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Fact of the Day - SPIDER SILK

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Did you know... Spider silk is stronger than steel.
Despite being thinner than human hair and lighter than cotton, spider silk is stronger than steel — and it isn’t even close. According to Science magazine, the insect-trapping, egg-protecting material is a full five times stronger than steel of the same diameter. It’s also highly elastic and can hold its strength at extreme temperatures, making it one of the most versatile substances in the world. Only about half of all spiders spin webs, but all of them produce silk — which is as lucky for us as it is for them, considering how many uses it has. Ancient Greek soldiers used cobwebs to reduce bleeding, and it’s even been used in body armor developed for the U.S. military. So the next time you get scared after seeing a spider, just think: Its silk may one day save a life.

 

You don’t really swallow eight spiders a year in your sleep.
There’s a good chance you’ve heard this common misconception about spiders crawling into your mouth while you snooze, but it’s just that: an urban legend. It simply doesn't make sense on a biological or behavioral level for us or our eight-legged friends, who are highly sensitive to vibrations and therefore not inclined to approach a sleeping (and often snoring) human — especially since it wouldn’t end much better for them than it would for us. ( Interesting Facts )

 

Captivating Facts About Spider Silk
By Russell McLendon | Updated November 27, 2020

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Spiderwebs rarely make a good first impression. Even if you aren't one of the insects they're designed to capture, a sudden coating of silk on your face can be annoying, and possibly alarming if you don't know where the spider ended up. For those of us large enough to escape, though, spider silk is worth a second look. Not only are its creators much less dangerous to humans than commonly believed — and often more helpful than harmful — but their silk is a vastly undervalued wonder of nature. And while this supermaterial would be worth admiring even if it was useless to us, it also happens to hold huge potential for humanity. There are lots of reasons to like (or at least tolerate) our arachnid neighbors, but if you can't make peace with spiders themselves, at least consider making an exception for their silk. Aside from capturing mosquitoes and other troublesome insects, spider silk teems with incredible capabilities, many of which humans would like to imitate. And after centuries of trying to harness the magic of spider silk, scientists are finally unraveling some of its most promising secrets. Here's a closer look at what makes spider silk so spectacular, both as a marvel of biology and a treasure trove of biomimicry:

 

1. Spider silk is stronger by weight than steel.

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Spider silk is lighter than cotton and up to 1,000 times thinner than human hair, yet it's also incredibly strong for such a wispy material. This outsized strength is vital for spiders, who need their silk to withstand an array of destructive forces, from the frantic flapping of trapped insects to powerful blasts of wind and rain. Still, for animals of our size, it's hard to grasp the proportional strength of spider silk unless we frame it in familiar terms. Comparing it with steel might sound absurd, for example, but on a per-weight basis, spider silk is stronger. It may lack the stiffness of steel, but it has similar tensile strength and a higher strength-to-density ratio. "Quantitatively, spider silk is five times stronger than steel of the same diameter," explains a fact sheet from the University of Bristol School of Chemistry. It also draws comparisons with Kevlar, which has a higher strength rating but a lower fracture toughness than certain spider silks, according to the American Chemical Society (ACS). Spider silk is highly elastic, too, in some cases stretching four times its original length without breaking, and retains its strength below minus 40 degrees Celsius. It has even been suggested — but not tested, obviously — that a pencil-width strand of spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight. In a more natural flex, however, the Darwin's bark spider of Madagascar can stretch its dragline silk up to 25 meters (82 feet) across large rivers, forming the world's largest-known spiderwebs.

 

2. Spider silk is surprisingly diverse.

Unlike silk-making insects, which tend to produce only one kind of silk, spiders make many varieties, each specialized for its own range of purposes. No one is sure how many types exist, as biologist and spider-silk expert Cheryl Hayashi recently told the Associated Press, but researchers have identified several basic categories of spider silk, each produced by a different silk gland. An individual spider can typically make at least three or four kinds of silk, and some orb weavers can make seven.

Here are seven known types of silk glands, and what each silk is used for:

  • Achniform: Produces swathing silk, for wrapping and immobilizing prey.
  • Aggregate: Produces droplets of "glue" for the outer part of sticky silk.
  • Ampullate (major): Produces non-sticky draglines, the strongest type of spider silk. Dragline silk is used for several purposes, including the non-sticky spokes of a web and the support lines that spiders use like an elevator.
  • Ampullate (minor): Silk from the minor ampullate gland isn't as strong as draglines from the major gland, but it's just as tough due to its higher elasticity. It's used in many ways, from web building to wrapping prey.
  • Cylindriform: Produces the stiffer silk for protective egg sacs.
  • Flagelliform: Produces the stretchy core fibers of a web's capturing lines. These fibers are coated with glue from the aggregate gland, and their elasticity allows time for the glue to work before prey can bounce off the web.
  • Pyriform: Produces attaching threads, which form the attachment disks that anchor a thread of silk to a surface or to another thread.

Hayashi has collected silk glands from dozens of spider species, but she and other scientists have still only scratched the surface, she tells the AP, noting there are more than 48,000 spider species known to science around the world.

