The words regardless and irregardless mean the same thing.
However, regardless is the more commonly used of the two because the prefix “ir” and suffix “less” are two negative elements that together cause the meaning of irregardless to be unclear.
Irregardless is primarily used in speech and not in written prose. Regardless is generally the more accepted word.
The Titanic crashed because its helmsman turned the wrong way.
Until now, it has been widely accepted that the great ship was sailing too fast and its crew did not see the iceberg soon enough to avoid it. However, a new book that has recently been released by the granddaughter of the Titanic’s second officer begs to differ.
According to Lady Patten (the granddaughter of Second Officer Charles Lightoller), the crew spotted the iceberg with plenty of time to dodge it. However, the helmsman at the wheel panicked and turned right instead of left (you had to steer the opposite way that you wished to turn!), dooming the vessel.
All the passengers and crew could have been saved after the ship struck the iceberg if they had just stayed put. Instead, the ship kept moving, allowing water to flood the hull and sink it.
About 600 cows are used to manufacture a full season’s worth of NFL footballs.
And all of these footballs are manufactured at ONE factory in a same town called Ada, Ohio! Wilson Sporting Goods Company has been the official football supplier for the National Football League since 1941, and 150 workers at the plant in Ada construct 700,000 regulation-sized footballs BY HAND each year!
If you're a cow (in which case, congrats on learning how to read!) you have only a 1 in 17,420,000 chance of becoming a football that is used in the Super Bowl (roughly the same odd of catching the black plague).
Linfen, China has frequently been deemed the most polluted city in the world.
Because Linfen is located in the middle of China’s colt belt, its residents must breathe air thick with coal dust and deal with arsenic-laden drinking water. It is said that if a person were to hang their laundry out to dry here, it would turn black from all the industrial pollutants in the air! However, China’s environmental misconduct does not end with Linfen. The World Bank claims that 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are Chinese. China is also reportedly responsible for one-third of the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen, and ozone that is polluting our air worldwide.
Men’s shirts and women’s shirts have buttons on opposite sides.
Fastening a button left over right (the male way) is supposedly easier for right-handed people than it is for southpaws. The reason for the gender variance is not known for sure, but a widely accepted explanation is that women’s buttons are reversed comes from back in medieval times. In those days, it was common for women to be dressed by their servants, who were typically right-handed. Another popular (and probably not true) alternative is that men had to keep their right hands tucked into the coats to be ready for swordplay, and that women used the left side of their dresses to protect their babies when breastfeeding.
Mathematician William Shanks spent 15 years calculating the value of pi to 707 places…but he made a mistake on the 528th digit.
Luckily, this discovery was made over 60 years after his death – Shanks would not have been pleased to know that he’d accidentally written a 5 instead of a 4 – which threw off the next 179 calculations! Pi is an irrational number that describes the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It has an infinite number of digits, but that doesn't stop mathematicians from calculating it to as many places as they can. Thankfully, now that we're calculating pi to trillions of places, we have advanced computers to help, so no more careless human errors!
In China, finishing all the food in a meal is considered to be rude.
The reason this is regarded as impolite is because, in their view, this implies that the host did not provide enough food and you are still hungry! It is also important to remember to use communal chopsticks for serving yourself food – using your own personal chopsticks to do is basically the equivalent of “double dipping.” You're not supposed to point your chopsticks at other people, or stick your chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice. However, talking with your mouth full, burping, and putting your elbows on the table are all ok.
