what I have learned today.

[ian]

I'm a fluent American speaker, and I'm pretty sure they agree that inflammable means easy to set light to.

Admittedly, the mid-West is a different place and I learned to speak American on the east coast.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Flammable and non-flammable might be the safest words to use. It's either that or restricting your audience.

[Efrogwr]

Horace Batclelor!      Radio Luxembourg under the bedsheets.

Radio Luxembourg was not cool when you could have Caroline between the sheets.

Nah, Caroline was (much later) for kids - Luxembourg with the signal fading and then coming back was the real deal.     Where would we be without the Teen & Twenty Disc Club?

What about Jimmy Saviile's Under The Bedclothes Club? In retrospect it's a bit Uncle Ernie.

[Canardly]

7 transistors in your radio and you were good to go for Luxembourg. Who was that bloke that was always advertising something from Keynsham?

[ian]

I always wondered why the past tense of to go is went.

Now I know, it's really fucking obvious.

[Mr Larrington]

7 transistors in your radio and you were good to go for Luxembourg. Who was that bloke that was always advertising something from Keynsham?

The aforementioned Horace Batchelor?

[robgul]

7 transistors in your radio and you were good to go for Luxembourg. Who was that bloke that was always advertising something from Keynsham?

The aforementioned Horace Batchelor?

... he of the "Famous Infra-Draw Method" for forecasting results on the football pools.    Do they still have football pools with the paper forms and crosses/zeroes etc or is it all betting shops/online now?     When I first went to work in the mid-60s we had a pools syndicate .... I can remember a winning share on just one week in about 3 years - 10/- (50p)

[T42]

7 transistors in your radio and you were good to go for Luxembourg. Who was that bloke that was always advertising something from Keynsham?

The aforementioned Horace Batchelor?

... he of the "Famous Infra-Draw Method" for forecasting results on the football pools.    Do they still have football pools with the paper forms and crosses/zeroes etc or is it all betting shops/online now?     When I first went to work in the mid-60s we had a pools syndicate .... I can remember a winning share on just one week in about 3 years - 10/- (50p)

8 of us had a syndicate at university.  One week we had 8 draws: flatmate called up his dad all joyful, put phone down not joyful and said "so has he".  We got a tenner each out of it.

[Guy]

Thanks to Citoyen's recent post in the "Random thread for small things..." thread I now know that "experiential" is a real word, and has been since the 1640s!

I'd never come across that one before. It sounds like it should be modern USAnian Corporate/Advertising Newspeak.

[Salvatore]

That the Spanish for mobile library is bibliobús

[T42]

That the Spanish for mobile library is bibliobús

It is in French too, without the ´.  Looks like bilious with extra blobs.

[Cudzoziemiec]

That there have been several occasions of mixed nationality teams in the Olympics, including the seemingly self-inflammable combination of GBR, FRA and USA, who won silver in the 1900 polo competition under the perhaps confusing name BLO Polo Club Rugby.

[T42]

The first Messerschmidt Bf 109 prototype was powered by a Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine.

[spesh]

The first Messerschmidt Bf 109 prototype was powered by a Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine.

Well, Anglo-German relations were still cordial enough in the mid-30s - at the same time, Rolls-Royce bought a Heinkel He 70* for use as an engine test bed, and in 1936-37, it was used to test the engine which evolved into the Merlin.


* Some sources suggest that the He 70 was traded for four Kestrel engines, one of which was used in the Bf 109 prototype. If that was the case, I wonder who got the better end of the deal...

edited to correct typo in footnote

[T42]

Amazing how soon the arms-limitation clauses of the Treaty of Versailles became a dead letter.  Not that the N.I. Protocol is likely to last as long.

[yorkie]

The first Messerschmidt Bf 109 prototype was powered by a Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine.

Well, Anglo-German relations were still cordial enough in the mid-30s - at the same time, Rolls-Royce bought a Heinkel He 70* for use as an engine test bed, and in 1936-37, it was used to test the engine which evolved into the Merlin.


* Some sources suggest that the He 70 was traded for four Kestrel engines, one of which was used in the Bf 108 prototype. If that was the case, I wonder who got the better end of the deal...

Anglo-Italian relations were also quite cordial around the same time, Vospers 1937 prototype Motor Torpedo Boat No. 102 was originally powered by 3 x 1000hp Isotta-Fraschini petrol engines (yes, it did shift - top speed of 48 knots!) which were replaced by Rolls Royce Merlins after spare parts became difficult to obtain.

[phantasmagoriana]

That AAAA batteries exist! I've spent nearly 40 years on this planet without ever having encountered one before.

[grams]

That AAAA batteries exist! I've spent nearly 40 years on this planet without ever having encountered one before.

If you really want your mind blown, most 9V PP3 batteries contain 6 AAAAs in series huddled together. Either that or 6 lozenge cells stacked on top of each other.

[phantasmagoriana]

That AAAA batteries exist! I've spent nearly 40 years on this planet without ever having encountered one before.

If you really want your mind blown, most 9V PP3 batteries contain 6 AAAAs in series huddled together. Either that or 6 lozenge cells stacked on top of each other.

Goodness! I just Googled that and indeed this "hack" came up in the results:
https://www.instructables.com/How-To-Get-AAAA-BATTERIES-OUT-OF-9V/
They've been there, lurking in my smoke alarm, all along!

I did wonder whether AAAAA or even AAAAAA batteries might exist, but alas, it appears not.

[Kim]

If you like that, then you'll love B cells.  They're the ones that make up those 4.5V lantern batteries that nothing made this century uses.

[phantasmagoriana]

If you like that, then you'll love B cells.  They're the ones that make up those 4.5V lantern batteries that nothing made this century uses.

That was the next thing I discovered!

I think the last time I saw one of those 4.5V batteries was in a CDT lesson circa 1995...

[Kim]

I had a (halogen) head torch that used them that I think last got used in about 1998.

More surprisingly, I noticed they were still for sale in some shop or other relatively recently.

[yorkie]

I had a (halogen) head torch that used them that I think last got used in about 1998.

More surprisingly, I noticed they were still for sale in some shop or other relatively recently.

I'm pretty sure the original Petzl head torches had one of those batteries. My younger brother had one, I seem to remember him constantly whingeing about not being able to get replacement batteries in any location close to where you would like to be using the thing! I had one of the Petzl Max head torches, a bit bigger and heavier, but at least it used 3 x AA *or* 3 x AAA batteries, available from any corner shop/garage/off licence/etc...

[lissotriton]

I'm pretty sure the original Petzl head torches had one of those batteries. My younger brother had one, I seem to remember him constantly whingeing about not being able to get replacement batteries in any location close to where you would like to be using the thing! I had one of the Petzl Max head torches, a bit bigger and heavier, but at least it used 3 x AA *or* 3 x AAA batteries, available from any corner shop/garage/off licence/etc...

Yes, I've got an old Petzl Zoom that used those square batteries. But I got an adapter, so can use 3 x AA instead.
And I've replaced the bulb with an LED, so a bit brighter and longer battery life.
Still works OK, though a bit rubbish compared to a modern torch.

[Mrs Pingu]

Oh yes, we dug a couple of Petzls out of the pile earlier this year. Promptly got binned as the batteries had gone all salty.