Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - RAINBOWS

 

Did you know.... Most of us think of rainbows as arches that stretch across the sky, but in reality, every rainbow forms a complete circle. That circle is centered on the point in the sky directly opposite the sun — the same direction your shadow points. From the ground, the horizon blocks the lower half of that circle, so you usually see only the rainbow’s upper arc.

 

The higher your vantage point, the more of that hidden circle you can see. From airplanes, observers can sometimes view the complete circular rainbow, since nothing blocks the ring’s lower half from that perspective. Photographs taken from research and weather aircraft often capture those full rings floating in clouds, revealing the rainbow’s true shape.

 

A rainbow is formed by the way sunlight interacts with millions of tiny raindrops. As light enters a droplet, it bends (refracts), reflecting off the inside of the droplet, and then bends again as it exits. Those changes in direction separate the light into its different colors and direct them back toward your eyes. Only the droplets positioned at a specific angle relative to the sun — about 42 degrees for red light, for instance — send color your way.

 

Every raindrop that sends light to your eye does so at the same angle from the point opposite the sun, and all the droplets at that shared angle form a circle around that point, creating that curved colorful band in the sky. Because the effect depends on your exact position relative to the sun, the rainbow you see is tied to your unique viewpoint. Move even a few steps, and a different set of droplets creates slightly different colors. No two people ever see precisely the same rainbow.

 

One of the most recognizable album covers of all time features a rainbow.

The prism and color spectrum on Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon is arguably the most iconic rainbow in rock history. The original album artwork, designed by Storm Thorgerson, depicts a beam of white light entering a triangular prism from the left and emerging on the right as a rainbow — though it omits the indigo band typically included in a full spectrum. 

 

 

Source: Rainbows are actually full circles.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MAGNOLIA TREES

Did you know.... Life as we know it today is less the result of a steady evolutionary flow than a series of cataclysmic fits and starts. To date, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, a variety of ice ages, and other climatic changes that have had huge impacts on plant and animal life, often wiping the terrestrial slate clean. However, a few incredible survivors live among us — including magnolias. Named for the 17th-century French botanist Pierre Magnol, these trees have a history that far surpasses the ancien régime. In fact, it’s estimated that magnolias first sprouted on Earth 95 million years ago — smack dab in the middle of the Cretaceous Period. That’s about 27 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex roamed the Earth. 

 

Back here in the Holocene (the current geological epoch), the magnolia family’s native ranges can be found in East and Southeast Asia and the southern U.S., as well as Mexico, northern South America, and the Caribbean. Although a modern favorite among plant lovers, magnolias still sport evidence of their ancient upbringing. Because they are so old, they evolved to be pollinated by beetles and flies instead of bees, butterflies, or moths. That’s because back in the Cretaceous, those other pollinators didn’t exist yet. Magnolias have tough carpels (the female parts of the flower) to protect themselves from a beetle’s less-than-graceful mandibles, and invest more energy in producing showy, nectar-filled, sweet-smelling flowers in an effort to attract these insects. The beautiful magnolia tree and the flightless beetle may seem like an odd couple, but it’s a relationship that has worked since the Mesozoic.

 

The world’s loneliest tree species survived the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In 1895, British botanist John Medley Wood was exploring the Ngoya Forest on the coast of South Africa when he came across an ancient-looking tree. Although he didn’t know it at the time, this particular cycad (now called Encephalartos woodii in his honor) was the only specimen left in existence. Some 250 million years ago, at the dawn of the Triassic, cycads — including Encephalartos woodii — dominated the globe. This particular species survived the explosive asteroid impact that likely snuffed out land-based dinosaurs, and a half-dozen or so ice ages, until only one solitary male specimen was left. That specimen is believed to have died in 1964, although basal offsets of the stem (essentially clones of the original cycad) can be found in botanical gardens around the globe. Alas, Encephalartos woodii needs a female in order to produce naturally, and several expeditions to find a plant partner have failed. Scientists are now trying to create a close approximation of a female woodii by mating the plant with a close cycad cousin (Encephalartos natalensis). With a little bit of luck, maybe one day the world’s loneliest tree will find love again.

 

 

Source: Magnolia trees are so old they coexisted with dinosaurs.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SOME DO SOME DON'T

Did you know... In English-speaking countries, including the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, people typically use the 12-hour clock, marking day and night with a.m. and p.m. In those countries, if someone were to ask, “What time do you want to meet for lunch?”, it would seem strange to respond, “15:00.” If you did, people might assume you were in the military, as it uses the 24-hour clock, known in the U.S. as military time. 

 

But in many countries around the world, “15:00” would be a totally normal meeting time for lunch, as the 24-hour clock is the standard method of timekeeping. Here’s a look at why some countries go by military time while others split their days into two 12-hour periods. 

 

 

Two Kinds of Clocks

The 24-hour day originated with the ancient Egyptians, who divided the night into 12 parts based on their observation of rising stars and paired that with 12 daytime periods. So, the 24-hour clock certainly isn’t a modern invention — and nor is the idea of dividing it into two 12-hour periods. After all, when it comes to time, one of the most obvious indicators of its passage is the day-night cycle. 

 

The Middle Ages saw the introduction of the first mechanical clocks, with both 12-hour and 24-hour systems developed at the same time. One of the earliest examples of those clocks was installed in the Dunstable Priory in Bedfordshire, England, in 1283. It was weight-driven and didn’t have a clockface — it was simply set to strike a bell at regular times. 

 

The 24-hour mechanical clock later became established in Italy during the 15th century, and that’s when a split began to emerge. The 24-hour system spread across parts of Europe, while in England a preference emerged for measuring time using two periods of 1 to 12, aka the a.m./p.m. system. 

