Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ABOUT NAMES

Did you know.... What’s in a name? It depends a lot on who you are and where you come from. Maybe you’re named after a religious figure, or an ancestor or two. If you were born in the mid-’90s, you might be named Brooke, but that name is all but extinct for the babies of the 2020s. Maybe, like a certain famous surrealist painter, you were given more than a dozen names at birth. Some cultures keep it simple and have just one name per person. These eight facts about names across time and space show us how much our monikers can reveal about history and culture.

 

1. Modern Middle Names Started With 15th-Century Aristocrats

Having three or more names dates back to at least ancient Rome, but middle names as we know them today started in Italy just as it was entering the Renaissance. The earliest middle names were Catholic saint names given to children in elite families in the hopes that saints would protect them. The practice became common by the late 15th century, then spread to lower classes and nearby countries. In the early 1800s, 45% of French boys were given at least one middle name; by the end of that century, the number jumped to 69%. The practice gained traction in Great Britain and the United States during the 19th century too, although it was exceedingly rare to have middle names in those countries before 1800. By this point, middle names weren’t necessarily religious — they just gave families more room to honor a second relative or a matriarchal lineage when naming their children.

 

2. The First U.S. President With a Middle Name Was John Quincy Adams

Middle names weren’t common in Great Britain or the United States until the 19th century, so it’s unsurprising that the first five Presidents, born between 1732 and 1758, didn’t have them. It was still unusual when the first President with a middle name, John Quincy Adams, was born in 1767 — but it ended up being pretty convenient as a way to distinguish him from the other John Adams (the second U.S. President). The next President with a middle name was number nine, William Henry Harrison. At least three later Presidents went by their middle names: Ulysses S. Grant (first name Hiram; the S doesn’t stand for anything), Grover Cleveland (first name Stephen), and Woodrow Wilson (first name Thomas).

 

3. Pablo Picasso Had Around 15 Names

 

Most people know a certain influential surrealist/cubist painter as Pablo Picasso or even just Picasso. But the artist, who was born in Andalusia, actually had around 15 names, inspired by saints and members of his family. His full name, not necessarily in this order, was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María de los Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso. At first, he incorporated his second-to-last name, Ruiz, into his signature — his earliest paintings were signed P. Ruiz, then P. Ruiz Picasso, then P. R. Picasso. He signed just “Ruiz” for some cartoons. Eventually, he settled on plain old “Picasso.”

 

4. The Most Popular Dog Names Are Luna and Charlie

Some people get really creative in naming their dogs, but for every Mutt Damon or Babaganoush, there are plenty of old standards. According to the pet care company Rover, the two most popular names for dogs are Charlie (for male dogs) and Luna (for female dogs). That’s only among dogs that are registered with the service, but with more than a million clients, the sample size is decent. Other incredibly common dog names are Max, Bella, Cooper, and Daisy.

 

5. The Last Pope to Use His Birth Name Was in 1555

The pope rarely goes by the name he was born and baptized with. For example, Pope Francis, who ascended to the papacy in 2013, was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The tradition may have started because John II, who ascended in 533, was named Mercurius for the god Mercury, and pagan gods aren’t exactly popular with the Catholic Church. Now, Popes choose names that honor saints and previous popes. The last time someone bucked tradition was in 1555, when Marcellus II retained his baptismal name.

 

6. Iceland Has a Naming Committee That Approves or Denies New Names

Iceland takes its culture very seriously, and has a preapproved list of traditional names that citizens can use — which applies whether they’re newborn babies or older newcomers. If someone wants to use a name outside of that list, they need to apply to the Personal Names Committee for approval. New names need to fit the structure of the Icelandic linguistics and alphabet, be able to accommodate the language’s structure of word endings, and not “cause the bearer embarrassment.” The committee receives around 100 applications each year and rejects about half of them. (And they’re not the only country with a naming committee.) This, predictably, sometimes causes conflicts — as in the case of the British expat who couldn’t renew his children’s passports under Icelandic law because their names were Harriet and Duncan.

 

7. Single Names Are Common in Indonesia and Myanmar

Many countries don’t have the traditional surnames we’re used to in most of the Western world. Iceland, in addition to their strict first-naming conventions, doesn’t use family names — your last name just means “son of [father’s name]” or “daughter of [mother’s name].” But in some cultures, one single name (no last name) is normal. Myanmar, formerly Burma, has a naming structure of single names and honorifics. Former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant had a single name, “Thant”; “U” translates roughly to “Mr.” Single names are also common among Javanese people in Indonesia, sometimes because of tradition, other times because of forced assimilation policies that required them to drop their last name. Other places where single names are common include India, where last names only became common after British colonization, and Tibet.

 

8. Most Women in Heterosexual Marriages Still Take Their Husband’s Name

When a woman marries a man in the United States, it’s more common than it used to be for her to keep her own last name — but according to a Pew Research study, around 79% still adopt their husband’s last name. In the study, 14% kept their last name, and 5% hyphenated both names. More than 90% of men kept their last names, with 1% hyphenating and 1% taking their spouse’s last name. It’s more likely for younger women (ages 18 to 49) than older women (50 and over) to hang onto their name, although 73% of them still opt to change it. Women with advanced college degrees and with left-leaning political views are also less likely to change their names.

 

 

Source: Notable Facts About Names

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THE MUFFIN MAN

Did you know... “Do you know the muffin man?” Chances are you’re familiar with the nursery rhyme this line kicks off, but you might not be as clued up on its history. As with many sweet-sounding rhymes, there are rumors about it having dark origins, so let’s dig in to discover the truth.

 

Debunking the Urban Legend of a Serial Killer “Muffin Man”
You may have heard that the titular muffin man was actually a 16th-century serial killer named Frederic Thomas Lynwood, a.k.a. the Drury Lane Dicer. Lynwood supposedly lured his victims—amounting to 15 children and seven fellow bakers—with the temptation of muffins. The story goes that the rhyme was created to warn people of his M.O.

 

But things read on the internet should be taken with a grain—or, in this case, a handful—of salt. There’s no record of a baked-goods killer in the late 1500s and no proof that the rhyme was written in reference to a murderer. The original source of this half-baked tale is most likely the Wikipedia parody site Uncyclopedia, where it was first posted in 2007 before being stripped of its crass comedy and passed off as true by netizens.

 

The Actual Origins of “The Muffin Man”

So if the rhyme isn’t about a Renaissance serial killer, where did it come from? The verse first appeared in print in the 1819 book Life High and Low, with slightly different lyrics to the ones we know today:

 

“Don’t you the know the muffin-man,
Don’t you know his name?
Don’t you know the muffin-man,
As lives in Drury Lane?”

 

It’s noted to have been sung “in attic entertainments and at cellar-balls, at promiscuous clubs, and at gallows hops.” While the oral history of the song remains unknown, it likely originated in these less-than-reputable adult venues.

 

Within a few decades the rhyme had entered family-friendly circles. Artist Frank Bellew’s The Art of Amusing (1866), describes people sitting in a ring and singing the song, with the game being “to keep a gwave face all the time. If yaw laugh yaw pay a forfeit.” This version also substitutes “Cwumpet [i.e. Crumpet] lane” for “Drury Lane.” Folklorist Alice Gomme records another game linked to the rhyme in The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1894), this time in the form of a guessing game children played.

 

As for the meaning behind the ditty, it isn’t any deeper or darker than it sounds. At the time, muffin men walked the streets selling muffins, which were a bread-like product similar to English muffins, rather than sweet treats filled with blueberries or chocolate chips. In London Labour and the London Poor (1851), English journalist and playwright Henry Mayhew writes that muffin men were usually “the children of bakers, or worn-out bakers.” While the character from the rhyme is often depicted as a baker himself—as in the Shrek (2001) sequels—Mayhew reports that he “did not hear of any street-seller who made the muffins or crumpets he vended.” Now you definitely know the muffin man.

 

 

Source: The True Origins of “The Muffin Man” Nursery Rhyme

Edited February 16 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BAKING

Did you know... Who can resist the smell of freshly baked cookies or a basket of warmed bread brought out before your entrée? Not many, though it’s no surprise considering humans have made baked goods a dietary staple for thousands of years. The love doesn’t stop at just consumption, either — whether you enjoy mixing up a bowl of cake batter or watching a group of contestants sweat through the task, there’s something about baking that’s entirely alluring.

 

1. Baking Can Lift Your Mood

If life has you in a sour mood, baking a loaf of sourdough (or your favorite treat) may just be the answer. Some psychology research has shown that small-scale creative projects — such as baking — actually benefit human brains, and contribute to a sense of flourishing. Baking and cooking may help people feel more relaxed and satisfied with life, and focusing on kitchen tasks may have benefits similar to those offered by meditation.

 

2. The World’s Oldest Bread Is 14,000 Years Old

Tiny crumbs are the last remnants of the world’s oldest bread, which researchers believe is at least 14,000 years old. Discovered in an ancient fireplace in Jordan, the small bits of bread likely belonged to the Natufians, hunter-gatherers who lived during the Epipaleolithic era. The bread crumb discovery, made public in 2018, has shifted scientific understanding about how early humans ate — the archaic food scraps are 4,000 years older than when researchers believe the first bread was baked. They indicate that humans learned to bake even before the advent of agriculture.

 

3. Baker’s Yeast Was Domesticated by Humans

Yeast gives raised baked goods their lift by creating air bubbles — as the organisms feed off sugars, they produce carbon dioxide that inflates the dough. Humans have used some strains of yeast — like today’s popular Saccharomyces cerevisiae — for thousands of years, slowly domesticating it over time to create consistent results. In comparison, wild yeasts (like those that can be found on fruit skins or floating around in the air) behave unpredictably, which can change the scent and flavor of breads and fermented beverages.

