Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for November 24, 2018

I just hope it’s not too late to return my meteorite helmet to Amazon.

before long in the 1970s or so, recreational lawn darts became illegal in the United States

In a way we have all been hit by meteorites. Tons of meteors impact the Earth’s atmosphere everyday. Mostly they are very small that burn up and separate into tiny dust particles that settle down to the surface eventually. They are so numerous that some of them have settled down on all of us.

Gee. How nice to know that. No use of hiding in my bear cave then.

“…over the heads of their enemies”

Then how are there still Romans?

When I was young, our family played with lawn darts. One of the darts landed on the roof of our neighbour’s house and left a hole in the shingles. It’s amazing none of us got hurt.

We are more at risk of blue ice from planes landing on us, than meteors.

And just how good is a weapon thrown ’Over the heads" of an enemy???

It was almost 2 years after Hasbro released Plumbata that they realized that their instructions had mistakenly used the Latin word for “over” instead of “at”.

Lawn darts illegal, too dangerous! AR-15 legal! How do you figure that????

Well yeah. Small meteorites.. that’s where freckles come from. I SAW IT ON THE INTERNET.

I remember reading that some dinosaurs thought that meteorite theory was pure folly.

This is getting to be more like “Believe it or Who Cares”! ;o[

Not a Latin scholar here, but isn’t “Plumb” the word for the chemical element of atomic number 82?

ya, just more regulations that keep us from having fun!

Some careless kid or adult probably nailed someone in the head with their hopeless toss – and boom… suddenly a few million lawsuits and laws appeared!

And in reality: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/02/130220-russia-meteorite-ann-hodges-science-space-hit/

I remember Jarts. Toys like that were great for culling the stupid herd. The toy police also removed the toys from Cracker Jacks because some moron ate the toy. Most metal toys were replaced with plastic ones with rounded edges because some moron scratched his pinky. I guess we’ll have to put helmets on our wussie kids and wrap them in bubble wrap because they are too dumb to walk down the sidewalk without hurting themselves.

Currently we really have no snow here in Alaska, and this is the sixth or seventh year in a row … as a skier makes me wonder why I’m still here sitting around in the dark for five months …

HA! Oh wow the 3rd fact directly relates to the story going on right now in Jump Start, in fact I basically said it in the comments yesterday.

VERY rough calculation: The earth has 10^15 sq. ft. Humans take up about 10^9 sq. ft. One in a million chance that a meteor that makes it to the ground hits a human. Hitting a particular human drops that to one in 10^12. Extinction level events happen every 100 million years. (10^8). About a 10^2 meteors (>10 grams) hit the earth per year per 10^13 sq ft. So 10^4 meteors per year on the whole earth. 10^6 for human lifetime. One in a million chance of contact. Chance of earth killer in next 100 years: about one in 10^4.. The killer asteroid is at least 100 times as likely as a meteor targeting a specific person. If we only require that SOME human gets hit, the situation reverses: the global extinction becomes less likely, This depends on some poorly known estimates.

If it hits just them small or giant won’t matter much to them.

how did the Romans win by throwing them over their enemies’ heads? ka-plumbata

it’s my right to play with lawn darts if I want to. do-gooders bah!

Lawn darts banned cuz some little moron got harpooned. You just can’t have anymore! ;)

Plumbata were no weaponized lawn darts, they were proper weapons.