Interesting Facts - Page 37

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181

Due to generations of inbreeding, the parents of King Charles II of Spain were more closely related than siblings.

182

Due to inbreeding, hemophilia was common among the royal lines of Europe.

183

About 50% of the world's gold was mined in South Africa.

184

In the "Jeeves and Wooster" stories, Jeeves was not a butler - he was a valet. The difference? A valet is a personal servant. A butler is a person who manages household staff.

185

When we read a news story about a subject we know well, we are often struck by the many errors and misrepresentations the story contains. However, when we read a story about an unfamiliar subject, we tend to believe it without asking questions. We forget the errors from before. This effect is known as "Gell-Mann amnesia".

21 Comments

Level 92

Apr 10, 2019

#185 I've noticed that since I was in grade school. If they so badly muck up something minor that I'm familiar with how can I trust them with complex, distant international stories? Cronkite and Brinkley, et al were all extremely slanted toward American b.s. propaganda but they had a practiced performance of appearing neutral.

Granted, they weren't called out for holding politicians to the fire like they would be by today's partisan soaked public.

Level 79

Mar 26, 2022

oh yeah but the "news" that you consume isn't slanted at all, is it? You're so much more familiar with world history and global geopolitics than Cronkite was, right? Because you're privy to the secret knowledge that the USA is the Great Satan. Nothing at all slanted about that....

Level 92

Jun 20, 2023

Holy chocolate pudding emoji.

Level 64

Jul 23, 2025

🏜🌞🫖 💩

Serving it hot!

Level 46

Oct 24, 2019

Walter Cronkite was known to occasionally raise his eyebrows in reaction to certain news stories. I think he was called out about it once and afterwards CBS decided to have no more of that because it showed bias. News stories should always show neutrality, not opposition or expressions of disbelief about them.

Level 82

Nov 12, 2019

#183 is incomplete.

Level 82

Nov 12, 2019

And #181 doesn't seem very clear - what does 'more closely related than siblings' mean?

Level 80

Nov 23, 2019

It means they were really closely related. Siblings share 50% of DNA. If his parents were more closely related than that, they had more than 50% of their DNA in common. I'm not sure how much, but enough that Charles was hideously deformed, sterile, and not very effective as a king.

Level 71

Jan 3, 2020

Charles II had some disabilities, but experts don't completely agree these were due to inbreeding. His older sister Margaret did not have any obvious birth defects. Nonetheless the family was extremely inbred over 200 years. Charles' father was also his mother's uncle, whose parents were cousins, and whose grandparents on both sides were also cousins. This family tree illustrates it best.

Level ∞

Jan 3, 2020

Here's a picture, in case anyone is curious:

+16

Level 80

Feb 27, 2020

My favorite line from the Wikipedia article on Charles II is he was described as "short, lame, epileptic, senile and completely bald before 35, always on the verge of death but repeatedly baffling Christendom by continuing to live."

Level 82

Apr 3, 2020

Wow. How interesting. But why does inbreeding lead to defects in offspring?

Level 63

Dec 13, 2020

Low genetic diversity leads to such things, I believe

Level 80

Dec 20, 2020

@JackintheBox: When reproducing, genes that have a negative effect in the organism are often recessive traits that would require two recessive genes to be present. Most of the times, one parent may have the recessive trait but not the other. This prevents the recessive trait from being present since it would be AA or Aa with A being the dominant trait and a being the recessive trait. When two people from the same family reproduce, the likelihood of the recessive trait to be present increases. Sometimes this results in blue eyes instead of brown eyes. Other times, it results in hemophilia or other deformities. The more inbreeding that happens, the higher the chance of the recessive trait appearing. You also have multiple recessive traits that taken together result in King Charles looking like the above picture.

Level 68

May 15, 2022

I thought it was that similarity in genes led to errors in the chromosome-combining process, somehow.

Level 68

May 15, 2022

There's a fact on here somewhere (I think) that says that you can marry your cousin, though.

Level 79

May 23, 2022

Over 60% of all first marriages in Saudi Arabia are between 1st cousins. Marrying siblings is illegal, though.

Level 82

Apr 3, 2020

When was it that around 50% of gold was mined in South Africa?

Level 70

Oct 25, 2020

South Africa's period of peak production during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970 South Africa produced 995 tonnes or 32 million ounces of gold, two-thirds (66%) of the world's production of 47.5 million ounces:

Level 70

Dec 11, 2021

Note: 995 metric tonnes of gold is equal to over 51.5 cubic metres of gold. Imagine a line of solid blocks of gold 1m square and 50 metres long!

Level 64

Jul 23, 2025

Butler surname was from Boutilier, Bottler, from handling the Bottles. From Normans, according to some guy from their latter empire who learned a decent amount of English from the backs of booze bottles. After emigrating, English language and culture was learned from Seinfeld, the Simpsons, Family Guy, and KOTH with a touch of MadTV.

I supplied the supa dupa fly Boston Canajun accent, and fake words like overlybese.

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Hi, Mom!