 

4. The First Dough Mixer Was Donkey-Powered

Historians attribute the first mechanical dough mixer to Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, a formerly enslaved Greek man who became wealthy from baking bread in first-century Rome. Eurysaces’ mixer kneaded dough inside a stone basin outfitted with wooden paddles; the setup was attached to a horse or donkey that walked in circles to keep the paddles moving.

 

5. Early American Bakers Used “Beehive” Ovens

Heating an oven to bake a loaf of bread is much easier today than it was for 18th-century bakers. Cooks of the time relied on dome-shaped ovens, often called “beehive ovens,” to bake pies, breads, cakes, and other foods. The wood-fired ovens were made from brick and often covered with clay, and cooking in them took skill, especially because they took up to five hours to properly heat. That’s why many colonial cooks crafted breads and baked goods just once per week.

 

6. Most Ovens Are Preset to 350 Degrees for a Reason

The instructions for many baked goods often suggest you preheat the oven to 350 degrees — but why? The reason is simple: 350 degrees is a middle-of-the-road temperature that’s sufficient for cooking foods without causing them to burn. Also, 350 degrees is the temperature at which the Maillard reaction occurs; that’s the browning reaction that gives food its toasty color and complex flavor profile. However, including a temperature in cooking instructions is something of a modern notation; before 1940, most ovens didn’t have a temperature gauge and required cooks to measure temperature by setting pans of flour or paper inside, or testing heat with their hands.

 

7. There’s a Major Difference Between Baking Powder and Baking Soda

If you’ve ever run out of baking powder and reached for baking soda, chances are the results weren’t quite right. While these two pantry necessities look nearly identical and do the work of helping cookies and cakes become light and fluffy, they work somewhat differently. Baking soda, the stronger of the two ingredients, is made from 100% sodium bicarbonate, which creates carbon dioxide when mixed with an acid like vinegar or lemon juice. Baking powder is a less potent blend of sodium bicarbonate and acidic cream of tartar that activates with moisture and heat, and removes the step of adding another astringent ingredient.

 

8. Astronauts Have Baked Cookies in Space

Most of the cooking astronauts do in space is limited to boiling water, used to rehydrate freeze-dried, shelf-stable meals. However, in 2019, astronauts Christina Koch and Luca Parmitano became Earth’s first zero-gravity bakers. They used a special “space oven” sent to the International Space Station just for the experiment, which tested how well raw foods cook in space. The cookies apparently took far longer to bake in space — about 120 to 130 minutes. However, the ISS crew didn’t get to taste their culinary creation; the baked cookies were returned to Earth for examination by NASA researchers. (Fortunately, the astronauts were provided with prebaked cookies to eat after the experiment, so they got a treat anyway.)

 

 

Source: Delicious Facts About Baking

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BEETLEJUICE FAN THEORY

Did you know... ‘Beetlejuice’ is packed with dark humor, but one element of the movie may be even darker than it appears on the surface. According to some fans, Adam and Barbara’s deaths in the beginning of the film were no accident.

 

Few movies straddle the line between horror and comedy as well as Beetlejuice. The 1988 classic follows Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin)—a married couple who die in a car crash within the film’s opening minutes. They immediately return to their beloved home as ghosts, and are eventually forced to share the space with an eccentric family who buys their home. That’s a bit heavier than your typical comedy premise and, according to one fan theory, the set-up may be even darker than it appears on first watch. 

 

As Screen Rant explains, Beetlejuice leaves room to interpret Barbara and Adam’s deaths as a murder rather than an unfortunate accident. The theory, which originates with the Reddit user u/StrawberryUwUGirl, relies on information given to the viewer in the movie’s introduction. As Barbara and Adam prepare for their vacation, they receive a visit from Jane Butterfield (Annie McEnroe), Barbara’s cousin who also happens to be a real estate agent.

 

Jane forces her way inside the house to pitch Barbara on selling their home to a buyer in Manhattan who wants to move to the country with his wife and daughter, foreshadowing the arrival of the Deetzes later in the film. Jane promises them a big profit, but Barbara makes it clear they aren’t interested. Barbara’s reaction to Jane’s persistence makes it clear she won’t take the Maitlands’ no for an answer. Which has led some viewers to speculate that Jane had something to do with what happens next.

 

Adam and Barbara are driving over a bridge when an unleashed dog walks in front of their car. This causes them to crash into the water, ultimately killing them and dooming them to a monotonous afterlife. 

 

A surface-level read of the film paints the accident as totally random and even comedic. But according to the theory, Jane intentionally caused their deaths by leading the dog into their path. If she was determined to make money off the Maitlands' house and they were unwilling to move, she may have viewed killing them as her only option.

 

Beyond the greedy and aggressive behavior we see in her short screen time, there aren’t many clues to confirm this interpretation, but the script goes further to depict Jane as someone who could be capable of murder. The introduction of her character reads: “She's divorced three husbands and buried another for good measure. She's ruthless but is weirdly, seamlessly pleasant.” With the fan theory in mind, the phrase “buried another for good measure” has disturbing implications. 

 

 

Thirty-six years after the premiere of the original, Tim Burton is bringing Beetlejuice back to the big screen in 2024. The sequel, titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, will see the return of Michael Keaton in the title role as well as Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder. Jenna Ortega will also star in the new role of Lydia’s daughter. Few details about the plot have been revealed, so fans will have to wait for September to see if the fan theory surrounding the Maitlands’ deaths is refuted or confirmed.

 

 

Source: ‘Beetlejuice’ Fan Theory Gives the Movie a Dark Spin

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HAWKS VS FALCONS

Did you know.... 

No one can mistake the bold appearance of a bald eagle or the hunched figure of a vulture. They are two iconic types of raptor—or birds of prey—characterized by their sharp talons, hooked bills, and keen vision. Hawks and falcons are also raptors. Some of the most common species include red-tailed hawks, goshawks, and peregrine falcons. But unless you have an encyclopedic knowledge of birds, they can be a little hard to tell apart.

 

How to Spot the Difference Between Hawks and Falcons
The features of a bird are especially difficult to make out when squinting into the sun from a distance. But a raptor’s silhouette might give you some clues.

 

If the bird in flight appears to have finger-shaped feathers sticking out from the end of its wings, it is most likely a hawk. Hawks have wings that are rounded and broad, and the birds have a wide wingspan ending in those finger-like feathers. Falcon wings have a sleeker, more clean-cut shape that tapers to a point at the wingtip. In flight, hawks may use their broad wings to soar and fly smoothly with a minimum of flaps, while falcons can appear very fast and agile and display a tendency to hover in one spot.

 

 

If you’re lucky enough to spot a raptor close up, take a good look at its eye color. Falcons will always have dark-colored or brown eyes, while the eye color of a hawk can range from hazel to bright yellow to a rather menacing red.

 

Size is also an indicator of their difference: the size of a hawk ranges from medium to large, while falcons are generally on the smaller side. Curiously, for all raptor species, the female is larger than the male—a phenomenon known as sexual dimorphism.

 

There’s even a difference in how hawks and falcons kill their prey. Both use their talons to catch a meal, but studies find that falcons have a preference for killing with their beaks. Up close, you can see that falcons have an extra point in their beaks known as a tomial tooth, which help them sever the necks of prey.

 

 

Another behavioral difference is nesting. Hawks build their nests from scratch, collecting hard materials like sticks and tree bark before filling it with softer material to protect offspring.  Falcons, on the other hand, will simply arrange material that already exists at their chosen nest site, or will even take over an existing nest made by another bird.

 

Are Hawks and Falcons Endangered?

The World Conservation Union classifies some hawks as endangered or critically endangered. They include Ridgway’s hawk, one of the most endangered raptors in the world; Gundlach’s hawk; and the gray-backed hawk. No falcons are considered endangered, although some have a vulnerable status.

 

In the mid 20th century, the use of the pesticide DDT in farming and agriculture caused severe population declines in many bird species, including the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. DDT has been banned since the 70s, the affected species have made a remarkable bounce-back, and biologists learned a valuable lesson.

 

 

Today, raptors are still threatened by human actions, particularly those which result in a loss of their habitat. Hawks and falcons can be found on every continent except Antarctica and live in nearly every kind of terrain, making conservation a global project.

 

Even urban cities are home to raptors. Peregrine falcons—the fastest animal on Earth—are especially well adapted to city life. For years they have been making themselves at home on iconic buildings such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Palace of Westminster in London

 

Eagles, Ospreys, and Other Raptors
Raptors are a taxonomic group comprised of four main orders: Accipitriformes (hawks, eagles, vultures, kites, buzzards, and osprey), Falconiformes (falcons, kestrels, merlins, and hobbies), Cathartiformes (vultures), and Strigiformes (owls).

 

However, these classifications are always being updated along with which names are used for which birds. Hawk and falcon are often used as blanket terms for raptors within Accipitriformes and Falconiformes. For example, fish-hawk is another name for an osprey. Confusingly, duck-hawk is also a nickname for the peregrine falcon in North America. So even if you mix up your raptor names, you might still be correct.

 

 

Source: Hawks vs. Falcons: What’s The Difference?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DAWN SINGERS

Did you know.... Wake up early enough and, depending on where you live, you’ll likely hear a pleasant chorus of birds chirping their tiny hearts out. This a.m. avian arrangement is instinctual behavior for birds, but why?

