The celery one is actually just a wide spread myth. That said, you would have to eat an improbable amount of celery to gain your needed daily calories. It can be treated as a calorie neutral food. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21723312
I wish you had posted that before Comm and I had a half hour debate on it. Amazing that the two of us have lived in tropical environments and had to look it up on Google. We both knew that coconuts grow underground though.
My parents always get me a pineapple for my birthday, a tradition since my childhood. Certain milestones I'll cut the top off the pineapple and grow a plant... like my 10th, 13th, 21st, 30th bdays. The plant looks a lot like a pineapple top... Lol... But eventually would grow pineapples on it... Off one of the leaves. I've never actually kept one alive long enough to get a pineapple off it though... I always forget to bring one in when it freezes and it only takes the mildest of freezes to kill one off. I think 1 winter is longest # of winters I've kept one alive...
I don't remember the name of the ship, but the Moby Dick story was inspired by a real story (very loosely... There was a whale in it). The real ship got destroyed by a whale and their fate was quite gruesome. They ended up eating each other one by as they ran out of food. The sailors from that ship not only famously ate each other, they inspired the story Moby Dick, and are responsible for causing extinction of a species of Turtle on one of the Galapogas islands all by themselves. The funny thing about that voyage is... When they whale destroyed their ship they were only a dozen miles or so from a safe habited island, but the sailors though cannibals might live there, so they set out on an epic trip in their life boat over hundreds of miles. There were no cannibals on the island they avoided, but they eventually ran out of food and had to eat each other. Trying to avoid cannibals that didn't exist made them end up all becoming cannibals or dying to cannibals (each other).
Speaking of cannibals. Polynesian Cannibals in the 19th Century and early 20th century gave us a picture of what human meat tastes like. They said it tasted like Pork. (Although European cannibals have compared it to veal too, something the Polynesians wouldn't have had exposure to at that time). They also said that European sailors taste better than Asian sailors. (This is probably down to the diet of the sailors as one wouldn't expect the meat to taste any different for any genetic reasons). There were several cases in Germany after WWI where impoverished Germans went on mass killing sprees and selling their victims as Pork Sausage to other Germans, so a number of people living in German between the world wars unwittingly became cannibals.
I've seen the film too Add to that the name given to the whale in the book. Melville read a story in a magazine about an albino sperm whale famed for its deadly attacks on whaling ships trying to hunt it down. This whale, killed off the coast of Chile near Mocha Island, was called Mocha Dick. Which if you didn't know about the island would seem strange for a white whale.
On a similar theme. Sharks are the only fish that can't swim backwards — and if you pull a shark backward by its tail, it will die. Now you know what to do.
I think that was on QI? They went on a scientific expedition to the Galapagos and put a load of tortoises on their ship. On the way back home they ate one and it was so delicious that by the time they got back to Britain they'd eaten them all. Think they had to go back for more?
that was a different expedition. These were from Massachusetts not England and they never got the tortoise back home. I've not seen the film, didn't know there was one but I'd be interested in seeing it. I borrowed a book about it from my parents. All the officers lived longest because they were the fattest and so didn't starve as quickly. So the officers got to eat all their underlings.
Intersting fact: Someone did not understand what he wrote. He wants to use it as as staging post. Another fact Mars has 2 moons
Its technically safer to travel on the tube with a bomb strapped to your back. The chances of 2 people doing it on the same train are enormous.
