You learn something new each day.

[Watchman44]

"woad" - blue dye, from plants

"Woad" - also something Jonathan Ross and Roy Hodgson drive on.

You mean Johnathan Woss and Woy Hodgson?

[Penfold]

[spideyGirl]

Heart of blue whale weighs 600 kilograms and is the largest known in any animal. A blue whale's aorta (the main blood vessel) is large enough for a human to crawl through.

[Who's Wee Dug]

Jonah wrote a book on Whale internals.

[Batty]

Jonah wrote a book on Whale internals.

But he was feeling down in the mouth at the time, Dug!

[Who's Wee Dug]

Just as well Batty I don't think he would like to be blown out by a Whale.

[Del]

‎"Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know."
~ Jeremy Knowles

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a truly extraordinary woman.

[wicked woman]

Ain't that the truth.

[Sister Jennifer]

It's not often I can put my hand up & say I knew that but, I knew that. I've read Cecilia's Autobiography.

[Del]

I am ashamed that I didn't even know it Jenn. And shall try to get her autobiography this week.

[Dotsie]

Women did a lot for astronomy, it was a science with a lot of menial work that required expertise, so perfect for second class citizens who needed to be kept out of the limelight.

OK, now I have an idea for my pension - rewriting the popular science books to include women. If it's just about women no-one will buy it, so I'll have to be sneaky.

[Catch-up]

I didn't know that either!

[raptornx01]

You think she ever looked at Marie Curie and went, "That bitch."

EDIT: and whats funnier is, if you look up top women in science, she not even on THOSE lists. I think people just don't like her for some reason.

[Quatermass]

‎"Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know."
~ Jeremy Knowles

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a truly extraordinary woman.

Actually, Del, while we're on the subject of pioneering female astronomers who have all but been forgotten, what about Ruby Payne-Scott, who got her own Google front page earlier last year? And an Aussie to boot.

Anyway, last week, I discovered a new word: mephitic.

[wicked woman]

Ooooh, wish I'd known that one when I had babies in nappies. "You can change that one, it's mephitic."