 

According to the Woodland Trust, this early singing is known as the dawn chorus, and it can start as early as 4 a.m. and last for several hours. Birds do it to attract mates and warn other birds to avoid their turf. One theory as to why they opt for the wee hours to communicate these important messages is because the low visibility makes it hard to do other bird activities, like foraging. Keeping their activity level low, they opt to sing instead.

 

Another theory argues that birds use the morning vocals to project an image of strength. By singing with fervor, they’re letting other birds know they survived the night—no guarantee in nature—and would make for an excellent mate.

 

Like a good recording studio, the early morning hours also allow birds to transmit a clear tune thanks to the cooler, drier air. Because birds have distinctive chirps, that clarity helps them be more easily identified by birds within listening distance.

 

There used to be a prevailing theory that birds sang so much in the mornings because the sounds could travel greater distances due to less atmospheric turbulence, but it was disproven by researchers at the University of Western Ontario in 2003. They played recordings of sparrows at dawn and midday. The songs didn’t travel farther, but they were more consistent.

 

Because birds only have so much energy to belt one out, singing when they stand the best chance of being heard makes sense. For a bird, an early morning session is like having the perfect acoustic environment for their performance.

 

 

Source: Why Do Birds Sing at Dawn?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WOMEN

Did you know.... History is filled with the stories of amazing women, from female pirates to tireless civil rights advocates. And while many of these stories are important feminist firsts, some feature the quirkier side of women’s history — like the famed mystery writer who helped popularize surfing. From women who authored important legal arguments to those whose inventions made our lives easier, here are 25 facts that will help you celebrate Women’s History Month.

 

1. Women Were the First Beer Brewers

On the list of things women don’t get enough credit for, being the first to brew beer might not seem like the most important. But fermented beverages have played a vital role in human culture for almost as long as society has existed, providing nutrients, enjoyment, and often a safer alternative to drinking water before the advent of modern sanitation. Scholars disagree over exactly when beer was first introduced — the earliest hard evidence for barley beer comes from 5,400-year-old Sumerian vessels that were still sticky with beer when archaeologists found them — but one thing has never been in question: “Women absolutely have, in all societies, throughout world history, been primarily responsible for brewing beer,” says Theresa McCulla, who curates the Smithsonian’s American Brewing History Initiative.

 

2. Ada Lovelace Is Often Considered the World’s First Computer Programmer

Ada Lovelace followed a path many considered impossible for a woman in the early 19th century. Encouraged by her mother, Lady Byron, Lovelace developed a passion for mathematics at a young age. In 1833, a 17-year-old Lovelace met British mathematician Charles Babbage at a party, and he told her about a calculating machine he’d created called the Difference Engine. Fascinated, Lovelace eventually began a regular correspondence with Babbage.

 

About a decade later, while translating a French text regarding Babbage’s proposed Analytical Engine — often considered the first mechanical computer — Lovelace added a few notes of her own. “Note G” detailed a method through which Babbage’s creation could calculate complex numbers called Bernoulli numbers. This is often considered the world’s first computer program, making Lovelace the first computer programmer. And while Babbage was the brains behind the machine, Lovelace was the one who truly grasped its wider importance, foreseeing a future where engines could use the “abstract science of operations” to do things beyond mere computation.

 

In fact, many early computer programmers were women. In the 1940s and ’50s, engineering computers was perceived as a man’s profession, but programming them was considered secretarial. As a result, many women took jobs as programmers — helping Alan Turing crack the Enigma Machine during World War II, writing instructions for the world’s first general-purpose computer called ENIAC, and creating the world’s first compiler (a program that translates programming languages into machine languages). According to government data, around 27% of programmers in 1960 were women. In 2013, that number was 26% and falling. Today, many leading universities are working hard to reverse that trend.

 

3. Lucille Ball Helped Get “Star Trek” on TV

As the first female head of a major Hollywood studio — Desilu Productions, which Lucille Ball formed with then-husband Desi Arnaz but took over by herself after their divorce in 1960 — Ball helped produce some of the most influential television shows of all time. She was particularly instrumental in getting Star Trek on the air. There was apparently some trepidation by Desilu board members when it came to the budget of the ambitious series, leaving Ball to personally finance not one but two pilots of the science fiction mainstay. One studio accountant, Edwin “Ed” Holly, even claimed: “If it were not for Lucy, there would be no Star Trek today.”

 

4. Ching Shih Was a Legendary Female Pirate

Not all pirates were men: Ching Shih was a fearless female pirate from China. Following the 1807 death of her husband Cheng I, who was head of the powerful Red Flag Fleet, she unofficially commanded a fleet of 1,800 pirate ships and approximately 80,000 men. She also took control of the Guangdong Pirate Confederation and spent the following years waging battle — and winning — against the Portuguese Empire, the Chinese Navy, and Britain’s East India Company. She’s widely considered one of the most successful pirates of all time.

 

5. Before Rosa Park, Claudette Colvin Refused to Give Up Her Seat on the Bus

Nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, the same thing happened to 15-year-old Claudette Colvin. So why was the Parks incident the one that ignited the Montgomery bus boycott and transformed the issue into a national story? As Colvin herself later conceded, the then-42-year-old Parks, a secretary for the NAACP, was considered by some to be a more respectable symbol for the boycott, particularly after it was discovered that the unwed Colvin had become pregnant. Nevertheless, Colvin wound up playing a crucial role as events unfolded: She was named a plaintiff in the 1956 Browder v. Gayle case that challenged the constitutionality of Alabama's segregated buses and provided the legal backbone for the boycott's triumph. Colvin left Alabama soon after and spent most of the following decades living anonymously in New York City, though her contributions have finally earned some long-overdue recognition in recent years.

 

Click the link below  to read more about Amazing Women!

 

 

Source: Our Favorite Facts About Amazing Women

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - INVENTIONS

Did you know.... You’ve heard of the light bulb and the telephone, but what about Thomas Edison’s terrifying talking doll and Alexander Graham Bell’s metal detector? Below, in a list adapted from The List Show on YouTube, are just a few other lesser-known inventions of famous inventors.

 

 

 

1. Metal Detector // Alexander Graham Bell
In 1881, after President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, doctors struggled to locate the bullet—and spent a lot of time trying to find it by putting their dirty hands directly in Garfield’s body. So Bell made an electromagnetic device with a handle and a telephone receiver that was supposed to alarm when the field was interrupted by metal. He used the device on Garfield twice, but never found the bullet; the fact that Garfield’s mattress contained metal mesh probably didn’t help. (That, and the fact that Garfield’s doctor directed Bell to search in the wrong place, according to Candice Millard’s book Destiny of the Republic.) In the end, Garfield died not from the bullet wound, but because of an infection likely caused by being operated on by doctors who hadn’t washed their hands. So even if Bell had found the bullet with his metal detector, it might not have made any difference.

 

2. and 3. Train Bathroom and Air Conditioner // Lewis Latimer
Bell wasn’t the only person involved in the invention of the telephone. Lewis Latimer was a colleague of Bell’s; he drafted the patent that Bell filed for the device. Latimer was also an inventor in his own right: In 1874, he patented a bathroom for a train, and in 1886, he patented an early version of an air conditioner.

 

4. Hydrodrome Boat // Alexander Graham Bell and Casey Baldwin
Back to Bell: He broke a world record with a boat he’d created with fellow inventor Casey Baldwin. The “hydrodrome” was 60 feet long and traveled at 70 mph. Fins under the boat helped it move at that unprecedented pace. Bell hoped it would eventually lead to an aircraft that could lift off from the water.

 

5. and 6. A Remote-Controlled Boat and a Helicopter Plane // Nikola Tesla

Speaking of boats, in 1898, notable pigeon enthusiast and Tesla coil inventor Nikola Tesla wowed the crowd at an exhibition in Madison Square Garden with a 4-foot-long, battery-powered, remote-controlled boat. Tesla could control its propeller and rudder and even flash its lights using radio signals. At the time, not many people knew about radio waves, and the attendees were astounded. Tesla also had hopes of creating an aircraft. The last patent he ever received was for his “helicopter-plane.” It would become airborne the same way as a helicopter, with rotating blades. Once in the sky, the device would shift on its side and the blades would start acting like an airplane propeller. It also had wings like an airplane.

 

7., 8., and 9. Foot Warmers, a Bread Kneader, and a Device to Keep Trains on the Rails // Maria Beasley
Maria Beasley is best known for her inventions that improved barrel-making and patents for buoyant life rafts using metal floats. (Before her, life rafts were wooden and tended to sink.) But she had a few lesser known inventions: foot warmers, a bread kneader, and a device that prevented trains from derailing.

 

10. Custom Tools // Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an innovator from a young age. Starting at around 13 years old, he fixed watches for people in his community—and to do so, he invented his own tools. He used nails, knitting needles, and even parts of a corset to make instruments like screwdrivers and tweezers.

 

11. Soybean Car // Henry Ford and George Washington Carver
Later in life, Ford collaborated with George Washington Carver on the soybean car. It was made with 14 panels of plastic that had been created out of soybean and other crops. Ford presented the car in 1941, but World War II interrupted its momentum.

 

12. Cosmetic Cream // George Washington Carver

Carver also invented a cosmetic cream. He described it in the patent as a “vanishing cream of any desired or usual tint.” It was made of peanuts, contained salicylic acid and perfume, and had powder added for color. The patent for the cosmetic and the process used to create it was one of just three patents in his name, despite his many inventions and discoveries. The other two were related to producing paints and stains.

 

13. and 14. Performance Platforms and Huggable Hangers // Joy Mangano
If you’re a Home Shopping Network (or Jennifer Lawrence) fan, you probably know of Joy Mangano, most famous for the Miracle Mop. She also invented Performance Platforms, a type of sneaker with a platform heel that’s supposed to tone leg muscles, and Huggable Hangers, those thin, velvet hangers that fit very closely together.