 

The next big shift happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the rise of industrialization. Trains, factories, and military operations needed to run according to a precise, standardized time. This need for greater accuracy drove a shift in timekeeping and a more widespread adoption of 24 hours as the official standard. In 1893, Italy became one of the first countries to officially adopt the 24-hour clock nationally. France followed in 1912, then Denmark in 1916 and Greece in 1917. 

 

Coordinating military operations across time zones in World War I reinforced the need for a standardized timekeeping system, and most European countries adopted the 24-hour clock for their militaries. But while some nations — including the U.S., U.K., and Canada — used the 24-hour clock for military purposes, their civilian populations never followed suit. In the U.S., this divergence gave rise to the term “military time,” which reinforced the idea that the 24-hour clock is used for specialized purposes rather than normal, everyday timekeeping. 

 

 

Many Countries Use Both

In many countries, it’s not a question of either/or when it comes to clocks. In much of Europe, Latin America, and Asia, the 24-hour clock is the go-to for official, written, and formal contexts, such as train and flight schedules, business hours, TV listings, hospital records, and government documents. But in casual conversation, many people still use 12-hour language — in France or Peru, for example, a person might write 20:00 on a schedule but say, “8 o’clock” in spoken conversation.

 

Similarly, English-speaking countries use 24-hour time in specific professional contexts even though 12-hour time dominates daily life. Hospitals, emergency services, aviation, and the military use 24-hour notation for precision and to avoid errors, due to the higher probability of getting times confused when using the a.m./p.m. format. 

 

While the 24-hour clock is the international standard format for time today and is currently the most widespread time notation worldwide, many countries use a mix, depending on whether the situation is formal or casual, written or spoken, and official or personal.

 

 

Source: Why Some Countries Use Military Time (And Others Don’t)

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WAS ANOTHER NAME

Did you know... Born to Italian immigrants in San Jose, California, in 1870, A.P. Giannini became a successful produce merchant. He married into a prominent San Francisco family, through which he joined the board of the Columbus Savings & Loan bank. However, the headstrong newcomer clashed with other board members over the practice of lending money solely to affluent clients, and in October 1904, Giannini established his Bank of Italy in a saloon across the street from Columbus Savings & Loan.

 

Thanks to the aggressive courtship of “the little fellow,” i.e., working-class immigrants ignored by other banks, Bank of Italy accrued more than $700,000 in deposits in its first year of business. And when a massive earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco in April 1906, Giannini was shrewd enough to steer his cash to safety from the looting masses. Setting up a makeshift bank on a North Beach wharf, Giannini helped rebuild the community by extending loans on handshake deals. He continued to do so even after the Panic of 1907 threatened to undermine financial progress. By the end of the decade, the astute businessman began buying other banks en route to founding the country’s first statewide banking system. In 1928, he orchestrated a merger between the Bank of Italy and the smaller Bank of America Los Angeles.

 

Giannini was well prepared to weather the storm that followed the stock market crash of 1929, and he responded by relaunching his enterprise as the Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association in 1930. By the time he died in 1949, Bank of America counted more than 500 branches and $6 billion in assets — the bank of “the little fellow” having clearly outgrown its roots to stand as the world’s then-largest bank.

 

The Italian bank Credito Emiliano accepts cheese as collateral for loans.

Although it sounds like something from an outdated comedy with cringey stereotypes and bad accents, Credito Emiliano has sound business reasons for welcoming cheese as part of its loan operations. Situated in a region filled with Parmigiano-Reggiano farms, the bank understands that the “King of Cheeses” needs a full 18 to 36 months to properly age, forcing its producers to wait for the opportunity to turn a profit. Willing to be patient alongside its clients, Credito Emiliano oversees two climate-controlled warehouses with space to store more than 400,000 80-pound wheels of cheese, as well as a staff of inspectors who keep a close eye on the goods. If a producer defaults on a loan, the bank can turn around and sell the cheese, which can fetch thousands of dollars per wheel. But no one is rooting for such an outcome, as repaid loans provide incentive for Credito Emiliano to continue with this community-minded arrangement, while signaling that a thriving regional industry will continue supplying delicious cheese for all. Mangia!

 

 

Source: The original name of the Bank of America was ‘Bank of Italy.’

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LIGHTNING CAN HEAT AIR

Did you know..... “How hot is lightning?” is a bit of a trick question. Lightning itself doesn’t have a temperature, because it’s just the movement of electrical charges in the atmosphere. (You can think of it as one big spark of electricity that happens when positive and negative charges build up within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the ground.) But that doesn’t stop lightning from heating up whatever it passes through — in this case, air. Air is a poor conductor of electricity, so it heats up tremendously when lightning strikes. In fact, lightning can heat the air to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is five times hotter than the surface of the sun.

 

Suffice to say that the air stays extremely hot near Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, home of what’s been dubbed the “everlasting lightning storm.” Known locally as Relampago del Catatumbo, or the Lightning of Catatumbo (named for a nearby river that enters into the lake), the phenomenon has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as involving the most lightning strikes (250) per square kilometer of any spot in the world. Ten-hour lightning storms occur some 150 times per annum, and lightning itself can be seen up to 300 nights every year.

 

People used to think that ringing church bells repelled lightning.

There’s a good reason why some church bells still have the words “fulgura frango” inscribed on them. The phrase, Latin for “I break up lightning,” is evidence of a superstition dating back to the medieval era: that ringing church bells prevented lightning strikes. You might be able to guess how the superstition was proved to be just that — a great many bell-ringers were struck by lightning — but the belief persisted until the late 18th century. It’s far from the only way people once tried to repel lightning, of course. Europeans used to plant Sempervivum tectorum, also called houseleek or hens and chicks, on the roofs of houses and churches in the belief that it somehow prevented lightning and fire.

