Complex Numbers

Lost in Time

Been a while since I landed on a Cracked article.

    6 Secrets We Once Knew But Are Now Lost to History  

No, Greek Fire isn't one of these. But rest assured, there are far more than 6.

We have some Russian doodles dating back to the year 1260, showing a six-year-old imagining himself as a knight fighting monsters, but we have other whole years where our records are blank.

D&D is apparently older than we thought.

For example, let’s be honest, can you remember a single thing that happened in 2019?

Only when I look at that year in my blog.

As usual, it's a countdown...

6. What Volcano Blackened the World, Half a Millennium Ago?

It seems like we should know. An eruption that big should have created immediate columns of ash 15 miles tall and would have been audible a thousand miles away. However, we don’t have records from anyone who saw or heard it.

Clearly, it was the one that wiped out Atlantis.

5. What Does pH Mean?

I gotta be honest; this one surprised me. My father, who had an actual degree in chemistry, told me it was "percent hydrogen," and, being younger than 13 at the time, I took that to be the Final Truth on the subject. Once I entered my rebellious years (which never ended), I was too arrogant to ever question that.

You know all about the pH scale if you use quack remedies that promise benefits from balancing the pH in your body.

No, you don't (yes, I know this is what we in comedy circles sometimes refer to as a "joke.")

The H stands for hydrogen — that much, we know. But the p? It doesn’t stand for “percent,” though pH does measure the proportion of hydrogen. Nor, for that matter, does it stand for “proportion.” Many people think it stands for “power,” because pH takes into account exponents, which we sometimes describe using the word power.

Various urban legends say it stands for various foreign words, like puissance, Potenz, pouvoir, potential and pondus.

French, German, back to French, English (which isn't foreign to Cracked readers), and... Latin? The guy who came up with it was Danish; why not look in that language, which I know pretty much nothing about (though it is somewhat related to English and German)?

4. Who Was the Guy on This Coin?

Obviously, "this coin" is pictured in the article.

Silbannacus must have been emperor for a couple months in the year 253. There was enough of a gap in the timeline for him to reign for a little bit. For a short spell in September and October, exactly 1,770 years ago this week, he was the most powerful person in the world. Then he was gone, leaving behind only two coins.

For once, the RNG gave me a recent article, so I need not explain the historical context of the writing I link.

I just want to know if he lasted longer than Liz Truss.

3. What Is This Battery Made Of?

I'd guess... battery stuff?

In 1840, the science of electricity was taking its first faltering steps. Oxford professor Robert Walker bought a curiosity called the Clarendon Dry Pile, which he set up in his lab. It used some kind of chemical reaction to generate electricity, which sent a clapper back and forth between two bells.

Fun fact: we still use "pile" for "battery" sometimes, but from what I understand, the French word is "pile" (pronounced more like "peel.") You can say "battery" in France, but they'll think you're saying "drum" (batterie) which, when you think about it, makes a hell of a lot more sense than English.

It’s been running almost 200 years now, without pause.

And yet, my smartphone battery starts to fail after a month.

The only way to find what’s in the battery is to cut it open. This would end the ringing and may also end the world.

Unless that long-ago inventor managed to stumble upon a way to circumvent the Laws of Thermodynamics, it's not a perpetual motion machine. At some point, perhaps in the distant future when humanity is either dead or living amongst the stars (or both), it'll stop. Then we'll know.

2. What Do Levi’s 501s Mean?

Jeans trivia is its own special branch of knowledge. Did you know that the rivets in denim are essential for holding the fabric together, and aren’t there simply to look cool?

That was true when they were invented. Now, it would be possible to use advanced materials technology to do that with thread alone. But then it wouldn't look nearly as cool.

Did you know that the leather patch that bears the brand logo is called a Jacron?

Okay, I learned something.

And that the tiny upper jeans pocket (the one that fits a single key or an emergency ecstasy pill) was designed to hold your pocket watch?

You do if you read this blog.

And did you know what the “501” in Levi’s 501s stands for? Nope, you didn’t, and as you might now guess, having read this far in the article, no one else today knows that answer either.

You'd think maybe it was just a cool-sounding number, which companies like car makers pull out of thin air all the time, these days. But according to the article (which, in case it's not obvious, shouldn't be taken as the final word on anything, and neither should this blog), there was a whole history behind it. Said history was lost in a fire, much like the contents of the Library of Alexandria.

1. Why Was Ivar the Boneless Boneless?

I'm guessing because his dick didn't work.

Was he missing an arm maybe, or a leg? That sounds reasonable, but it would still leave him with plenty of other bones and may not justify the “boneless” sobriquet. One theory is that he really did have no bones, as we normally know them, but had cartilaginous bones, a condition known as osteogenesis imperfecta. If he did, you’d think every account of his life would have mentioned this fact, long before detailing which parts of Northumbria he raided.

I suppose it's also possible that he was extraordinarily flexible. Physically, anyway.

However, one other theory remains. The name could have been a way of noting that Ivar couldn’t get a boner. We have no record of Ivar having children, and his name may have mocked his impotence.

Or his dick didn't work.