 

15. Giving to Charity Over Text // Marian Croak
Marian Croak is currently best known for being a VP of engineering at Google. She has over 100 patents related to voice-over Internet protocol, which is what allows us to Skype. Beyond that, she has 100 other patents, one of which is the process that gets used when someone donates to charity over text message.

 

 

Click the link below  to learn about inventors and their lesser-known inventions.

 

Source: Lesser-Known Inventions of Famous Inventors

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BIRD EMBRYOS

Did you know.... You might not realize it while you’re frying them sunny side up on a Sunday morning, but chicken eggs (and those of other birds and reptiles) offer up some pretty sophisticated pieces of packaging.

 

Hard-shelled bird eggs contain albumen, or “egg white,” and a yolk. The fertilized egg cell, or embryo, develops within the yolk and feeds off it, as well as the albumen. The baby bird has shelter, food, almost everything it needs inside the egg; except, it seems, a little fresh air.

 

Animals that develop inside their mothers, like mammals, get their oxygen from mom through the umbilical cord. A bird egg doesn’t have as obvious a way to take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide, but the egg, again, takes care of things.

 

Directly under the egg’s shell are two membranes. When the eggs are laid by the mother, they’re very warm, and as they cool, the material inside the egg shrinks a little bit. The two membranes pull apart a little and create a small pocket or sack of air. As the baby bird grows, it develops an allantois, which is a hollow pouch that grows out of the bottom part of the chick’s gut. From there, the pouch fuses to the second membrane (the chorion) that’s around the yolk, forming a chorioallantoic membrane. Working similarly to lung tissue, it connects the baby bird’s circulatory system to the air outside the egg.

 

As the embryo develops, it breathes in oxygen via that membrane and exhales carbon dioxide (CO2). The hollow part of the allantois can also be used to store waste containing nitrogen.

 

Several thousand microscopic pores all over the surface of the bird egg allow the CO2 to escape and fresh air to get in. These pores also allow moisture to get into the egg to keep developing bird and the egg parts from drying out, which is why hard-boiled eggs always feel a little heavier than raw ones.

 

What becomes of that chorioallantoic membrane after the baby bird hatches? It stays attached to the eggshell. Your chances of seeing it in an unfertilized egg—like the one you’re scrambling for breakfast—are pretty low, since it exists only when a fertilized embryo begins developing. If there’s no baby bird inside the egg, you won’t be getting it as a morning side dish.

 

Source: How Do Baby Birds Breathe Inside Their Eggs?

[DarkRavie]

SATURDAY'S FACT

Fact of the Day - ODD VISUAL CLICHÉS

Did you know... Have you ever seen someone throw an old shoe at a stray cat that’s yowling on a backyard fence? Or witnessed a circus elephant rear away in fear when a mouse crosses its path? A whole host of images has become iconic over the decades—thanks to movies, cartoons, and comic strips—despite the fact they’ve never actually been seen in real life (at least by anyone alive and reading this article). Let’s examine a few.

 

1. Bankrupt Person Wearing a Barrel

The image of a person so destitute that they are reduced to wearing a barrel held up by a pair of suspenders was first popularized by political cartoonist Will Johnstone. His portrayal of “The Taxpayer,” a person from whom the IRS has literally taken the shirt off their back, was published in the New York World Telegram in 1933, and would reappear frequently as the Great Depression continued to wear down America’s morale. In reality, though, barrels aren’t cheap, and the logistics of actually outfitting one for daily wear (not to mention the risk of splinters) make this an unlikely alternative to public nudity.

 

2. Drinking Champagne Out of a Lady’s Shoe
A sophisticated swain sipping fine champagne from a seductive sylph’s stiletto is the very picture of elegant decadence. Legend has it that this tableau originated at a party held in 1902 at Chicago’s Everleigh Club, one of the nation’s most exclusive brothels at the time. The guest of honor was Prince Henry of Prussia, and during the festivities one of the house “butterflies” (as the working girls employed by the club were called) was dancing on a tabletop to “The Blue Danube” when her slipper flew off her foot and knocked over a bottle of champagne. A member of the prince’s entourage supposedly picked up the slipper and placed it to his lips, sipping the bit of bubbly that had dripped into it. “The darling shouldn’t get her feet wet,” he explained to onlookers. (However, there are also those who say the original champagne-from-a-shoe drinkers were Russian ballerinas of the late 19th century, or members of Toulouse-Lautrec’s set from around the same time.)

 

3. The Life of the Party Wearing a Lampshade on Their Head

 

Several years ago, President Barack Obama warned some St. Patrick’s Day partiers at the White House not to get too rambunctious—specifically, to refrain from putting lampshades on their heads—since there were plenty of photographers lurking nearby, and the pictures may well come back to haunt some members of Congress in attendance. It’s impossible to pinpoint when someone donning a lampshade as a hat signaled that the party had officially kicked into high gear, but a 1928 Baltimore Evening Sun piece titled “Life of the Party” seems to indicate that the practice was common enough at the time to warrant a “been there, done that, caught heck from my wife the next day” reaction from readers. Before that, the image likely arose out of vaudeville, and was then popularized by early silent films.

 

4. A Chef Kissing Their Fingertips
We usually see a chef expressing the perfection of the meal they’ve prepared depicted on restaurant signs or menus—and more often than not, the pictured chef is Italian. The meaning is immediately understood: the food served in this establishment is done to perfection. But outside of any TV/movie restaurant scene featuring Vito Scotti as a gourmand, has anyone ever really witnessed a chef recommending a dish with such a gesture? The cliché itself, however, may have some basis in an actual Italian hand gesture of kissing the fingertips before tossing them away—a move meaning something like “beautiful,” “delicious,” or “as good as a kiss.”

 

5. Bank Robber with Dollar Sign Sacks

It’s doubtful that any financial institution ever actually transported cash in containers emblazoned with giant dollar signs—in the grand scheme of things, such markings would seem counter to standard security precautions, no? However, in April 2015 a gentleman robbed an Olympia, Washington, Subway restaurant and provided a homemade dollar sign bag to the startled sandwich artist (whom he warned “not to do anything funny,” in film noir fashion). True, he didn’t wear a Lone Ranger mask and horizontally striped shirt while committing his heist, but the local flatfoots nabbed him nevertheless.

 

6. Kid Running Away from Home with His Belongings on a Stick
The bindle (or “hobo stick”) originated with the vagabonds and migratory workers of the Depression. Hobos were frequently penniless, so they hopped on freight trains and traveled from city to city looking for work. Plastic shopping bags hadn’t yet been invented, so hobos tied their meager belongings into a large kerchief and hung the bundle from a stave or stick for ease of carrying. Somewhere along the way, the hobo stick became a symbol cartoonists used to instantly identify a child as a runaway, as in Norman Rockwell’s famous 1958 Saturday Evening Post cover titled “The Runaway.”

 

7. A Bomb that Looks Like a Cannonball

 

Thanks to pop culture staples such as the board game Stratego and MAD Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” comic strip, Baby Boomers grew up thinking that all bombs looked like a bowling ball with a fuse sticking out of the top. The cannonball-style bomb does, in fact, have some basis in history; after gunpowder reached Europe in the 1300s, militaries did use dark metal spheres filled with explosives, sometimes designed to be shot out of a cannon. The addition of a loose string wick, however, seems to be a cartoonist’s fantasy.

 

Source: The Possible Origins of 7 Odd Visual Clichés
 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EARLY MORNING FLIGHTS

Did you know.... Flying is stressful, no matter when you decide to do it. While you probably already know that it’s a good idea to give yourself plenty of time to make it to your gate, what time of day you book your flight for can have a major impact on your travel experience, too. 

 

Expedia’s 2023 Air Travel Hacks report reveals why boarding a plane that’s taking off on the earlier side can really pay off, as flights after 3:00 p.m. have a whopping 50 percent higher chance of being canceled compared to morning trips. And travel experts tend to agree. “Early morning flights are the best time to fly as they are the least likely to get delayed,” Harrison Woods, CEO of YourParkingSpace, told HuffPost. “The weather is usually calmer and the rest of the air traffic is quiet.”

 

There are a number of things that contribute to their high completion factor, which is a flight’s on-time arrival rate over a set period of time. Airplanes being used for the first trips of the day have typically been sitting in an airport overnight, so they’re all cleaned, sanitized, and ready to go. Another upside? It’s usually a flight attendant’s first trip of the day, so they might be more energized and refreshed.

 

As Woods mentioned, air traffic is another tipping point, because as the day goes on, it can take a longer time for air traffic controllers to clear arriving flights for landing, which builds up the number of planes lining up to take off. By flying in the late afternoon or evening, not only are you more likely to face delays and/or cancellations, but your chances of catching a new flight on that same day if one of those scenarios happens are slim.

 

But those aren’t the only reasons why it makes sense to get up early on flight days. Demand can have a major impact on prices, and most folks tend to avoid plane rides at the crack of dawn. According to travel experts, being willing to rise with the sun puts you at a distinct cost advantage. If planes depart before 9 a.m., travelers can save even more when it comes to pricey, long-haul international flights, which are, on average, significantly cheaper than those happening in the early afternoon. 

 

If you’re prepping for an early morning trip, there are a few simple ways you can make your experience more enjoyable. Dehydration can be a risk factor when you’re up in the air, so be sure to drink plenty of water (whatever you do, just don’t refill your cup with water from the airplane’s bathroom). Traveling with a tennis ball is another good travel hack, especially if your muscles get stiff at high altitudes. Combined with a little extra space to stretch out—which you can get by booking on an airline that gives you plenty of legroom—you’ll likely have a great flight from gate to gate, no matter what time you take off. 