 

 

Source: Lightning can heat the air to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LARGEST WATERFALL

Did you know.... Waterfalls are some of the world’s most amazing wonders. Millions of people flock to these water-rushing giants — with names like Niagara, Yosemite Falls, and Iguaçu — to see them up close and in person. However, the largest waterfall in the world has no ticket counter, no gift shop, and no tourists. In fact, there’s nothing at all to see, because this waterfall is entirely underwater. 

 

Nestled between Greenland and Iceland is a body of water known as the Denmark Strait, and beneath its waves lies the world’s largest waterfall. Known simply as the Denmark Strait cataract (a “cataract” is a type of powerful, flowing waterfall), it cascades 11,500 feet toward the seafloor. This incredible deluge — like other underwater cataracts — is actually a dramatic dance between warm and cold water. In the case of the Denmark Strait cataract, cold water from the Nordic Sea meets the much warmer water of the Irminger Sea southwest of Iceland. The cooler, denser water sinks beneath the lighter, warmer water, dropping more than 2 miles to the seafloor. The resulting waterfall completely dwarfs Venezuela’s Angel Falls, the tallest terrestrial waterfall in the world, by more than 8,000 feet. The Denmark Strait cataract is also a staggering 100 miles wide, nearly 15 times wider than the widest terrestrial waterfall, the Khone Phapheng Falls in Laos, which is only 6.7 miles wide. By every single metric, this underwater avalanche towers over the competition — even though it never rises above sea level.

 

The world’s largest volcano is also (mostly) under the ocean.

Some 590 miles northwest of Honolulu, a small, unassuming island known as Pūhāhonu (Hawaiian for “turtle rising for breath”) covers only a 5-acre expanse. But underneath the sea, Pūhāhonu is actually the very tip of the world’s largest volcano. Pūhāhonu is a shield volcano, a type of volcano named for its overall shape — which resembles a shield laying on the ground — and in 2020, scientists confirmed that its size surpassed that of the previous record-holder, Mauna Loa. At 36,000 cubic miles, it’s almost twice the size of Mauna Loa, which clocks in at only 19,200 cubic miles. Part of the reason Pūhāhonu remained such a well-kept secret is that nearly two-thirds of its bulk is below the ocean floor, and is covered by debris and broken coral. The volcano is so heavy, it has actually caused the Earth’s crust nearby to sink.

 

 

Source: The world’s largest waterfall is under the ocean.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THIRD PLACES?

Did you know... 'Third places' are spaces that are separate from home and work. They may be critical for individual and collective well-being.

 

Many people spend most of their time at home and at work. Yet did you know there’s actually a name for locations other than these two places—like cafes, bars, parks, and library-type settings where people go to hang out free from the constraints of their houses and their offices?

 

 

These are so-called third places. According to some experts, these places might be essential for individual well-being—and even for the well-being of democracy.

 

The term third place was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989. He first used it in his book The Great Good Place to describe a location where people gather and socialize with both friends and strangers and truly engage with their communities. These places, he theorized, can help people feel connected to others who live near them, and can be vital for the health and well-being of communities on the whole.

 

Shopping malls, markets, and concerts don’t exactly fit this bill, Oldenburg noted, as the centerpiece of any proper third place should be conversation. Third places should allow neighbors to meet each other and should provide places where newcomers can be integrated into communities, he wrote in a 1996 essay. They should also provide opportunities for people of different generations to meet, for community members to support one another and share resources, and for political debate to occur. Ideally, they should be long-term establishments located within walking distance of people’s homes. Finally, he emphasized, they should foster entertainment and friendship—not stress and more expenses.

 

The History of Third Places
Third places of sorts have always existed in human civilizations, ever since we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started settling down and staying put. Older iterations of contemporary third places date back to the agoras of ancient Greek city-states of the sixth century BCE, where people would gather to debate, socialize, and access amenities like temples and administrative buildings. These spaces were essential to the development of Greek society and democracy. 

 

Today, the quintessential third place, of course, is the cafe—one of the few places where people can meet to simply be together and talk in a safe, comfortable social setting. One early predecessor to the modern cafe is the tea houses of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) in China; these places were fixtures in communities of this era, acting as spaces where meetings, celebrations, and gatherings were held regularly. 

 

The very first coffeehouses arose in the Middle East, and cafes started to thrive in England in the 17th century, when people would often engage in political debates long into the night inside them. The cheap price of admission to these spaces—usually nothing more than a cup of coffee—allowed large cross-sections of people to gather and simply talk, debate, and meet each other without the threat of intoxication that always loomed in taverns. At this time, coffeehouses were sometimes referred to as “penny universities,” as cups of coffee typically only cost a penny.

 

Naturally, not every cafe in existence today is an ideal third place. Some are too small, expensive, or otherwise inhospitable to really serve this function. Yet if you’ve ever stumbled upon the perfect cafe—the kind of place you return to again and again to work, rest, meet up with friends, and simply soak in the ambiance—you probably can imagine what Oldenburg was envisioning when he created the term.

 

Some other popular third places—such as libraries, bowling alleys, and hair salons—became widespread in the West around the 1930s, when an economic boom and a surge in the popularity of cars gave people the means to spend more time and money in these sorts of spaces.

 

The Future of Third Places
According to Oldenburg and more recent scholars, third places have also been undergoing a steady decline since the late 20th century. In a 1996 essay, Oldenburg described how technology and the structure of modern cities and suburbs have made it possible for people to go years without ever meeting their neighbors. 

 

Today, that phenomenon has become even more extreme thanks to the rise of apps that allow people to order coffee straight to their doors and economic conditions that have made it more and more difficult for third places to stay open and for people to enjoy them. 

