Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HE DIED IN 1956

Did you know.... One Gettysburg memorial stands out for its strikingly modern appearance, featuring a man in a midcentury suit and tie, no musket or battle flag in hand. The statue honors Albert Henry Woolson, the last surviving Civil War veteran, as he appeared at age 106, nine decades after the war’s end. At the time of his death in 1956, Woolson had outlived more than 2 million Union Army soldiers. 

 

Born in New York in 1850, Woolson (like many young recruits) likely lied about his age to enroll in the Union Army in 1864. He was accepted into the ranks at age 14, served as a drummer boy and bugler, and eventually was stationed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a commission that kept him from combat.

 

After the war, Woolson held a variety of jobs, including teaching both mechanical engineering and music. He also became a living link with history, speaking at local schools about his experience and receiving letters and visits from around the country. As a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternity for Union veterans, Woolson met with other surviving veterans; the group, which had more than 400,000 members in 1890, had whittled down to only 16 men by 1949. Six of the Civil War veterans met in Indianapolis that year, including Joseph Clovese, the last formerly enslaved soldier. Called the “Grand Old Men,” the group paraded through the streets one final time. Woolson’s funeral a few years later would also attract a crowd. More than 1,500 people attended the burial, including the grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, who helped lay the soldier to rest as an honorary pallbearer.

 

Abraham Lincoln helped turn Robert E. Lee’s home into a cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 400,000 soldiers and their family members, but at one time, the Virginia military cemetery was an estate run by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary. The couple abandoned the property as the war broke out, and shortly afterward the U.S. Army seized the Arlington estate to protect nearby Washington, D.C., which it overlooked. The U.S. government took hold of Arlington after the Lees failed to pay taxes on the land, and turned some portions into a village for formerly enslaved people; the government also soon created plans for a potential military cemetery there. When presented with the idea, Lincoln gave presidential approval for the concept, with the idea that if Lee ever returned, the burial ground would force him to reconsider his role in the war — though Lee never made any effort to reclaim the land. Arlington became a national cemetery in June 1864, and today is the second-largest national cemetery in the U.S.

 

 

Source: The last surviving Civil War veteran died in 1956.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - KEVLAR

Did you know.... Few synthetic polymers have saved as many lives as poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide, better known as Kevlar. These super-resilient, nylon-like threads are five times stronger than steel, lighter than fiberglass, incredibly heat-resistant, and fantastically flexible. Although the material is found in a variety of items from kayaks to NASA spacecraft, Kevlar has arguably made the greatest impact in bulletproof vests and body armor. But Kevlar’s incredible, lifesaving superpower is only a happy byproduct of its original purpose — creating a new kind of car tire.

 

In the mid-1960s, chemist Stephanie Kwolek was working in a Wilmington, Delaware, research lab for the textile division of the chemical company Dupont, which had invented another “miracle” fiber called nylon 30 years earlier. Fearing a looming gas shortage — one that arrived in earnest in 1973 — Dupont was searching for a synthetic material that could make tires lighter and stronger, replacing some of their steel and improving overall fuel efficiency. One day, Kwolek noticed that a particular batch of dissolved polyamides (a type of synthetic polymer) had formed a cloudy, runny consistency rather than the usual clear, syrupy concoction. Although colleagues told Kwolek to toss it out, she persisted in investigating this strange mixture closely, discovering that it could be spun to create fibers of an unusual stiffness. Thus, Kevlar was born. Dupont introduced the “wonder fiber” in 1971, and the material began undergoing tests in ballistic vests almost immediately. By one estimate, it has saved at least 3,000 police officers from bullet wounds in the years since. Despite its myriad applications, Kevlar still delivers on its original purpose as an automotive component, whether baked into engine belts, brake pads, or yes, even tires.

 

The top speed of the world’s fastest cars is mostly limited by their tires.

Rubber tires can go only so fast. The centrifugal force of speeds approaching 300 mph creates an incredible amount of pressure and heat that normal tires just can’t handle. Because of this, supercars such as the $3.8 million Bugatti Chiron can’t reach the top speeds its 1,500-horsepower engine might technically achieve (around the 310 mph mark). This physical limitation is why land speed record-breaking vehicles — which are more like wheeled rockets than cars — get rid of rubber entirely and ride on aluminum alloy wheels instead. Undeterred, the tire company Michelin developed all-new tires for the Chiron, reinforcing the rubber with carbon fiber and testing them with the same equipment NASA used to test the wheels for space shuttles. In 2019, these reinforced tires helped the Chiron reach 304.77 mph — a new speed record for any car with street-legal tires (rocket cars not included).