 

 

Source: The Real Reasons You Should Always Book an Early Morning Flight

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PREICKLY PORCUPINES

Did you know.... Porcupines are largely known for one defining characteristic that tends to keep humans and predators at a safe distance. But while their famous quills are something to be feared, these animals as a whole are not. Indeed, like the neighbor or co-worker whose intimidating tattoos belie a sweet disposition, porcupines have proved to be compelling animals to watch and study for those who dare to get a closer look. Here are nine facts to further prick your interest in these delightfully bizarre rodents.

 

1. The Two Porcupine Families Are Not Closely Related

Porcupines are classified into one of two families. New World porcupines, which live in North, Central, and South America, are primarily arboreal herbivores. Old World porcupines, native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, are largely terrestrial and sometimes also consume meat. The two families have additional differences when it comes to physiological features such as quill density; Old World species showcase clusters of these stiff hairs, while their New World counterparts sport single quills interspersed with fur. Although the two families share a name and common characteristics, they are not considered to be closely related.

 

2. Only One New World Porcupine Species Lacks a Prehensile Tail

Most New World porcupines enjoy the benefits of a prehensile tail, which helps these tree-climbing mammals grip branches as they scamper above forest floors. The lone New World species forced to survive without such assistance is the common North American porcupine, which, as the largest and heaviest member of the family, probably could use the extra help for balance. The lack of a prehensile tail doesn't dissuade them from climbing trees, although it does occasionally result in an unlucky creature taking a tumble. Fortunately, this species sports something of a natural antibiotic on its quills, which keeps infections at bay should the animal impale itself after a long fall.

 

3. Porcupines Cannot "Shoot" Their Quills

Some porcupine species boast up to 30,000 quills, which typically lie flat across most of the body but spring to attention when their owner feels threatened. Contrary to popular belief, porcupines cannot "shoot" their quills; they simply shed old ones, with new ones constantly growing at a rate of 1 millimeter every two days until fully developed. Although they’re not poisonous, the quills of New World porcupines are especially dangerous because of barbed tips that flare open amid the warmth and moisture of a wound.

 

4. Porcupines Face Their Greatest Predatory Threat From a Member of the Weasel Family

Although the porcupine boasts an intense defense against predators such as bears, wolves, lynx, and eagles, it tends to have its paws full when confronted by a fisher. A forest-dwelling member of the weasel family, the fisher is far more agile than the lumbering porcupine but about the same height; capable of dodging the swipe of a thorny tail, it moves fast enough to attack a porcupine's face, and can upend its opponent to go after an unprotected belly. The fisher is also a skilled tree climber, and as such can either launch an airborne attack from a branch, or force its slow-footed prey to the disadvantageous terrain of the ground.

 

5. Porcupines Crave Salt

Visitors to porcupine-populated areas may be surprised to find the sides of a house or car damaged by bite marks. This is partly due to ever-growing porcupine incisors, which — like those belonging to all rodents — require constant nibbling for maintenance. However, porcupines in particular possess a dire need for salt following a winter of subsisting on low-nutrient bark and a spring spent chowing down on high-potassium leaves, grass, and flowers. That means they'll gnaw not only on human sweat-stained tools like canoe handles, but also on house paneling treated with salt-infused paints and stains, as well as tires that bear traces of contact with winter road salt.

 

6. They Make Sounds Ranging From Shrieking to Mumbling

Visitors to porcupine-populated areas may be startled by the range of sounds emitted by these nocturnal animals, starting with the unsettling nighttime whining of an individual calling out to a mate. Porcupines also shriek when in distress, and will hiss or chatter their teeth when confronting danger. During calmer times, a mother may communicate with her baby by way of wailing and grunting, while companions exchange friendly clicking noises. Meanwhile, a solitary porcupine may simply mumble to itself as it ambles along.

 

7. Females Are Fertile for a Short Period of Time

Porcupine mating is a delicate process, and it's not just because of the sharp quills in close proximity to nether regions. Fertile for only an eight-to-12-hour window, a female North American porcupine will mark her territory with urine and other secretions to arouse the interest of suitors, who then engage in often brutal battles for mating rights. After an alpha male has vanquished his rivals, he may still have to wait a few days for the opportunity to consummate their relationship. When the female finally signals her readiness, the male showers her with more urine before moving in for his long-awaited reward.

 

8. New World Species Usually Produce Just One Baby at a Time

Following a drawn-out courtship period and seven months of gestation, New World porcupines typically give birth to just one baby per year (Old Worlders may produce two to four per litter). Although prehensile species reveal no sexual dimorphism at a young age, prompting handlers to seek gender clarification from DNA testing, these porcupettes are otherwise built to quickly get up to speed. Born with their eyes open, babies experience the hardening of their soft quills within an hour, and are capable of supplementing mama's milk with vegetation after two weeks. Fully weaned after three to four months, porcupines are ready to head into the wilderness on their own some six months after arriving in the world.

 

9. Porcupines Can Be Kept as Pets

In a world home to people who attempt to domesticate wildcats and giant snakes, it shouldn't come as a surprise that some adventurous owners also keep porcupines as pets. On the plus side, these animals are largely docile and subsist on easily acquired food. On the other hand, they can be expensive — one dealer sells individuals for as much as $3,000 — and they require at least 15 to 20 square feet of space in which to roam. But even people with the money and means to support these animals can be impeded by the long arm of the law, as several states have made porcupines illegal to own.

 

 

Source: Prickly Facts About Porcupines

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ATM FEES? Why?

Did you know... There can be a particular kind of thrill associated with using an automatic teller machine, or ATM. A series of analog clunks counts and spits out cash into your hand. It’s like getting a casino payout at the slot machine, except you’re winning your own money.

 

The disappointment comes when you realize you’ve had to pay a surcharge to access that money. Sometimes those charges multiply. In 2023, the average ATM fee amount was $4.73. So why are we paying for the privilege of taking out money that already belongs to us?

 

The answer is twofold. If you’re going to an ATM that your bank considers out-of-network—meaning the machine is unaffiliated with the institution—then the private owner of that machine is looking to monetize it by collecting what’s known as an operator fee. That operator might also be the owner of the property where it’s located (maybe a gas station, bar, or other small business) or it might be an ATM operator who leases space. Either way, there’s no incentive for them to offer a fee-free transaction, especially when it costs them money to rent and maintain their ATM footprint.

 

Sometimes this can be a little manipulative. A bar, for example, might insist on cash-only transactions. On the one hand, the owner might want to avoid credit card transaction fees. On the other hand, they might conveniently have an ATM on the premises. Customers take out cash, pay a fee, and the owner collects it all.

 

But it’s not just the independent ATM operator: Your bank may also charge you their own fee for using a machine outside of their purview. One reason banks do this is to incite loyalty. They’d prefer you seek out their own locations for any and all transactions.

 

The second source of fees is when banks charge a premium to use their own in-network ATMs. Sometimes this happens when you exceed a certain number of free transactions in a given month; other times, it’s simply because the bank is in a fee frenzy, tacking on charges for everything from cash withdrawals to overdraft penalties.

 

There’s no mystery why banks do this: They’re out to make money, and transaction fees help their bottom line. In the specific case of ATM surcharges, they might charge just enough to cover the cost of maintaining the machines.

 

Avoiding ATM Fees
If you’re bothered by ATM convenience fees, the easiest thing to do is establish a relationship with a bank that keeps transactions free. You also want to make sure they have ATM locations that are conveniently located. Sometimes this might mean switching banks, but if you find yourself in front of an ATM often, it would be worth the hassle.

 

Other times, banks will offer ATM fee reimbursement for out-of-network fees. These typically appear as credits on your monthly statement, though they might be capped. The bank might, for example, cover $20 of fees. If you incurred $30, you’re out $10.

 

Another strategy is to use the cash-back option at businesses like grocery stores. At checkout, you often have the choice of receiving cash without a fee when using your debit card.

If you have no choice but to use an ATM, you can try taking out more money at one time. Fees are typically per transaction and not based on any dollar amount, so taking out $20 or $200 incurs the same toll.

 

What Does ATM Stand For?
ATM stands for automatic teller machine. An early incarnation was dubbed the Bankograph in the 1960s, though obviously that failed to catch on. (The Bankograph only accepted deposits: dispensing cash came later.) Because machine is already in ATM, it doesn’t make much sense to call it an “ATM machine.”

 

The World’s Loneliest Wells Fargo ATM
It’s probably hard to feel sympathy for a machine, but there is something noble about the Wells Fargo ATMs in Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. The units service the small population of the research station in one of the most remote places on the globe. Fortunately, Wells Fargo considers it in-network. (We think.)

 

 

Source: Why Do I Have to Pay ATM Fees?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM?

Did you know... The difference between these small winged insects is subtle, but bees, wasps, and hornets all play important roles in the environment. As winged insects go about the important business of pollinating plants, you may wonder whether the little guy that just landed on your arm is a bee, a wasp, a hornet, or even a yellow jacket—and whether it’s about to sting you. One quick way to identify bees vs. wasps vs. hornets: A bee can generally only sting you once, while hornets and wasps can sting multiple times.

 

Bees - Clade Anthophila - Pollen, nectar

Wasps - Suborder Apocrita - Spiders, flies, caterpillars, nectar

Hornets - Genus Vespa - Fruit, flies, sap, spilled soda

 

Here are some less-painful methods for telling the difference between bees, wasps, and hornets.