 

Studies have shown that third places are essential for the well-being and health of neighborhoods, and their widespread closure can have significant risks. According to an article published in PubMed Central in 2020, by losing third places, “residents are losing access to key services, goods, amenities, and recreational leisure facilities; and spaces to socialize, connect, play, and care for one another. The loss of protective factors and resilience mechanisms, including buffers against stress, loneliness, inactivity, and alienation may be particularly harmful to groups who rely on third places including older adults, children, the chronically ill, and socioeconomically marginalized.” 

 

On the other hand, the authors continue, “focusing on third places can advance multiple domains of health geography and public health, including upstream socio-geographic conditions that impose downstream barriers to health, neighborhood-level protective factors and sources of resiliency, and the importance of place and context.”

 

In short, that beloved local cafe might be doing a lot more than just serving great coffee. “What suburbia cries for,” Oldenburg wrote in 1996, “are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably—a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

 

 

Source: What Third Places Are, And Why They're Important

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ENDEMIC SNAKES

Did you know.... For the 2% to 3% of people with genuine ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), not to mention the 50% who just feel anxious about the reptiles, Ireland may seem like heaven on Earth. That’s because throughout its entire modern history, the Emerald Isle has been home to precisely zero endemic snake species. Although one of the nation’s most popular legends tells of St. Patrick driving serpents from the island in the fifth century CE, snakes haven’t slithered along Ireland’s soil since at least before the last ice age. 

 

Ireland’s geological history makes it perfectly inhospitable for snakes. During the last ice age, the northern latitudes of the British Isles were just too cold for ectotherms (animals dependent on the sun to warm their bodies), so these creatures migrated south. As the ice age receded, glaciers retreated to the poles and water levels rose; the land bridge to Ireland became submerged around 8,500 years ago, whereas the land bridge to England stuck around for 2,000 more years, allowing snakes more time to migrate north as the planet warmed. This is why England has endemic snakes, while Ireland does not. (New Zealand and Iceland lack snakes for similar reasons.)

 

However, this doesn’t mean you won’t run into any snakes in Ireland. While the island has no endemic snake species, it isn’t illegal to have one as a pet (like it is in Hawaii) — in fact, pet snakes were seen as a status symbol in Ireland during the 1990s. With many people setting their pet snakes free during the economic recession around 2008, it’s possible a few populations of snakes are slithering about, though not nearly in large enough numbers to threaten Ireland’s ecosystem or its residents.

 

Snakes can smell with their tongues.

Have you ever seen a snake flick its forked tongue? Scientists — going back to ancient Greece — have theorized a variety of reasons for why snakes perform this strange tongue dance, hypothesizing about its role in enhanced taste, grooming, or fly-catching. Turns out, it’s none of these things — snakes actually use their tongues to smell. Snakes have limited hearing and eyesight compared to humans, but they make up for it with an incredible sense of smell. Although they do detect scent through their nostrils, they can also use a pair of vomeronasal organs located at the roof of their mouth to follow smells. A snake flicks its forked tongue to create eddies of odor particles in the air, then transports them back to its mouth with its tongue tips, delivering scent to each organ. This allows the snake to not only smell its surroundings, but also discern in what direction a certain smell is strongest. Some scientists have described this process as “smelling in stereo.” When a snake is on the move, especially when hunting, it’ll flick its tongue once per second (or more) to stay on the trail of its prey.

 

 

Source: There are no endemic snakes in Ireland.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THE FIRST MOTORCYCLE

Did you know.... On November 10, 1885, German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach unveiled the first motorcycle. Known as the Reitwagen, or “riding car,” it had four wheels: two large wheels plus a pair of small stabilizers (sort of like training wheels) to help keep it upright. 

 

Indeed, the wooden creation resembled a bicycle more closely than it did a modern motorcycle, and the low-mounted engine drove the rear wheel via a belt at a top speed of only about 7.5 miles per hour. Though crude by today’s standards, it demonstrated new possibilities for compact, engine-powered vehicles that could reliably carry a rider.

 

Just one year after the Reitwagen’s debut, Carl Benz introduced his motorcar, considered the first practical automobile. Benz’s car had just three wheels, a choice that was more practical than stylistic. Three wheels simplified steering, something Benz tinkered with until introducing his first four-wheeled vehicle, the Benz Victoria, in 1893.

 

The following year, German company Hildebrand & Wolfmüller introduced and began mass-producing the first two-wheeled motorized vehicle that was referred to as a motorcycle, though it went by the German word motorrad.

 

Folding motorcycles were parachuted out of planes.

World War II sparked a wave of rapid innovation, and one of its stranger byproducts was the Welbike, a small folding motorcycle developed for British paratroopers. Designed to fit inside a standard parachute supply canister, the bike was dropped from aircraft alongside troops and assembled upon landing. 

 

The U.K.’s Excelsior Motor Company made around 3,600 Welbikes between 1942 and 1943. Though they could be unpacked and quickly ridden at a top speed of about 30 mph after landing, their lightweight design didn’t make them the most durable vehicle, and few Welbikes actually made it into service. The design later influenced civilian bikes such as the Corgi, which started production in 1948.

 

 

Source: The first motorcycle had more wheels than the first car.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BOB DYLAN

Did you know.... Bob Dylan may have written all of these songs, but Adele, Jimi Hendrix, and other musicians have turned them into massive hits.

 

Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most iconic songwriters—so much so that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Some of his most famous songs are undeniably associated with him, such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Yet some of his other songs are much better known through other artists’ covers of them. Here are five songs that—depending on your familiarity with music history and Dylan lore—you might be surprised to learn were written by Dylan himself.

 

“All Along the Watchtower”

 

 

 

Dylan penned this song, but Jimi Hendrix made it immortal when he recorded it for his 1968 album Electric Ladyland. Dylan originally wrote the song during an 18-month period he spent recovering from a motorcycle accident in Woodstock, New York, and its enigmatic lyrics have provided fodder for many different interpretations. Chronicling an imagery-loaded conversation between a joker and a thief, the song has been linked to the Bible’s Book of Isaiah.