 

 

Source: Kevlar originally had a different purpose.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LONDON BRIDGE

Did you know.... If you want to see the 19th-century version of London Bridge, don’t travel to London — or even England, for that matter. Instead, head to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where a U.S. businessman by the name of Robert McCulloch moved the bridge after buying it in 1968. That the landmark structure was even for sale was the result of English officials realizing the bridge was sinking, albeit at the relatively slow pace of 1 inch every eight years. And so, after a tenure of some 130 years — a bit shabby, when you consider that its medieval predecessor stood for more than 600 — that iteration of London Bridge was put on the market after London City Councilor Ivan Luckin convinced his colleagues that he could persuade someone in America to buy it. 

 

He was right, of course, and it made sense that McCulloch would be the one to purchase it. An eccentric industrialist who once attributed his success to “booze and broads,” McCulloch jumped at the opportunity to bring a piece of history to a patch of land he was hoping to turn into a haven for tourists. Buying the bridge for the princely sum of $2.46 million was the easy part — it was disassembling and moving it, granite brick by granite brick, that turned out to be a logistical nightmare. Three years and another $7 million later, London Bridge settled in its (apparently) final resting place on October 10, 1971. Today, it’s one of Arizona’s top attractions.

 

No one knows who the “fair lady” in “London Bridge Is Falling Down” was.

As is the case with many nursery rhymes, the precise origins of “London Bridge Is Falling Down” are hard to pin down. Also as with many nursery rhymes, they’re assumed to be fairly dark. Though everything from a bridge suffering normal wear and tear to child sacrifice has been floated as a possible interpretation, the most widely held belief is that “London Bridge” is about King of Norway Olaf II and his fellow Vikings allegedly destroying said bridge in the early 1000s. As for the fair lady, there’s even more disagreement about her true identity. Some think the reference is to the Virgin Mary, whom Londoners credited with protecting the rest of their city from similar destruction, while others believe Eleanor of Provence or another royal consort is the lady in question.

 

 

Source: The old London Bridge is in Arizona.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CAN CATS RECOGNIZES VOICES

Did you know.... While dogs are often touted as man’s best friend, cats can be so aloof that they seem like little more than a passing acquaintance. However, there is more going on between felines and their human owners than a cat’s sometimes steely exterior may suggest. In October 2022, researchers from France published results from an experiment examining the relationship cats have with their owners’ voices. In the study, cats responded more positively to a familiar human voice (swishing tails, pivoting ears, pausing grooming) than when they heard the voice of a stranger. 

 

This builds on previous research from 2013 that found a similar connection between a familiar voice and its effects on a cat — though none of the felines in that study even bothered to get up in response to the voices they recognized. Unlike dogs, cats were never domesticated to follow a human’s orders, and instead were the product of a more symbiotic relationship, as the rise of agriculture gave rise to rodents and other pests for cats to hunt.

 

The French researchers also studied how owners spoke with their pets; specifically, if they used cat-directed speech — aka baby talk — which is known to positively impact both babies and canines. (In fact, babies learn words more quickly when listening to baby talk.) Owners’ voices were recorded asking questions such as “Do you want to play?” and “Do you want a treat?” using both cat-directed speech and human-to-human conversational speech. Like dogs and babies, cats reacted more positively to cat-directed speech than to an owner’s normal speaking voice.

 

There’s a scientific reason why you hate listening to your own voice.

Hearing a recording of your voice can be an unpleasant experience, as the sound isn’t usually what you expect. To put it simply, hearing works by something called “air conduction,” in which sound waves travel to our ears’ cochleas, which in turn stimulate nerve axons that send signals to the brain — but that’s not what happens when we speak. While some air conduction occurs when we hear ourselves talking, most sound is translated through “bone conduction,” particularly our skull bones. This blend of both air and bone conduction gives our voice a deeper, richer low end, which explains why most people perceive their voices as higher-pitched when listening to a recording.

 

 

Source: Cats can recognize their owners’ voices.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EASTER

Did you know.... There’s a good, if complicated, reason Easter can be celebrated anytime between March 22 and April 25. It’s a movable feast, meaning it doesn’t take place on the same day every year, but it does always fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. 

 

That means the holiday can fall on 35 possible dates, some of which don’t repeat for centuries. In 2025, it landed on April 20, which was also the date of Easter in 2014 and 2003; before the 21st century, though, Easter hadn’t been on April 20 since 1930. The date is tied to the lunar cycle, a repeating pattern that tends to coalesce around a relatively small number of days even over long periods of time, and the fact that Easter always falls on a Sunday limits the likely number of days more than the possible number of days.

 

Much more rare is the earliest possible date: March 22. Easter was most recently celebrated on that date in 1818, but that won’t happen again until 2285. The latest possible date, April 25, is also exceedingly rare: The last time Easter was observed on that date was in 1943, and it won’t be again until 2038. Even more extreme is March 24, which is in the middle of a nearly five-century gap from 1940 to 2391.