 

What Do Bees Look Like?
Like all insects, including wasps and hornets, bees’ bodies have a head, thorax with six legs, and abdomen. Bees in particular have antennae, compound eyes, and mouth parts that allow them to bite and chew, and many species sport stiff hairs that pick up and transport pollen. Only female bees have stingers, which are actually modified egg-laying structures called ovipositors [PDF].

 

Bees are classified into seven taxonomic families in the clade Anthophila, numbering roughly 20,000 wild bee species across the globe. They evolved from wasps about 125 million years ago at the same time as flowering plants. Bees are vegetarian and eat flower nectar and pollen.

 

What Do Wasps Eat?
All wasps belong to the suborder Apocrita, and the most familiar wasps like hornets and yellow jackets are classified in the family Vespidae. They are carnivorous; wasp parents spend a lot of their energy collecting protein-rich spiders and insects to feed their young. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the body of another animal, which provides a ready source of protein for the larvae after they hatch. Adult wasps may also eat nectar.

 

Wasps generally have two pairs of wings and a narrow “waist” between their thorax and abdomen. Only the females have stingers, but they can sting people repeatedly.

 

Are Hornets Dangerous?
Hornets, a subset of wasps belonging to the genus Vespa, are social insects that nest in colonies. North America has no native hornet species. (Yellowjackets, which are native to North America, belong to the genus Vespula and are not true hornets‚ even though they look and act like them.) Many hornets have been introduced to the continent, such as the European hornet, brought to the East Coast in 1840. The Asian giant hornet was recently discovered nesting in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Hornets are generally bigger and chunkier than other wasps, and, like their relatives in the suborder Aprocrita, can be aggressive and sting a target multiple times.

 

 

Source: Bee vs. Wasp vs. Hornet: What’s the Difference?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WISE OWLS?

Did you know.... Often depicted wearing glasses and graduation caps, owls are regarded as the brainiacs of the animal kingdom. While they’re not exactly dumb, they fall behind several bird species when it comes to intelligence.

 

For thousands of years, from Ancient Greek legend to modern literature and TV, humans have portrayed owls as sage and wise. The intelligent owl appears in everything from The Iliad to Winnie the Pooh. But, it turns out, though they’re excellent hunters, owls probably aren’t any smarter than a lot of other birds.

 

In fact, they may be significantly worse at problem solving than other big-brained birds like crows and parrots. One study from 2013 found that great gray owls repeatedly failed a simple cognitive test—pulling a string to get a treat—that had been successfully solved by several other bird species. It doesn’t help that owls face some steep competition in the avian class. Ravens are often ranked as one of the most intelligent non-human species along with dolphins and chimpanzees.

 

Owls may not be as smart as their corvid cousins, but that doesn’t make them dumb. Studies have found that some owls actually practice a primitive form of tool use. According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature, burrowing owls have been observed using animal dung to lure dung beetles to their burrows, where they subsequently feast on the insects.

 

However, while animal tool use is always impressive, it doesn’t really mean that owls are “wise” by any human standards. Owls are extraordinary animals in their own right. They’re incredible hunters who have evolved specialized hearing, camouflaging plumage, and unique tubular eyes that help them catch their prey.

 

Why Are Owls Considered Wise?

But, if owls aren’t mysterious guardians of life’s secrets, hiding deep reservoirs of wisdom behind their giant yellow eyes, then why do we so frequently represent them that way? Where does that idea come from?

 

While many cultures feature owls in their mythology, not all societies see owls as wise. In India, for instance, owls are associated with ill-gained wealth and foolishness rather than wisdom. The pervasive myth of the wise owl, meanwhile, likely originated with legends of the Ancient Greek goddess Athena. The goddess of wisdom, Athena was often portrayed in art holding an owl, or described in literary works as “owl-eyed” or even “owl-faced.” 

 

Owls’ large eyes may have led to them being typecast as wise sages in literature. The bird’s striking peepers may not hold the answers to the mysteries of the universe, but they do serve a special purpose. The size enables a sort of night vision, allowing them to spot faraway prey in the dark. But the saucer-like eyes are not without their flaws. Up close, the world becomes blurry, so owls use the small, bristly feathers on their beaks and talons to feel their immediate surroundings.

 

Because their eyes are tubular instead of spherical—meaning they extend far back into their heads—owls can’t roll them around their sockets. Instead they have to move their entire heads to look around—which they can do 135 degrees in either direction. If you ever wondered how owls are able to pull an Exorcist without dying, you can read more about the impressive adaptation here.

 

 

Source: Are Owls Actually All That Wise?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - FOXES AND MAGNETIC FIELDS

Did you know... Even a blanket of snow can't keep a small rodent safe from a hungry fox. When red foxes are hunting small prey, they use a tactic that biologists call “mousing”: A fox will stalk its quarry until it’s at a certain distance, leap high into the air, and come down on the animal from above.

 

A land animal using an aerial attack is pretty cool, but what’s really impressive is that it works even in winter, when there’s snow on the ground and prey is hiding underneath it. A fox will stalk, jump, dive headfirst into a foot or two of snow, and still nab a meal that was invisible to it.

 

How do foxes hunt?

 

According to zoologist Jaroslav Červený, when they’re hunting like this, foxes seem to rely heavily on auditory cues. They move slowly and deliberately with their ears erect, cocking their heads from side to side and paying close attention to the slightest sounds of their invisible prey. After more than two years in the field watching foxes hunt, though, Červený has suggested there’s more to mousing in the snow than a discerning ear, and that foxes may have a secret sense that helps them target what they cannot see. 

 

Červený and his team enlisted 23 wildlife biologists and hunters to help them document fox hunting behavior. Between them, they recorded 84 foxes performing almost 600 mousing jumps in various parts of the Czech Republic over two years. When the researchers compared everyone’s notes, they found a pattern. When prey was out in the open or in low cover and easily seen, the foxes approached and leapt at it from all different directions. When prey was deep in some vegetation or hiding underneath snow, though, the foxes tended to jump toward the northeast to pounce on it. The majority of the successful attacks on hidden prey that were recorded were “confined to a cluster centered about 20 degrees clockwise of magnetic north,” the researchers reported in a 2011 paper. When the foxes made those northeast-pointing attacks, they had a 75 percent success rate; attempts in almost any other direction, though, ended in a kill less than 20 percent of the time.

 

The foxes’ preference for northeast leaps, and the advantage they brought, held up across different locations, seasons, times of day and weather conditions, and the researchers couldn’t find any environmental cues that might have influenced it. The only explanation left, they thought, was that the foxes could sense the Earth’s magnetic field and were lining their attacks up with it. 

 

Can animals sense Earth’s magnetic field?
It’s not unheard-of for animals to have a magnetic sense. Birds, sharks, lobsters and a handful of other species have all been shown to perceive the planet’s magnetic field. Červený and some of the other scientists working on the fox study, in fact, had previously demonstrated that cows and deer tend to align themselves with magnetic north while grazing, suggesting that they also have some sense of “magnetoreception.” In most of these cases, though, animals use the magnetic field to aid navigation. Foxes, if they can detect it, would be the first animal scientists know of that use it to hunt. 

 

So how does the magnetic field help a fox find a mouse? The researchers think that field acts like a rangefinder for the foxes, telling them how far away prey is when they can’t see it and making their blind jumps more accurate. At a certain point during the hunt, noise coming from the prey overlaps with the slope of magnetic field, as the fox senses it. When this happens, the fox is a fixed distance away from the prey and as it keeps hunting and pouncing, it’ll eventually learn to perfect its jump to cover that distance so it lands right on the prey. 

 

The fox’s sense of the magnetic field, the researchers speculate, could be as obvious as a sort of “heads-up display” in which they literally see the field as a pattern of light or color superimposed on their surroundings. All the fox would need to do to find the sweet spot and fix the distance of its prey is creep up until the location of the prey’s sounds lines up with part of the pattern (given the fox's strong preference for north-east jumps, the part of the pattern/field it uses to target is probably in that direction and the most visually obvious).

 

What do foxes eat?

 

Foxes are omnivores, meaning they’ll feast on a whole variety of food. Red foxes hunt rodents like mice and squirrels, and will also eat rabbits, birds, insects, and reptiles. They’ll help themselves to fruits, veggies, and nuts too. Red foxes, particularly those who live in urban areas, have also been known to dig through people’s trash in search of their next meal. And despite the common misconception, they won’t usually go after someone’s pet cat.

 

Gray foxes, like red foxes, also eat a mix of meat and plant-based items. They’ll hunt smaller animals like mice and rabbits, and will also scavenge for fruit, nuts, and vegetables. According to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission [PDF], they’ll eat “a significant amount of wild fruit and agricultural crops such as corn and peanuts.”

 

Arctic foxes, which, as their name suggests, inhabit arctic areas, eat nesting seabirds and their eggs, rodents, berries, and other small mammals. They rely heavily on lemmings and voles in the summer. Years with plentiful lemmings and voles often boost arctic fox numbers, while a year of scarcity will cause a population decline. Given the harsh climates they live in, these foxes sometimes have to go to great lengths to find their next meal. They’ve even been known to travel over sea ice to scavenge the remains of seals polar bears have killed.

 

 

Source: How Foxes Might Use Earth's Magnetic Field to Hunt Prey

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DANCING

Did you know... Dancing takes many forms, from formal, highly skilled ballet solos to the electric slide. Just like music exists in every culture, so does dancing — although the form and function may vary. Just how long have humans been dancing? Why have so many cities banned dance marathons? How long was the longest conga line? These eight facts about dancing might just inspire you to get your boogie on.