 

Dylan was personally a fan of this song, performing it live more than any of his other songs, but the track will always be connected to Hendrix’s version in popular imagination. Dylan even felt this way, and in the liner notes for Biograph, he described the song by writing, “strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to [Hendrix] in some kind of way.”

 

“Make You Feel My Love”

 

 

This song has been deftly covered by everyone from Garth Brooks to Adele, but it was originally written by Dylan himself. It appeared on his 1997 album Time Out of Mind, which was released when Dylan was 56. However, the song was actually initially released as a cover by Billy Joel.

 

Fans have long speculated about the song’s meaning, with some arguing that it might be about Dylan’s divorce from his second wife and others theorizing it might be about his relationship with God. Regardless, the song has become most famous due to all the artists who have covered it—reportedly over 450 since its release.

 

“Mr. Tambourine Man”

 

 

Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” is a psychedelic ode to the bohemian and creative life, at least according to some interpretations. The song was actually inspired by Bruce Langhorne, a musician who played guitar on the record.

 

Originally trained as a classical violinist, Langhorne lost two fingers in an accident at the age of 12, and soon switched to the guitar—and occasionally, the tambourine. “‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ I think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. On one session, [producer] Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine,” Dylan wrote in the liner notes for Biograph. “And he had this gigantic tambourine. It was like, really big. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind.”

 

While Dylan may have penned the track, it became famous when a cover was released by the Byrds in 1965 shortly after Dylan released his version. The Byrds' rendition reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and helped shape modern folk rock and jangle pop. The versions are slightly different, though, as the Byrds’ song only uses one verse, whereas Dylan’s version has four.

 

“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”

 

 

Dylan originally penned this song for the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and wrote it while on a plane flight to the set. It has been covered by everyone from Eric Clapton to Neil Young, though perhaps its most famous cover was recorded by Guns N’ Roses. The track is unique in Dylan’s songbook for its relative lyrical simplicity.

 

“If Not for You”

 

 

“If Not for You” is often associated with George Harrison’s version of the tune, but it’s actually a Dylan original. The song, which is believed to be a love song to Dylan’s first wife Sara, was released in 1970. Dylan also recorded a version with Harrison shortly after the song’s release, though that version remained unreleased until 1991. Harrison recorded his own version later that year, which was released on his album All Things Must Pass. The song was also covered by Olivia Newton-John in 1971, and the song became her first hit single.

 

Source: Hit Songs You Might Not Know Were Written By Bob Dylan

Edited March 19 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MID-FLIGHT NAP

Did you know... You’ve heard of a catnap, but what about a birdnap? Unlike the feline equivalent, birdnaps are unavailable to us humans for the simple reason that we can’t fly, which is exactly when some avians, namely great frigatebirds, doze off. 

 

Frigatebirds can stay aloft for up to two months without stopping, but one thing they can’t do is swim — which is a potential problem, as their flight patterns often take them across the sea. Sleeping mid-flight is key to their ability to traverse those great distances. To prove the long-standing hypothesis that frigatebirds catch some z’s while flying, researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Ornithology implanted 15 of the birds with electroencephalograms (EEGs) to study activity in their brains.

 

The study offered the first proof that frigatebirds do indeed sleep in flight, but only for about 10 seconds at a time, adding up to a total of 45 minutes a day. That’s much less than on land, where they rest for about 12 hours each day, divided into minute-long naps. 

 

The birds sleep with only one side of their brain while flying, an ability that typically allows animals to stay alert for predators while asleep. Because frigatebirds don’t have any natural predators in the sky, however, scientists suspect they stay partially alert to prevent crashing into one another. 

 

Three states claim to be first in flight.

North Carolina and Ohio had been quietly feuding over the title of “first in flight” for more than a century by the time a third state — Connecticut — threw its hat in the ring. Though the Wright brothers built the pieces of their pioneering Wright Flyer aircraft in their home state of Ohio, they successfully assembled those pieces and took to the sky in North Carolina in 1903. 

 

According to the Nutmeg State, however, one Gustave Whitehead beat the brothers to the punch in 1901 with a flying machine described in a contemporaneous article that has since been found unreliable. The state Legislature even passed a 2014 measure declaring Connecticut first in flight. In retaliation, Ohio lawmakers unanimously passed a resolution of their own that “repudiates recent claims made by state lawmakers in Connecticut that it is home to man’s first flight.”

 

Ohio declares itself the “birthplace of aviation,” while North Carolina’s license plates boast “first in flight.” If there’s one thing both states — and most other sources — can agree on, it’s that Whitehead’s claims were exaggerated.

 

 

Source: Birds sleep mid-flight.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TWINS

Did you know.... What are the health benefits of having a close friend — like identical twins close — for your entire life? Well, according to research from the University of Washington, the positive effects on life expectancy can be astounding. In 2016, UW scientists analyzed data gathered in the Danish Twin Registry, one of the world’s oldest registries on identical and fraternal twins. The data the scientists reviewed included information on nearly 3,000 same-sex twins who survived beyond the age of 10 from 1870 to 1900. With the data being over a century old, scientists could ensure that all subjects in the study had completed their natural lifespans. The study found that twins enjoyed a significantly higher survival rate compared to the overall Danish population, an advantage that peaked for male twins when they were in their mid-40s and for female twins in their early 60s. At those ages, male twins were more likely (by 6 percentage points) to be alive — meaning that in a group of 100 Danish men back then, if 84 were still alive at age 45, for twins the number was 90. For female twins, the difference at the peak was 10 percentage points.

