That's the spirit, it's the journey not the destination 🤣 (or so I've been told)

The obligatory: "creeper, aw man" - let's see who here is young enough to know this classic 2011 Minecraft parody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPJUBQd-PNM

And here's another fun one for you to enjoy (I just can't help myself from posting two) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2rDbRUDkds

I agree! On a related note, the other week on Fun Fact Friday I had the most sats and engagement on my post yet somehow still lost, very confusing 🤔

I agree, I love the rock side of it too! It's been stuck in my head all day now

I first heard this song as a cover by Passenger, The Once and Stu Larson but being a young'un I didn't know who wrote it until I recently discovered the original version. I was suprised by the difference, jumping from the chill trio of folk musicans to the great rock energy of Chicago.

Well that's ironic as there's actually a beer called Fucking Hell!

And in addition, the EU's trademark agency forbade them from marketing it, but in the end the brewery successfully argued that "hell" means "pale" in German, and that beer is produced in Fucking so after a year the EU gave in and granted them permission to use the name.

Here's a photo of the drink:

Indeed it was renamed 1st January 2021, a sad day for all Fucking visitors. He absolutely is!

Fucking is an Austrian village in Tarsdorf (Upper Austria) inhabited by some 106 people. The settlement is believed to have been founded in the 6th century AD by Focko, a Bavarian nobleman. The ending -ing is an old Germanic suffix indicating the people belonging to the root word to which it is attached, thus Fucking means: “(place of) Focko's people”.

Fucking is best known for the four traffic signs at its entrances, to which many English-speaking tourists flock to have their photograph taken beside. These signs however attract a terrifying type of criminal - British tourists armed with a sense of humour and a screwdriver, but more on that later...

It all started after World War II, when British and United States soldiers noticed the name and began traveling to the village to have their photos taken with the signs. The local residents - the Fuckingers - were bemused, as they had not previously been aware of their village's name's meaning in English.

The town's road signs were regularly stolen by souvenir-hunting vandals, costing 300 euros each to replace! This however was put to a stop in 2005, when the signs were upgraded to be theft-resistant: welded and secured in concrete. In 2009, the village installed surveillance cameras to deter tourists from continuing to attempt to steal the road signs.

Augustina Lindlbauer, the manager of a local guesthouse, said that the area had lakes, forests and vistas worth visiting, but there was an “obsession with Fucking”. She continued: “Just this morning I had to tell an English lady who stopped by that there were no F---ing postcards.”

The mayor of Tarsdorf said that tourists were still welcome, though the local police chief firmly stated: “we will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed. It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke?”

There was a campaign launched in 2004 to change the village's name to “Fugging”, however it failed. A second was launched in late 2020 which finally succeeded.

Another great country collaboration! https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QHXLdD_tES4

hmm... are you sure there's only 1077 private keys? According to this site there are 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4141 or around 1.1579208924×10^77

I recently discovered Be A Light - a beautiful collaboration between Thomas Rhett, Reba McEntire, Hillary Scott, Chris Tomlin and Keith Urban. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCGuv6-eaJM

Enjoy the epic 80s rock ballad sung by Marie Fredriksson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCC_b5WHLX0

I found a great solution to this one... getting stuck on stacker.news zapping instead

The ultimate trio: Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift and Keith Urban https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0uMmTPGtubY

not to sound like a normie but... you got a source for that?

I learnt a lot writing this fun fact, and not just in writing the post but in preparing a good image. All original photographs from the time period are very low quality (100x100px) and in black & white. To bring the photo up to a standard suitable for Stacker News, I used three tools to help augment the photo:

Below is a before & after of the edits:

The Anti-Tank Dogs were a Soviet military program where German Shepherds were trained to carry explosives to tanks and armoured vehicles. 40,000 dogs were intended to assist in curbing the German advance at the eastern front.

The first issues arose when the dogs wouldn't dive under the active enemy tanks as they'd only been trained on non-moving and non-shooting vehicles, so they would become scared return to their handlers... which could lead to explosive consequences!

Another serious issue was that the Soviets trained the dogs using their own diesel engine-powered tanks, however the German tanks used gasoline engines. Given dogs rely heavily on their keen sense of smell, they immediately sought out the familiar Soviet tanks, completely ignoring the strange-smelling German ones. As you can imagine, this wasn't particularly ideal for the longevity of the Soviet crews.

The program was started in 1930 and lasted until 1946 when, plagued by issues, it was unsurprisingly shut down.

I also found a great set of clones here - Word Waffle is my favourite of them

Of course! Have you seen Crosswordle?