Fact or Bullshit

[Marc Meakin]

Maybe belongs in a different topic but anyway.
I like to collect amazing factoids but some are maybe not so factual.
Here are 2 good examples :
Of all the people who have ever lived, 7% are alive today.

All the gold that has ever been excavated would fit in 3 double decker buses.

I have seen both of these claims both debunked and confirmed from online sources

[Gavin Chipper]

The 7% of people one would presumably depend on what you define a person to be - at what point in our evolutionary history.

[Johnny Canuck]

There was an ancient law that any Jewish person who walks under the Arch of Titus in Rome, which commemorates the Roman army's victory over Judea, is no longer considered Jewish. I have read that "to this day, no Jew has knowingly walked under the Arch."

I wonder who combed through 1500 years of CCTV and facial recognition to verify that.

[Fred Mumford]

I thought factoids were things that aren't really true.

[Gavin Chipper]

I thought factoids were things that aren't really true.

Is that one for the thread? Very meta.

[Gavin Chipper]

Maybe belongs in a different topic but anyway.
I like to collect amazing factoids but some are maybe not so factual.
Here are 2 good examples :
Of all the people who have ever lived, 7% are alive today.

All the gold that has ever been excavated would fit in 3 double decker buses.

I have seen both of these claims both debunked and confirmed from online sources

I seem to remember years ago Carol Vorderman calculating that the dead outnumber the living by 10 to 1. Whether this was on Countdown, How 2 or something else, I can't remember.

[Fred Mumford]

I seem to remember years ago Carol Vorderman calculating that the dead outnumber the living by 10 to 1. Whether this was on Countdown, How 2 or something else, I can't remember.

I can remember a bit more than you about this in that I know it wasn't on Countdown, but can't recall what show it was. I've seen the question answered elsewhere too though, with numbers comparable to what Carol came up with.

One that bugs me is that these days Please Please Me is not considered to be the Beatles' first UK number 1, whereas it absolutely was at the time. It was number 1 on all the major charts except the relatively minor Record Retailer (which incidentally used a smaller sample size of shops than most of the other charts too). However, at the end of the 1960s when the charts were standardised, Record Retailer was chosen as the one to use (I think partly because their chart went as far as a Top 50). All chart books since then have retroactively used the Record Retailer choices for the early years, thereby altering the official record and denying the Beatles a number 1 that was truly theirs. Happily, I believe they did go on to have a few other number ones that saved them from obscurity today.

[Gavin Chipper]

This article seems quite authoritative and reckons about 7%.

[Marc Meakin]

This article seems quite authoritative and reckons about 7%.

Or maybe this
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579
Hence my dilemma

[Marc Meakin]

Being born within the sound of Bow bells makes you a cockney.
For years I assumed Bow as in East London meaning I would qualify, however the Bow bells are actually in Marylebone making a Cockney more from central London than East london

[Gavin Chipper]

This article seems quite authoritative and reckons about 7%.

Or maybe this
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579
Hence my dilemma

Well it gives a 15 to 1 ratio. That's 6.25%. The other article actually says 6.7%. There's no massive discrepency there.

[Marc Meakin]

Man will never be able to travel the bottom of the deepest oceans, ergo there are species of marine life we will never discover.
My take on that is how can any living creature survive in such depths if that was the case

[Ian Fitzpatrick]

Being born within the sound of Bow bells makes you a cockney.
For years I assumed Bow as in East London meaning I would qualify, however the Bow bells are actually in Marylebone making a Cockney more from central London than East london

I think you may be a bit confused here, the bells are those of St Mary-le-Bow, which is in Cheapside EC2

[Gavin Chipper]

Man will never be able to travel the bottom of the deepest oceans, ergo there are species of marine life we will never discover.
My take on that is how can any living creature survive in such depths if that was the case

Erm. Also James Cameron made a later visit.

[Paul Worsley]

I heard a stat from different people that since the dawn of time, half the people on earth who had died, had died from malaria. It sounds ludicrously high now, but I went along with it, Recently it was debunked. The actual figure is around 5% of all deaths, which is still incredibly high when you think of it.

[Mark Deeks]

Would totally watch a TV show with this name.

[Gavin Chipper]

Backed or Fullshit would kind of make sense as well. On a rival TV channel.

[Ben Wilson]

Would totally watch a TV show with this name.

https://youtu.be/MRBMC0LUDgo similar format and you can always pretend the name is the same.

[Marc Meakin]

I heard a stat from different people that since the dawn of time, half the people on earth who had died, had died from malaria. It sounds ludicrously high now, but I went along with it, Recently it was debunked. The actual figure is around 5% of all deaths, which is still incredibly high when you think of it.

It might account for what is to be considered premature deaths

[Marc Meakin]

Being born within the sound of Bow bells makes you a cockney.
For years I assumed Bow as in East London meaning I would qualify, however the Bow bells are actually in Marylebone making a Cockney more from central London than East london

I think you may be a bit confused here, the bells are those of St Mary-le-Bow, which is in Cheapside EC2

Yes my bad I always thought Marylebone was the reference but still in central or rather The City of London

[Callum Todd]

My take on that is how can any living creature survive in such depths if that was the case

Evolution by natural selection.

[Marc Meakin]

Does time, travel in a curve ?
If so wouldn't every event be, eventually cyclical?

[Ian Volante]

Does time, travel in a curve ?
If so wouldn't every event be, eventually cyclical?

It's a component of spacetime. Maybe this is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Light_cone

[Marc Meakin]

Another factoid from my childhood.
If a plane could leave the earth's atmosphere and hovered it could return to earth getting to Australia direct in around 12 hours due to earth's rotation.
This sounds feasible but probably not practicle
Maybe this answers my own question but an interesting read anyway
https://project-cancelled.fandom.com/wiki/HOTOL

[David Williams]

Another factoid from my childhood.
If a plane could leave the earth's atmosphere and hovered it could return to earth getting to Australia direct in around 12 hours due to earth's rotation.
This sounds feasible but probably not practicle
Maybe this answers my own question but an interesting read anyway
https://project-cancelled.fandom.com/wiki/HOTOL

Try visualising this from the sun. If a plane took off from the equator and hovered, it's already moving at the same speed relative to space as the point on the earth that it takes off from. You would see it moving as the earth rotates and returning to the same position relative to you after 24 hours. It would have travelled the distance of the circumference of the earth, so that's about 1000 mph. If it took off from the North Pole it would be stationary, from London going about 600 mph. In order to remain stationary from your perspective the plane would have to be moving at about 600 mph relative to the earth. It would remain at the same latitude, so after 12 hours it would be over the Aleutian Islands rather than Australia. This, of course, is essentially what a plane flying from London to the Aleutian Islands does.

[Ben Wilson]

This, of course, is essentially what a plane flying from London to the Aleutian Islands does.

If they wanted to go the long way, anyway.

[Gavin Chipper]

This, of course, is essentially what a plane flying from London to the Aleutian Islands does.

If they wanted to go the long way, anyway.

What witchcraft is this?

[David Williams]

This, of course, is essentially what a plane flying from London to the Aleutian Islands does.

If they wanted to go the long way, anyway.

What witchcraft is this?

That's why I put the word 'essentially' in what I posted! If you ignore the fact that the earth is going round the sun, which I don't think is a factor, what it amounts to is that you can remain motionless in space and the Aleutian Islands will come to you, or you can head off and meet them a bit earlier.