 

Switzerland has an Easter bird instead of a bunny.

Not every country acknowledges the Easter Bunny. In Switzerland, for example, Easter eggs are instead brought by a cuckoo — which, when you think about it, makes more sense considering the fact that rabbits don’t lay eggs.

 

Easter celebrates rebirth, hence the focus on eggs, which in Switzerland are hard-boiled and decorated. The cuckoo is considered a symbol of growth and renewal in Switzerland, which explains its connection to Easter.

 

 

Source: Easter can fall on 35 possible dates, some of which don’t repeat for hundreds of years.

Edited Friday at 04:16 PM by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THUMBS

Did you know... If you’ve ever seen someone track their pulse (in real life or on a crime drama), you’ll notice that the index and middle finger are always pressed on the neck’s carotid artery, which is responsible for transporting blood to the brain. There’s a reason why doctors (and actors who play doctors on TV) use these fingers and not, say, their thumbs. While your thumb is good for many things, taking your pulse isn’t one of them. Unlike the other four digits, the thumb has its own exclusive artery, the princeps pollicis, which makes it biologically unreliable as a pulse reader — because you’ll feel it pulse instead of the artery in your neck.

 

Among the 34 muscles, 29 bones, and three major nerves in the hand, there are also two key arteries supplying blood to the area: the ulnar and the radial. The ulnar artery branches at the wrist into a network of blood supply vessels called the superficial palmar arch, which then branches to supply blood to the top four fingers. The radial artery, meanwhile, branches at the wrist into the deep palmer arch, which then branches into the princeps pollicis artery, sending blood to the thumb. But today, there are more modern methods of tracking your pulse that use technology in lieu of touch. The Apple Watch, one of the most popular consumer fitness-tracking devices, relies on a process called “photoplethysmography,” which leverages the fact that blood reflects red light and absorbs green light. The watch uses green LED lights that flash hundreds of times per second, as well as light-sensitive photodiodes that help measure the amount of green-light absorption, and thus blood flow and pulse — no fingers (and definitely no thumbs) required.

 

Thumbs gave humans a significant evolutionary advantage.

Of the many biological advantages human evolution has brought us, two of the biggest are our brains and our thumbs. While the utility of our brain is pretty obvious, it’s our opposable thumbs that do much of the work of day-to-day life. In fact, some scientists credit our thumbs as a driving force behind human culture. Around 3 million years ago, early hominids such as Australopithecines used primitive tools — basically just sticks and rocks — and possessed hands similar to a chimp’s. A million years later, as our early ancestors began migrating out of Africa, increased manual dexterity thanks to improved opposable thumbs gave rise to more complex culture, because of the variety of tools these early species could now manipulate. Eventually, starting some 300,000 years ago or so, Homo sapiens began grasping all the tools that make modern life possible — whether a philosopher’s quill, a carpenter’s hammer, a warrior’s weapon, or a TikToker’s iPhone.

 

 

Source: One finger has its own pulse.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EASTER BONNETS

Did you know.... Head to New York’s Fifth Avenue on Easter Weekend and you’ll find what looks like an explosion of life-sized confetti. It’s the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival, and “the only requirement” to participate, notes a guide, “is a bonnet, the more whimsical the better.”

 

But what exactly are Easter bonnets and where did they come from?

 

From New Clothes to Hats on Parade

Western culture has linked Easter with new threads for centuries. In Europe, people donned fresh outfits on the holiday as a symbol of renewal and rebirth. One piece of folklore from 1830 warns that “Every person must have some part at least of his dress new on Easter Sunday, or he will have no good fortune that year.”

 

In the U.S., the tradition took on a distinctively performative bent in the years following the Civil War. It was already common in New York for wealthy city-dwellers to spill out onto the streets after church to see and be seen in their Sunday best. And if Fifth Avenue was their weekly red carpet, Easter Sunday was their Met Gala; it was the day to show up in the boldest, most fashion-forward outfit you could muster.

 

Perhaps no part of an Easter Sunday outfit was more important than the hat. Women already wore hats in public; in the late 1800s, those head coverings were often bonnets, a name that came to encompass any Easter hat. The holiday presented an excellent opportunity to buy the first non-winter hat of the year.

 

People opted to get whimsical and extravagant with their holiday headpieces. In the late 19th century, volume was in vogue. A magazine print from 1897 featured a large Easter bonnet adorned with flowers floating above a group of people and the caption, “The easter hat throws everything else in the shade.” With size came with risk, though. In 1889, a woman in Chicago was alarmed to discover that “the nodding plumes of a new Easter bonnet” had been set on fire by the end of a nearby cigar. 