 

While both fraternal and identical twins outperformed their non-twin counterparts, identical twins showed even greater gains in life expectancy over fraternal twins, leading scientists to theorize that identical twins perhaps form deeper bonds due to an enhanced ability to predict their sibling’s needs. The strength of social bonds in relation to health outcomes isn’t unique to twins, though. A similar effect has been observed between married, or otherwise partnered, couples and single people, which is known as the marriage protection effect. Both examples show the vital need humans have for strong social connections, and connections don’t get much stronger than the bond — and DNA — shared between identical twins.

 

There is an extremely rare third type of twin.

You’ve heard of identical and fraternal twins. The former, known as monozygotic, happens when twins originate from the same egg, while the latter, called dizygotic, happens when two separate eggs are fertilized at the same time (the most common type of twin). However, there’s also an extremely rare third type of twin known as semi-identical, or sesquizygotic. First documented in 2007, this type occurs when two sperm fertilize the same egg. Sesquizygotic twins share the same placenta and will have somewhere between 50% and 100% of the same DNA (essentially on a spectrum between normal siblings/fraternal twins and identical twins). Although the twins also share the same amniotic sac, the two fetuses can actually be different sexes, something that’s impossible with identical twins. To this day, only a handful of sesquizygotic twins have been identified.

 

 

Source: Twins live longer.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PISTACHIOS GO BOOM!

Did you know.... It turns out there’s a price to pay for how tasty and nutritious pistachios are: Under the right circumstances, they can spontaneously combust. Everyone’s favorite shelled nut is especially rich in fat, which is highly flammable. Thankfully, that only becomes a problem when pistachios are packed too tightly during shipping or storage. It’s important to keep the nuts dry lest they become moldy — but if they’re kept too dry and there are too many of them bunched together, they can self-heat and catch fire without an external heat source. 

 

Though exceedingly rare and easy to avoid if the proper instructions are followed, pistachio self-combustion is a real enough concern that the German Transport Information Service specifically advises that pistachios “not be stowed together with fibers/fibrous materials as oil-soaked fibers may promote self-heating/spontaneous combustion of the cargo.” Don’t worry, though: It won’t happen in your pantry with just a few bags, which means you can indulge in the shelled snack of your dreams without worrying about their flavor becoming unexpectedly smoky.

 

Raw cashews are toxic.

Cashews are delicious, but you’d never know it from looking at a cashew tree — they’re quite strange-looking. If seeing one in the wild makes you hesitant to eat the fruit they bear, there’s a good reason for that: Cashew shells are toxic. They contain a toxin called urushiol, which triggers a delayed allergic reaction in the form of a painful, itchy rash; urushiol is also found in poison ivy, which, like cashews and pistachios, is a member of the Anacardiaceae family of trees. It’s for this reason that cashews are roasted before being sold and consumed, even those labeled as “raw.” Doing so removes all traces of urushiol and makes them safe to eat.

 

 

Source: Pistachios can spontaneously combust.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TORNADOES

Did you know... England doesn’t have the most annual tornadoes of any country overall — that dubious honor belongs to the United States — but it does have the most by land area. Brits are hit by roughly 29 twisters every year, which works out to 2.2 tornadoes per 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles); that’s quite a bit more than the U.S., which gets 1.3 a year per the same area. England has a total area of 50,301 square miles, while America is vastly larger at 3,531,837 square miles.

 

About 1,150 tornadoes are reported in the U.S. each year, which is more than all of Europe, Canada, and Australia combined. This is mostly due to topography, as the vast area in the middle of the country — appropriately known as Tornado Alley — is where dry, cold air traveling from Canada meets the moist, warm air from the south.

 

This creates unstable atmospheric conditions, which are ideal for the formation of tornadoes. While England isn’t as flat as Tornado Alley, its weather conditions, with an abundance of cold fronts and thunderstorms, are similarly conducive to tornadoes.

 

Tornadoes have plucked the feathers off chickens.

Though it may sound like an urban legend, there have been many instances of tornadoes plucking the feathers right off of chickens. “While it is not the mission of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center to record tornadoes which deplumed fowls,” the organization said in a response to a 1978 article in American Heritage magazine, “enough events of this phenomenon have been documented over the past one hundred and forty years to warrant acceptance.”

 

The real question isn’t whether this has ever happened but how, and there are a number of competing theories. Some think it’s simply the strength of the wind, while others (including Kurt Vonnegut’s brother Bernard, a meteorologist) believe the birds become so anxious during the storms that they spontaneously molt — an evolutionary adaptation meant to ensure predators make off with only a mouthful of feathers, rather than the entire chicken, when attacking.

 

 

Source: England has the most annual tornadoes by land area of anywhere in the world.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - RENT-A-FRUIT

Did you know... If you’re planning to throw a party, you might need to rent extra tables or chairs, or perhaps even a tent or a tux. But in the 1700s, party hosts and guests looking to make a statement were in the rental market for an entirely different accessory: pineapples. The message they were trying to send? That they were extravagantly wealthy. Prior to the 20th century, when pineapple plantations made the fruit widely available, pineapples were incredibly expensive imports to Europe (and most other places). In the 18th century, a single fruit bought in Britain could cost upwards of $8,000 in today’s money. 

 

Christopher Columbus is credited with introducing pineapples to Europe in the 1490s after voyaging to the Americas. Just one survived his return journey, and the bromeliad quickly had an impact. Dubbed the “king of fruits,” the pineapple became a symbol of opulence and royalty because of its scarcity. Pineapples were featured in paintings of kings, printed on linens and wallpaper, and even carved into furniture. Obtaining a rare pineapple meant the buyer had money and status — and for that reason, the fruit was also often featured decor at parties and events. Eventually, European botanists learned to grow pineapples in greenhouses and reduce their cost. But until the fruits were widely available, many partygoers in Britain would seek out a pineapple for just one night, renting the fruit for a fraction of its full price and sometimes even carrying it around at the party as the ultimate (uneaten) accessory. 