 

1. Humans Have Danced for Tens of Thousands of Years

The earliest book about dance is around 1,500 years old, and the first written records of dancing date back about 4,000 years, to ancient Egypt — but cave paintings and rock art more than 20,000 years old show that dance far predates written communication. It’s possible that we’ve been dancing since before we were human, since chimpanzees can keep a beat, too.

 

2. The Foxtrot Was One of Several Animal Dances

The ragtime era (circa 1899 to 1917) brought with it many then-scandalous dances that are pretty standard ballroom fare today, such as the foxtrot. But in its heyday, the foxtrot was just one of a number of animal-themed dances that had people clutching their pearls. The turkey trot came before the foxtrot, and was so feared by the morality police of the day that the New York Times reported that Woodrow Wilson canceled his inaugural ball over it and other animal dances. (Wilson denied the claim.) The grizzly bear, featuring two dancers that come together in a kind of frozen bear hug, also raised hackles. Other examples include the bunny hug, the kangaroo dip, and the sloth squeeze.

 

3. Break Dancing Is an Olympic Sport

Breaking, or break dancing, emerged from New York’s hip-hop culture in the 1970s, named for the break, a musical technique used by DJs. By the 1980s, it had hit the mainstream. The form is improvisational and acrobatic, requiring both a sense of rhythm and a high level of athleticism. The first Olympic event to feature breaking was the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018, and it’s set to debut as part of the main event during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

 

4. Dancing Could Help Treat Parkinson’s

Dancing is great for your brain, and it could even be therapeutic for those with degenerative neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s comes with a lot of dysfunction in the motor system, like slowed movement, stiffness, tremors, and loss of balance. Rhythmic auditory stimulation, a therapy that has patients move to a rhythm — like dance — appears to help significantly with gait and motor function. This helps decrease fall risk and improve quality of life. Similar treatments have also been studied for Huntington’s disease, although their efficacy is still up in the air.

 

5. Early Ballet Dancers Were Mostly Male

Ballet has a reputation as a feminine art, and modern choreography often showcases ballerinas at the expense of ballerinos. But for the first century-plus of the art, which developed in Europe (particularly France) in the 15th and 16th centuries, men were considered the primary performers. The first professional ballerina didn’t even come along until the 17th century, and women didn’t become stars until after the French Revolution in the late 18th century. Male dancers took the brunt of the hatred that had been directed at the aristocracy, while female dancers were able to carry the traditionally aristocratic art form into a more populist era.

 

6. The Longest Conga Line Was 119,986 People Long

Conga is a spontaneous Cuban dance in which a solo dancer or a group casually meanders around a street or a dance floor. You may have ended up in a conga line at a wedding or similar large gathering — one person puts their hands on another person’s shoulders, and the next thing you know you have a whole connected parade of dancers. The longest conga line ever recorded was formed in Miami during the Cuban street festival Calle Ocho on March 13, 1988. A whopping 119,986 people lined up to set the record. The festival followed up that record with another one in 2012, this time featuring the world’s largest flag. (The festival has also set records for largest piñata, largest cigar, and most domino players.)

 

7. Dance Marathons Could Get Dangerous

Multiple jurisdictions in the United States, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, have had rules on the books banning dance marathons, an old-timey fundraising competition that rose to prominence in the 1920s and during the Great Depression. No, it’s not because of the turkey trot — it’s because of far more legitimate dangers like dehydration,  overexertion, and worse. Not all the laws are on the books anymore — Seattle, for example, axed theirs along with a bunch of other antiquated laws in the 1970s — but dance marathons are far less prevalent and, when they do take place, more precautions tend to be put in place. The Guinness Book of World Records, for example, only supervises dance marathons that offer at least five minutes of rest for every hour of continuous dancing, which can accumulate if not taken, and records can only be set by people ages 16 and over. The current solo record-holder is Indian 16-year-old Srushti Sudhir Jagtap, who danced for 127 hours in 2023.

 

8. You Have to Call the Police to Dance in Public in Sweden

Sweden put a law on the books in 1956 that required permits for any public dancing, so if you wanted to cut a rug at a bar, the owner would need government approval first. If the authorities came by and observed dancing without a permit, the establishment could lose their liquor and business licenses. The requirement was finally lifted in 2023, but it’s still not exactly a free-for-all. If there’s about to be dancing, you still have to call the police to give them a heads up.

 

Source: Delightful Facts About Dancing

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - NORWAY SLANG

Did you know.... Norway may not seem to have much in common with Texas, but when Norwegians want to express how wild and outrageous something is, they go straight for this state-based euphemism.

 

The Norwegian word gal translates as “crazy” in English. However, citizens of the Nordic nation have adopted a more unconventional slang term to describe something that’s unpredictable, chaotic, exhilarating, or simply scary—“texas.”

 

According to Texas Monthly, Norwegians have used the state-inspired expression for several decades now. It’s meant to conjure the place’s rough-and-tumble history—cowboys, lassos, outlaws—and all the wild associations that go along with it.

 

As used in Norway, the term isn’t capitalized, and it’s employed as an adjective to conjure an atmosphere—meaning you wouldn’t be calling a person “texas,” but rather a situation or event. Instead of saying “That party was totally crazy,” you’d say “det var helt texas,” or “it was completely texas.”

 

To prove that “texas” is truly widespread terminology in Norway, Texas Monthly dredged up several news articles in which the state name is used to describe everything from truck drivers on dangerous routes to a wild soccer game to a rare swordfish caught in a fjord. And though that fish bit would most likely only happen in Norway, it’s interesting to see a word that’s so American be used to describe such a culturally foreign act.

 

A Texas Tradition
Texas isn’t the only Southwestern signifier in Norwegian culture: Norwegian families gather around the dining table for fredagstaco, loosely translating to “taco Fridays,” to celebrate the national craze for the Tex-Mex classic. According to the Norwegian American newspaper, a 2012 survey found that more than 400,000 Norwegians, or about 8 percent of the country’s population, regularly participate in fredagstaco.

 

How did this unique phenomenon catch on in a country where dietary staples include fish and brown cheese? The act of gathering together and having everyone choose their own taco filings and toppings leaves everyone content, and “it is a social dish because one sits at the table longer and makes their own food,” Trond Svendgård, a chef with the traveling caterers Flying Culinary Circus, told the Norwegian American.

 

Norwegian tacos stray somewhat from the typical Tex-Mex ingredients, though. A recipe from New Scandinavian Cooking calls for a filling of pork, mushrooms, and fresh cabbage served in potato-based lefse (thin flatbread). Most Norwegians choose flour or whole-wheat tortillas (not the corn-based hard shells) and offer a variety of options, including shrimp salad or salmon, cucumbers, bell peppers, and corn along with the usual beef or chicken fillings for every family member to enjoy.

 

 

Source: In Norway, ‘Texas’ Is Slang for ‘Crazy’

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - OLDER THAN YOU THINK

 

Did you know... When do you think the first 3D movie came out in theaters? If you guessed the 1950s, you’re off by a few decades. And it’s not just 3D movies that are older than you think: From sparkling water to condoms and everything in between, these everyday things trace their origins back a lot further than you may have realized.

 

1. The Name Tiffany
If you’re an elder Millennial or a younger Gen Xer, you probably grew up with a Tiffany or two—or 10. Or maybe you’re Tiffany. According to the Social Security Administration, Tiffany was America’s 11th most popular baby girl name of the entire 1980s—which might make it seem like a pretty recent invention. But people have actually been christening their babies Tiffany for centuries. The moniker derives from the Greek Theophania, meaning “the appearance of God.” Theophania became the Old French Tifaine, which showed up in English circa 1200. Baptism records for babies named Tiffany date as far back as the 1500s. But because the late 20th century birthed so many Tiffanys, it just feels wrong whenever a character named Tiffany appears in a period piece set long before then. In a 2008 interview, author Jo Walton dubbed this phenomenon “the Tiffany problem”—basically, a lot of historically accurate things seem anachronistic because they don’t match our perception of history.

 

2. 3D Movies
On June 10, 1915, patrons filed into New York City’s Astor Theatre to witness a landmark moment in film history. It was the first 3D movie ever shown in a theater. Technically, it was three shorts. First, some rural shots from across America; then some footage from a movie set; and for the grand finale, a trip to Niagara Falls. Audience members donned red and green glasses to get the full 3D experience, achieved by combining sets of images captured two-and-a-half inches apart. The first 3D feature film to hit theaters was The Power of Love, which debuted at the Ambassador in Los Angeles in September 1922. One experiment of the time was cutting edge even for today, allowing viewers to choose between two conclusions: look through one lens for a happy ending, and the other for a sad one.

 

3. Synchronized Swimming

 

Synchronized swimming was a vaudeville fad that found its way to the silver screen during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Picture Esther Williams in films like Million Dollar Mermaid (above) and Bathing Beauty. In fact, the phrase synchronized swimming wasn’t even coined until 1934, when the Modern Mermaids wowed the crowd at the World’s Fair in Chicago. The sport didn’t become an Olympic event until 1984, which is now called Artistic Swimming. But it turns out that ancient Romans enjoyed a good water ballet on at least one occasion. Only it didn’t take place in a pool, per se—instead, they just flooded an amphitheater. The 1st-century poet Martial described the performance in a series of epigrams, translated by Kathleen Coleman in 2006: “A well-trained troupe of Nereids [sea nymphs] was frolicking all over the surface and decorating the compliant water with various formations.” These included a “menacing trident,” a star “shining its welcome to sailors,” and a ship with “broad sails billowing in distinctive folds.” Not everyone is convinced that that’s synchronized swimming—because maybe it could be considered dancing in the water instead—but still, that routine would probably score well at today’s Olympics, and would definitely impress your local community pool.

