Asklemmy

The correct spelling of pneumono­ultra­micro­scopic­silico­volcano­coniosis

The first iteration of the baptist church was a militaristic commie org. That took over a small town.

I don't exist. I had a meeting and voted. It was unanimous.

When a drug company in the 80s scaled up production they accidentally created seed crystals that spread around the entire Earth's atmosphere that prevented other companies from manufacturing a generic drug without it attaching to the seeds and converting to the patented drug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_polymorph#Paroxetine_hydrochloride

The origin of the name 'Amerigo' Vespucci is 'Emmerich' in German. So the namesake of a contintent is a very demure provincial city close to the German/Dutch border.

Marx did actually consider human nature

If you catch a frog in between your hands and quickly flip it around, you can get the frog into a kind of paralyzed state called 'tonic immobility'.

Here is a photo from Wikipedia:

OK, well, many years ago I was very interested in this phenomenon and decided to look into the literature.

I found a paper from 1928 titled "On The Mechanism of Tonic Immobility in Vertebrates" written by Hudson Hoagland (PDF link).

In this paper, the author describes contraptions he used to analyze the small movement (or lack of movement) in animals while in this state. They look kind of like torture devices:

OK, but, that's still not it.... The obscure fact is found in the first footnote of that paper, on page #2:

Apparently this or a similar effect can be observed in humans too?! In this paper, the author himself claims to have done this and that it works! I tried to locate more recent resources describing this phenomenon in humans but I could not find them... Is this actually possible? If so, why is this not better documented? Or, maybe it is better documented but understood as a different type of reflex today? Not sure.

Ancient Egypt was ancient before it ended. The time when Cleopatra ruled is about as close to today as it was to the first pyramids.

Not that obscure, but most orange cats are male since the orange gene is tied to the x-chromosom, so male cats only need one copy to appear orange. Female cats have to have the orange gene on both x-chromosom to be fully orange.

And usually only female cats can be calico/tortoise since the orange gene is co-dominant, so if they only have one copy of the orange gene both the orange and black will be visible.

A seemingly male calico/tortoise cat is usually intersex and sterile.

Not obscure but apparently a lot of people aren't aware that sheep don't have top teeth in front.

A large amount of visual inspections on the inside of nuclear reactors is done literally with a camera duct taped to either a really really long pole assembled in sections or a rope. Operators "swim" the cameras to various locations and camera handling is basically an occupation in that field. You also need camera shots for any work being done on the inside of the flooded reactor with, again, really really long poles that end up acting more like pool noodles at such a length. It is silly and difficult work. Also you basically are wearing a trash bag sitting above a hot tub while doing this work. So it is a wild experience.