 

Queen Elizabeth II received cases of pineapples as a wedding gift.

What kind of gift do you send a future queen in honor of her nuptials? In Queen Elizabeth II’s case: pineapples. In 1947, the government of Queensland, Australia, marked the celebration with a wedding gift of 500 cases of canned pineapple. While today the gift might be considered unusual, it was warmly received in Britain just two years after World War II ended; at the time, Britain was still experiencing wartime rationing, which would persist for seven years after the war’s end. With many goods still difficult to come by, Queensland sent a surplus of its pineapple harvest to Britain, where many citizens still rarely saw fresh fruit. The cans, which were decorated with commemorative labels, were given out to British families, along with donations from other countries, including 804 metric tons of food from Toronto, Canada, and more than 50,000 packages from the United States.

 

Source: Pineapples were once so valuable, people rented them for parties.

[DarkRavie]

Yesterday's Fact of the Day - GREEN IS ACTUALLY RED

Did you know... If you’ve ever found yourself in the grocery store struggling to decide between red and green bell peppers — or even just wondering what the difference is between them — you may be interested to learn that they could be the very same vegetable. Many (but not all) green bell peppers are just red bell peppers that haven’t ripened yet. This is why red bell peppers are often more expensive: They require more time on the vine, and thus more care and resources.

 

Orange and yellow peppers may be somewhere in between the two stages, though cross-breeding has also produced peppers that ripen to those specific colors. There are also varieties that turn purple, white, or even black. And some bell peppers are bred to stay green.

 

Bell peppers don’t just change color as they ripen — they also become sweeter and drastically increase their beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin C content. And other pepper varieties have superpowers, too. Capsaicin, the active component that makes hot chile peppers spicy (bell peppers lack it), has been used for pain relief and other medicinal purposes for centuries. It also pairs surprisingly well with chocolate, as the cocoa-obsessed Aztec Emperor Montezuma could attest. Not all peppers are as friendly to the average palate, of course. According to the Scoville scale, which measures spiciness, the world’s hottest pepper (currently the Carolina Reaper) is 200 times hotter than your average jalapeño — which is to say, probably not something you’d use to add some kick to a burger. 

 

New Mexico’s state question is about peppers.

In 1996, the Land of Enchantment became the first state to have an official question: “Red or green?” Chiles are hugely important in New Mexico, which produced 62,700 tons of them in 2017, and anyone ordering a dish made with the peppers will be asked to clarify their color preference. (Answering “Christmas” will get you a blend of the two.) The state celebrates peppers in other ways, too — Las Cruces is home to the world’s largest chile pepper (actually a 47-foot-tall concrete statue celebrating the beloved staple), while traveling 40 miles north to Hatch will land you in the self-proclaimed chile capital of the world. Hatch’s namesake chile has become famous both across the country and abroad, earning acclaim for its balance of sweetness and heat.

 

 

Source: Many green bell peppers are just unripe red bell peppers.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DUNK AN OREO IN MILK

Did you know.... Milk and cookies go together like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, Jay-Z and Beyoncé. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to dunk a cookie in milk, according to scientists. In 1998, a professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K. looked into the ideal method for dunking a British biscuit (aka a cookie) into a drink, using the concept of capillary action — the way fluids move spontaneously through small tubes in porous materials — and Washburn’s equation, which describes their journey. Eventually, he determined that the typical British biscuit is best dunked for 3.5 to 5 seconds. Using this same technique in 2016, scientists at the University of Utah’s Splash Lab determined the perfect dunk time for the much-beloved Oreo. Although the amount of time to get to “perfect” depends on preferred sogginess levels and milk fat content, the Utah researchers determined that three seconds was enough to thoroughly saturate the Oreo without losing structural integrity.

 

Here’s the journey in slow motion. Cookies are porous, and milk travels through the small holes inside them the same way ink does through blotting paper, or a spill through a paper towel. During tests, the Oreo soaked up 50% of its potential liquid weight in one second. That number shot up to 80% at two seconds, flatlined at three seconds, and maxed out at four seconds — meaning the cookie could absorb no more milk. So if the goal was to saturate the cookie but not lose structural cohesion, three seconds was the perfect number. While this test used 2% milk as its dunking medium, the optimal dunking time will vary slightly when using other milk: The higher the milk fat (like whole milk or cream), the longer a cookie can be dunked, but only by mere fractions of a second. Mmmmm, we just made ourselves hungry.

 

All humans used to be lactose intolerant.

All mammalian young produce an enzyme known as lactase, which allows babies to digest lactose, a naturally occurring sugar found in milk (human or otherwise). As mammals age, their bodies naturally produce less and less lactase, until eventually milk sugars are no longer digestible. But around 10,000 BCE, a genetic mutation in humans took hold near modern-day Turkey that effectively kept human lactase production permanently set in the “on” position. According to some anthropologists, this gave certain cultures a distinct advantage, since this new lactose tolerance added a pool of easily accessible calories to the human diet. A 2015 study looking at the DNA of Eurasians who lived between 6500 BCE and 300 BCE shows that Russian steppe herders likely introduced the mutation to Western Europe. However, humanity’s ability to digest milk isn’t as widespread as you might think. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 68% of the world’s adult population experiences “lactose malabsorption,” and those percentages are particularly high in Asia and Africa.

 

 

Source: Scientists have studied the ideal amount of time to dunk an Oreo in milk.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EGG ROLLING

Did you know.... Discover how eggs went from religious symbols to Easter’s famous lawn-rolling tradition.

 

Dating back to pre-Christian times, eggs have long been considered a symbol of fertility, restoration, new life, and the seasonal regeneration that is springtime. 