 

4. Oreos

Oreos aren’t quite so ancient, but they have been around for way longer than you’ve been dunking them in the milk of your choice. (The optimal dunk time for an Oreo is roughly three seconds, by the way—the cookie absorbs roughly 80 percent of its potential liquid after two seconds, and it maxes out after four.) When the Oreo first hit shelves in 1912, it wasn’t marketed as a dunkable sensation that belonged in every kid’s lunchbox. It was way more of a luxury. Here’s how one ad from that year described the dessert: “A dainty, tasty chocolate biscuit with cream filling. Very expensive, but Oh! how good.” At 45 cents per pound, “expensive” was no exaggeration—that’s about $14 in today’s money. 

 

5. Juicy Fruit Gum

Speaking of storied American snacks, Juicy Fruit gum arrived on the scene in the ’90s … the 1890s, that is. It was the brainchild of William Wrigley, Jr., who initially sold soap. He gave out baking powder with every soap order, which was so popular that he started selling baking powder. That came with a freebie, too: chewing gum. And then the gum was such a hit that he started selling that instead.  The man loved a business pivot, and a free gift with purchase—especially one that had nothing to do with the purchase itself and everything to do with what the purchaser might want. You know, a coffee grinder, a cheese cutter … maybe some lace curtains for the buyer’s wife.  According to a 1915 edition of the advertising magazine Printers’ Ink, those were just a few of the freebies that Wrigley gave to one grocer who stocked his gum. Others advertised in newspapers include a mandolin, a solid oak clock, a hand saw, a “100 candle power lamp,” and a souvenir spoon from Maine.  Wrigley introduced Juicy Fruit gum to the public in 1893 at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and the rest is history. Well, except for the actual flavor of the gum, which is still top-secret. A Wrigley Company spokesperson reportedly told a fan in 2002 that the flavor profile mainly features “lemon, orange, pineapple, and banana notes.”

 

6. Zildjian

When it comes to making music, it doesn’t get much more basic than banging a metal disc. So it’s not hard to believe that cymbals have been around for thousands of years. The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one dated between 2300 to 2000 BCE, during the Early Bronze Age. (Yes, it was made of bronze.) What’s more surprising is that Zildjian, one of today’s leading cymbal manufacturers, has been in the game for four centuries. In Constantinople in 1618, a 22-year-old Armenian chemist named Avedis was trying to make gold when he accidentally concocted the perfect metal alloy for making cymbals instead. It’s some combination of copper, tin, and silver, but the exact recipe is just like Juicy Fruit’s: confidential. The Ottoman Empire commissioned Avedis to craft the royal cymbals and was so pleased with his work that he gave him a special surname: Zildjian, meaning “family of cymbal makers.” So Avedis Zildjian went off and founded his own foundry in 1623, and eventually taught his son all his cymbal-making secrets. Things more or less continued like that for the next 15 generations of Zildjians. It’s still a family business today: The current president and executive chair is Craigie Zildjian, who also served as CEO from 1999 to 2019. We’re not sure about everyone else, but we’re fine with nepo babies in the cymbal industry. 

 

7. Sparkling Water

Get off your high horse, La Croix—sparkling water existed in natural mineral springs for thousands of years before humans finally figured out how to make their own [PDF]. For that, we have pig bladders to thank. That’s what English chemist Joseph Priestley used in the late 1760s as part of a contraption that combined gas bubbles with water. Priestley didn’t do it out of thin air—there was over a century of discoveries and innovations leading up to his contraption, but we really like viewing history in terms of “one dude did something,” so historians tend to treat Priestley as sparkling water’s First Man. He detailed his process in a 1772 paper called “Directions for Impregnating Water With Fixed Air.” The pig bladder turned out to be kind of a problem: To put it frankly, some people thought Priestley’s impregnated water tasted like pee. One such critic was John Nooth, who unveiled his own seltzer-maker just a couple years later. Priestley was initially disgruntled about the urinous allegations—he even implied that one of Nooth’s assistants might’ve been peeing in the water before Nooth ran it through Priestley’s machine. But eventually even Priestley acknowledged that Nooth’s mostly glass apparatus was better than his. So the next time you crack open a cold seltzer, cheers to pig bladders. Or to the absence of them in today’s carbonation techniques.

 

8. Condoms

While we’re on animal bladders, let’s talk about condoms. According to Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete was cursed with semen full of snakes and scorpions. Needless to say, this was pretty dangerous for his sexual partners, and it also prevented his wife, Pasiphae, from getting pregnant. So in one version of the story they use a goat’s bladder to catch the scorpions and everyone is happy. Sure, this is technically a legend, and nobody knows for certain if King Minos ever even existed. But as historian Vern L. Bullough wrote in his 2001 Encyclopedia of Birth Control, “it seems logical to argue that what appeared in mythology reflected, in part, reality, and barriers of one kind or another made from bladders might well have been used by the Greeks and probably their Roman successors.” The oldest condoms that archaeologists have actually unearthed aren’t that different from Minos’s legendary goat bladder. Excavated from beneath England’s Dudley Castle in the 1980s, they were dated to the 1640s and made from fish and other animal intestines. Archaeologist Stephanie Ratkai told UPI that “They look like leaves of brown paper, and at first we thought they were parchment.” But that’s not the only old condom discovered—in Sweden a reusable condom was found that had an instruction manual. According to the directions, soaking it in warm milk before each use would prevent disease. Not something we recommend under any circumstances.

 

 

Source: Everyday Things That Are Much Older Than You Think

Edited March 4 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - GHOSTS IN MIRRORS

Did you know.... Despite what you’ve heard at slumber parties, saying “Bloody Mary” to a mirror won’t summon a vengeful spirit. It may, however, trigger a spooky optical illusion. One of the surest ways to prove your courage to all the other kids at a slumber party back in the day was to march into a dimly lit room (typically a bathroom), stare at your face in the mirror, and repeat the words “Bloody Mary” a specified number of times (typically three, though some versions say 13). According to legend, a woman would suddenly appear in the mirror and scratch your face off—or perhaps even kill you. Different iterations of this game exist around the world; in one, the mysterious mirror woman goes by Mary Worth or Kathy, and in another, the devil himself makes an appearance.

 

Of course, no ghosts or demons ever actually appeared, but that didn’t stop you from running out of the bathroom screaming, convinced that you saw a bloodied face looking back. Even as adults, our minds sometimes play tricks on us. We may get spooked after thinking we see something in the mirror while getting ready for work or brushing our teeth, even though we are rational beings and understand that nothing is there.

 

However, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this. The longer you stare in a mirror, the more likely you are to start seeing things that aren’t there—even if you haven’t been forewarned that something ghastly will appear. This is partly due to a phenomenon called the Troxler effect. When you stare at the same object for a prolonged period of time, there comes a point when your brain adapts or gets used to unchanging stimuli. As a result, your neurons cancel the information out, and the image often appears blurry, faded, or distorted until you blink or look around.

Likewise, if you gaze into your own eyes in front of a mirror, your whole face will start to look strange if you look long enough. You can try this optical illusion out for yourself—no mirror needed.

 

Stare at the plus sign in the center of the image below for seven or eight seconds:

 

Did the colorful blotches fade to gray? This is just one of the many ways your brain can trick you and distort your vision. It’s actually an important coping mechanism, though. As Live Science wrote, “If you couldn’t ignore the steady hum of your computer monitor, the constant smell of your own body odor, or the nose jutting out in front of your face, you’d never be able to focus on the important things—like whether your boss is standing right behind you.”

 

Another part of the phenomenon is the recently described “strange face in the mirror” illusion. Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo conducted an experiment in 2010 in which people were asked to enter a dimly lit room and look at their reflection in the mirror for 10 minutes. Afterwards, they were asked to report what they saw. Of the 50 test subjects, 66 percent reported seeing “huge deformations” of their face, and 48 percent also saw “fantastical and monstrous beings.” Others described seeing the face of a parent (some of whom were deceased), the face of an animal, or the face of an old woman or child.

 

Humans in general have a remarkable ability to see faces in everyday objects—from clouds to trees to pieces of toast—so it makes sense that dim lighting and visual tricks would cause people to see another face of some kind. In addition, when an image is distorted, your brain draws from past experiences and expectations to fill in the gaps. Hence the deceased relatives.

 

Interestingly, the same effect “can also be obtained during eye-to-eye gazing between two individuals,” Caputo tells Mental Floss. In fact, this “inter-subjective gazing” produced an even higher number of “strange faces” seen by test subjects, according to another experiment conducted by Caputo in 2013.

 

So we’ve ruled out the presence of mirror monsters, but what about Bloody Mary? The origin of this particular mirror game would seem to be related to “Bloody” Mary I, who served as queen of England in the 16th century—but folklorists are unconvinced.

 

That the figure goes by multiple names—such as Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Mary Lou, etc.—suggests against a real person as the inspiration. Psychoanalysts have proposed that the game has to do with young girls and the onset of menstruation. Others have noted earlier analogues of the game, including a Robert Burns poem where he explained that if you “[t]ake a candle, and go alone to a looking glass; eat an apple before it; and some traditions say, you should comb your hair all the time,” you’ll see over your shoulder the face of the person you’ll marry (and some psychoanalysts have even proposed an importance of the homophone Mary/marry). But as far as we know, no one has ever actually appeared in a mirror to confirm what—or who—Bloody Mary is about.

 

 

Source: Bloody Mary: Why We Think We See Ghosts in Mirrors