive of your confident personality and willingness to rip food out of a baby's hands.

We're getting bored at this point. So let us move on to the other topic of contention we had. The supposedly arbitrary names of cars. Yeah right.

Let's take the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX 2.0 L 4G63. This car is an achievement in engineering.

The 2.0 in its name refers to its 2 litre engine. The number serves a distinct purpose, telling us instantly that the car has a mid-size engine. We know just by seeing those numbers there that it isn't a loud car. We expect it to be silent. Mostly.

The 4G63 refers to the fact that it is a Sirius engine. One of the four ranges of engines that Mitsubishi has. And not only that, but it tell us that the car has four cylinders; that the engine is of the straight-four variety. The G tells us that the engine chugs petrol (gasoline) and not diesel. We also know that this Sirius, is the 63rd of its name, more powerful that the 61st and the 62nd.

And the Lancer in its name refers to its awesomeness. Evolution is a cool word. The IX suggests that unlike Off With Her Red (yet another nail polish colour), this car has pedigree, a bloodline of sorts. One that is not red, but black, oil dark black.

What's more, this car comes in gun-metal black. Which is exactly as the name suggests.

Thus our debate is won. Car names have a purpose. Nail polish names have one too. It proves to men that women have a sense of humour. One that makes no sense.

(This is actually a cunning car review, the purpose of which is to fool women into reading one).

By The Gruesome Statistic and The Awful Fact
Illustration: ER Ronny
Title taken from a Leonard Cohen song.

   

 

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