 

After Christianity began to spread among the pagan peoples of ancient Europe, the egg was repurposed as a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the springtime festival of Easter. The chick emerging from its shell is said to symbolize Jesus emerging from the tomb three days after his crucifixion. As a result, eggs made the leap from pre-Christian tradition to Christian tradition and have remained a popular symbol of Eastertime ever since. 

 

The story doesn’t end there, however, because it’s not just ordinary hens’ eggs that we’re used to seeing at Easter. Specially dyed and brightly colored eggs, for instance, have been incorporated into Easter festivities since the Middle Ages. Chocolate eggs are a recent invention, first popularized during the late Victorian era. British chocolatier JS Fry & Sons is credited with producing the first chocolate Easter egg in 1873, as a sweet indulgence to be enjoyed amid the day’s celebrations. 

 

EGGING IT ON

 

As Easter became more established in the Christian calendar of ancient Europe, so too did the forty-day period of privation and reflection before it, known as Lent. Various churches and traditions soon imposed their own rules on their followers during this pre-Easter period, and eggs—as both a nutritious luxury and a popular symbol of the Easter season—were one of the things to be promptly forbidden. 

 

Just because it’s Easter doesn’t mean that chickens stop laying, of course. But, with eggs taken off the Lenten menu, that left people with rather a lot of perishable eggs that they couldn’t use. Consequently, people began to look for other ways to incorporate eggs into the Easter celebrations, besides just eating them. Surplus eggs were therefore boiled and dyed or painted, and utilized as Easter decorations—or handed out to friends and neighbors as gifts to be enjoyed when the long period of fasting was finally over. 

 

The end of Lent and the loosening of the dietary rules that came with it ultimately became something of a festive occasion. And as such, various traditions began to emerge around cracking open these gifted colored eggs when the time finally came to enjoy them—including rolling them down a hill. 

 

ROLL WITH IT

 

The earliest known egg-rolling traditions are believed to have emerged amid the Easter celebrations of northern and central England in the 1700s. 

 

Traditional colored eggs, known locally as pace eggs (from the Old English word for Easter, pase), would typically be handed out to children, or else gifted to the performers of so-called “pace-egg plays”—old medieval-era mystery plays, long performed across rural England as part of the Easter Day celebrations. One of the highlights of the day’s festivities was the chance to at long last crack open these gifted pace eggs and enjoy them, and so children and players would often roll them along the ground, or down hills or slopes, to break off their colored shells. Games and competitions soon emerged to see whose egg could be rolled the furthest, or whose egg survived the roll down the hill the most intact. (It has even been theorized that these celebratory rolling games might have emerged as a symbol of the stone being rolled away from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday morning.)

 

From rural England, the traditional Eastern morning egg-rolling contest soon spread to the United States, with Dolley Madison—wife of America’s fourth president, James Madison—often popularly credited with establishing the now-annual egg roll down the South Lawn of the White House back in 1814. In fact, records suggest the very first White House egg rolling was held later, under President Hayes in 1878. 

Source: The Strange History of Egg Rolling Traditions

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WHICH FLOATS, WHICH SINKS

Did you know... Few flavors complement each other like lemon and lime, with many a refreshing treat combining both for maximum effect. The two citrus fruits have some key differences, however, including the fact that limes sink while lemons float. You may have noticed this if you’ve ever put lime and lemon slices in a glass or pitcher of water, and the reason is simple: Objects float only if they’re less dense than the liquid they're placed in, and while both limes and lemons have densities close to that of water, limes are denser than their yellow counterparts. That remains true whether the lemon or lime in question is whole, peeled, or sliced — a lemon will always float, and a lime will always sink. 

 

That's not the only difference between these citrus fruits, of course. Whereas lemons grow well in moderate climates, limes fare better in tropical and subtropical areas. Limes also tend to be smaller, which helps distinguish them from lemons even when they sometimes take on a yellowish hue as they ripen. And though the two are almost identical on a nutritional level, lemons are sweeter — which is probably why you can think of a lot more lemon-flavored candies than lime-flavored ones.

 

Every citrus fruit is descended from three “ancestral” species.

Lemons, limes, grapefruits, tangerines, and most other citrus fruits all have something important in common — none of them originally existed in nature. They’re all descended from three “ancestral” citrus species, namely the mandarin orange, pomelo, and citron. (Some consider the papeda to be the fourth original citrus, though its genetic impact hasn’t been as strong.) All three are still around, though they’re not as popular commercially as some of their descendants. Limes and lemons both descend in part from the citron, although the genetics of specific varieties are still being debated by scientists. Since almost all citrus are sexually compatible — a rare quality in nature — their genes have been mixing both in the wild and under human hands for thousands of years, creating a vast bounty that brightens our drinks, our winters, and much more.

 

 

Source: Lemons float, but limes sink.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LIBRARIES

Did you know..... You’re never more than 135 miles from a McDonald’s in the continental United States, and the vast majority of the time you’re much closer. For how ubiquitous the golden arches are, however, the fast-food giant’s 14,300 locations are outnumbered by something completely different: public libraries, of which there are more than 17,000 in the U.S. 

 

In addition to lending physical books, libraries offer everything from free internet access to language courses to streaming services. Some even have collections of objects, which allow anyone with a library card to check out musical instruments, cooking utensils, hardware tools, and other useful items they may not already own.

 

McDonald’s is one of the biggest real estate companies in the world.

As anyone who’s seen The Founder knows, McDonald’s didn’t make all its money from selling Big Macs. “We are not technically in the food business,” former CFO Harry J. Sonneborn has been quoted as saying. “We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell 15-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.”

 

McDonald’s now stands as one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, with more than $42 billion in land holdings. Each franchise is built on land McDonald’s owns — land it then leases to franchisees. More than one-third of the chain’s revenue comes from that rent.

 

 

Source: There are more public libraries in the U.S. than McDonald’s locations.