 

An Enduring Tradition

 

Even as styles morphed, the importance of the hat remained. “It is Time to Plan the Easter Bonnet,” announced a New York Times headline in February 1924. The accompanying article, which filled the majority of a page in the Sunday paper, offered an array of instructional pictures showcasing the latest fashions. 

 

Conformity, however, has never been the point. “The changes of style in gowns are important and permanent,” noted the article. “But the bonnet! That is so … individual a matter.”

 

Despite waves of alarm over the years that the Easter bonnet is a dying tradition (“Mothers…say that their little girls will never know what it is to wear an Easter bonnet,” lamented a museum curator in 1975), the commitment to over-the-top headwear remains.

 

Every year on Easter, parades and other hat-showcasing opportunities abound, from the New Orleans Gay Easter Parade to New York’s iconic Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival. Whether you opt for feathers, flowers, or sparkles this Easter, one thing’s for sure: As long as you love your hat, it will always count as Easter finery.

 

 

 

Source: What's the Deal With Easter Bonnets?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - IMMORTAL JELLYFISH

Did you know.... Immortality is the dream of ancient mystics and futuristic transhumanists alike, but for humans and most other animals on Earth, the promise of such longevity remains out of reach — that is, unless you’re a jellyfish known scientifically as Turritopsis dohrnii, nicknamed the “immortal jellyfish.” The life cycle of most jellyfish begins with a fertilized egg that grows to a larval stage called a planula. Eventually, the planula attaches itself to a surface, and forms into a tubelike structure known as a polyp. These polyps eventually bud and break away into an ephyra, aka a young jellyfish, and these floating youngsters then develop into adult medusae capable of sexual reproduction.

 

Most species of jellyfish call it quits at this point, and eventually die like every other species on Earth — but not Turritopsis dohrnii. Instead, when this creature becomes damaged for whatever reason, it can revert to a blob of living tissue that eventually turns back into a polyp, and once again its developmental process repeats. Of course, this jellyfish isn’t immune to the numerous dangers of the ocean — whether from predators or climate change — but if left to their own devices, these incredible creatures can just go on living forever. 

 

Although the immortal jellyfish is a longevity outlier in the animal kingdom, there are a few other organisms that can pull off similar feats. Planarian worms display a limitless ability for regeneration, and can become two worms when cut in half. Additionally, the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is resistant to basically everything, as it can reassemble its genome and effectively return to life even after intense heat or radiation — a feat that earns the hardy bacterium the fitting nickname “Lazarus microbe.” Maybe immortality isn’t so impossible after all.

 

Jellyfish do not have a brain (or a heart).
Most animals, whether a minuscule fruit fly or a complex human, have a central nerve center known as the brain. However, jellyfish don’t follow this seemingly basic biological blueprint. Instead, jellyfish rely on two separate nervous systems: The “large nerve net” controls swimming, while the “small nerve net” is essentially responsible for everything else. Even without a brain, jellyfish perform complex actions, especially when feeding and mating, suggesting that brains aren’t a requirement when it comes to defining life on Earth. In fact, jellyfish might be better at the whole “living” thing than many animals — biologists say that they’ve survived every single extinction event in Earth’s history.

 

 

Source: There’s a jellyfish that’s considered biologically immortal.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - KANGAROO RATS

Did you know....  In the scorching deserts of North America, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and rainfall is scarce, a small rodent the size of a hamster is thriving — and it’s possible that it’s never taken a sip of water in its life. The kangaroo rat, named for the powerful hind legs that allow it to bound across the arid desert landscape, has solved one of survival’s trickiest problems: how to live in an environment that provides almost no water at all.

 

This seemingly miraculous feat is achieved through various evolutional adaptations. One of the kangaroo rat’s key characteristics is its ability to get all the moisture it needs from its primarily seed-based diet. When it breaks down those seeds during digestion, one of the byproducts is a small amount of water — just enough to sustain the animal.  

 

But producing small amounts of metabolic water alone isn’t enough; kangaroo rats have also developed clever adaptations for conserving water. They don’t sweat or pant like other animals, preventing the loss of much-needed liquid from their bodies, and their kidneys concentrate their urine to an almost crystal-like consistency, with very little water lost through waste. Even their exhaled breath is partially recycled thanks to specialized nasal cavities, which condense moisture to be reabsorbed rather than escaping the body through breathing.

 

The small, mostly nocturnal rodents also escape much of the daytime heat by remaining in their underground burrows out of the scorching sun. The combination of all these evolutionary and behavioral adaptations allows kangaroo rats — which have a lifespan of between two and six years — to survive in some of Earth’s hottest and harshest environments without drinking a drop of water.

 

 

Source: Kangaroo rats can live their whole lives without drinking water.