h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Who told you that?
Did they know from experience or something?

I also heard cockroaches can live for 9 days with there heads cut off- I don't know if someone already said this, a lot of people know this already. Just thought I'd regurgitate it.

For more headless information

Once there was a chicken who lived for days after its head had been cut off

I have no idea where i heard the 10 second thing, but I have known it for a really long time- it might be wrong, I don't know.

it took 1,200 yrs. to build stonehenge
50,000 people could fit into the Colusseum in Rome

Now these I know are true.

When Francis Bacon did the stuffing-chicken thing, he cut himself, it went septic, and he died. No one knew whether the experiment worked...
I've heard this story countless times, but never with the ghost ending. However, there's a story by Paul Jennings (a man whose work everyone should read, even if they're not children) where some unpleasant men pretend to be ghosts to frighten people out of their homes so they can sell them. They take on one property where once a man died in similar circumstances from stuffing a chicken... and it's the headless chicken that haunts the place.

Also... at about 11 minutes past the hour, at whatever time of day and in whatever circumstances, everything goes quiet.
Woooh.

At amusement parks, the main job of the maintenance people in the haunted house rides is not to keep them clean but to keep then dirty

You know how you get a sonic boom when you break the sound barrier? Well apparently there's a similar effect when you go faster than light. This has been shown by high energy particles travelling through water (where the speed of light is much lower than it is in the air)

Do you get a light boom or something?

Of sorts. There's a flash that expands in a cone in a similar way to the sonic boom. But of course you can't hear it.

But you can see it though
So it is a light boom for your eyes

Yes.

It's caused for a different reason. And a sonic boom doesn't happen when you pass the speed of sound, it's constant when you are going the speed of sound. It's just a boom because the shock wave passes by you. It's a traveling boom, that goes with the plane, rather an occurence when breaking some ficticious "barrier". I'd explain what causes it, except what I've told you is already bordering on usefulness, so I won't risk it. See link 1.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A583058

Thanks
We wouldn't want anything that is actually useful to be posted in here.

I've heard that the famous bridge of the thames is actually Tower bridge, while London bridge it self was actually disassembled and shipped to Arizona, USA.

I have heard that too.
But why would they do that?
It sounds like a pretty stupid idea to me.
Can you go to Arizona and see London Bridge?
Or is it now called Arizona Bridge

There have actually been several "London Bridge"s the one from the nursery rhyme with all the shops along it did actually fall down.

And yes some gullible American did buy the latest incarnation and ship it to the States.

Back to useless info:

The Thames Barrier has never actually been used in flood defence.

I've heard they use it as a tourist attraction or something... yeah, i guess you can go see it.. are there any londoners who can confirm/deny this one?

I've heard they use it as a tourist attraction or something... yeah, i guess you can go see it.. are there any londoners who can confirm/deny this one?