 

3. Spiders make silk kites, slingshots, submarines and more.
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Silk gives spiders a wide range of housing options, from iconic spiral webs to tubes, funnels, trap doors and even submarines. The latter are mostly built by semiaquatic species like the beach-dwelling Bob Marley spider, which makes air chambers to ride out high tide, but there is one known species — the diving bell spider — that spends almost its entire life underwater. It only leaves its air chamber to grab prey or replenish the air supply, but even that doesn't happen very often, since the silk bubble can draw in dissolved oxygen from the water outside. Silk can be useful for transportation, too. Many spiders make silk sails, which let them travel long distances by riding the wind, known as "ballooning." This is a common way for spiderlings to disperse from their birthplace, but some species also use air travel as adults. Even without wind, spiders might still manage to fly by harnessing the Earth's electric field. And for shorter trips, some orb weavers use silk to slingshot themselves at prey, relying on the silk's elastic recoil to accelerate like a rocket. And in one of the strangest-looking uses of spider silk, a species from the Amazon rainforest makes little silken towers surrounded by a tiny picket fence. Little is known about the builders, which are nicknamed Silkhenge spiders since the structures vaguely resemble Stonehenge. Researchers have at least learned what the Silkhenge itself is for, though: It seems to be a protective playpen for the spider's babies.

 

4. Silk goes from liquid to solid as it leaves a spider's body.

Silk glands hold a fluid known as "spinning dope," with proteins called spidroins arranged in a liquid crystalline solution. This travels via tiny tubes from the silk gland to the spinneret, where the proteins start to align and partly solidify the dope. Fluid from multiple silk glands can lead to the same spinneret, letting the spider make silk with specific properties for a particular task, according to the University of Bristol School of Chemistry. When it leaves the spinneret, the liquid dope is solid silk. Spider silk's properties come not just from the proteins, but also from the way a spider spins them, as scientists noted in a 2011 research review. When people take spidroins from spiders and try to recreate spider silk, the resulting fibers "show completely different mechanical properties compared to fibers spun by spiders, indicating that the spinning process is also crucial," they wrote. That's illustrated by cribellate spiders, a large group of species with a specialized organ called a cribellum, which makes silk with "mechanical stickiness" instead of the liquid glue of other spiders. Unlike a typical spinneret, the cribellum has thousands of tiny spigots, all producing extremely thin threads that spiders comb with specialized leg bristles into a single, wooly fiber. Instead of glue, nanofibers from this silk seem to trap prey by fusing with a waxy coating on an insect's body.

 

5. Some spiders replace their webs daily, but recycle the silk.

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Orb weavers tend to build their iconic webs in relatively open areas, which boosts their chances of catching prey — and their chances of sustaining web damage. These spiders often replace their webs every day, sometimes even if they still seem perfectly fine, before spending their evenings waiting for prey. That may sound wasteful, especially considering all the protein spiders must use to produce silk in the first place. Yet even if an orb weaver fails to catch any insects overnight, it still usually has enough silk proteins to tear down that web and build a new one for the following night. That's because the spider eats the silk as it removes the old web, recycling the proteins for its next attempt.

 

6. Spiders 'tune' and pluck their silk like a guitar.

Anyone who has watched a spider in her web knows she pays close attention to even slight vibrations, which might indicate trapped prey. In recent years, however, scientists have found this is a lot more complex than it looks. When compared with other materials, spider silk can be uniquely tuned to a wide range of harmonics, according to researchers from the Oxford Silk Group at Oxford University. Spiders "tune" their silk like a guitar, the researchers explain, adjusting its inherent properties as well as the tensions and connections of the threads in their webs. Organs on the spiders' legs then let them feel nanometer vibrations in the silk, which convey surprisingly detailed information on multiple topics. "The sound of silk can tell them what type of meal is entangled in their net and about the intentions and quality of a prospective mate," Beth Mortimer of the Oxford Silk Group said in a statement about the findings. "By plucking the silk like a guitar string and listening to the 'echoes,' the spider can also assess the condition of its web." Aside from shedding more light on the impressive powers of spiders, scientists are also keen to learn from a material that combines extreme toughness with the ability to transmit detailed data. "These are traits that would be very useful in lightweight engineering," according to Fritz Vollrath of the Oxford Silk Group, "and might lead to novel, built-in 'intelligent' sensors and actuators."

 

7. Some spider silk seems to have antimicrobial properties.

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This kind of interest is hardly new, as humans have been co-opting spider silk for thousands of years. Polynesian anglers have long relied on its toughness to help them catch fish, for example, a method still used in some places. Ancient Greek and Roman soldiers used cobwebs to stop wounds from bleeding, while people in the Carpathian Mountains treated wounds with the silk tubes of purseweb spiders. Its toughness and elasticity likely made it well-suited for covering wounds, but spider silk was reportedly thought to have antiseptic properties, too. And according to modern research, these ancient appreciators of spider silk may have been on to something. In a 2012 study, researchers exposed a Gram-positive and a Gram-negative bacterium to silk from the common house spider (Tegenaria domestica), observing how each grew with and without the silk. There was little effect in the Gram-negative test, but the silk inhibited growth of the Gram-positive bacterium, they found. The effect was temporary, suggesting the active agent is bacteriostatic rather than bactericidal, meaning it stops bacteria from growing without necessarily killing them. Since spider silk is also biodegradable, non-antigenic and non-inflammatory, this hints at a significant therapeutic potential. More recently, scientists have figured out how to boost this natural property of spider silk, creating an artificial silk with antibiotic molecules chemically linked to the fibers. The silk can respond to the amount of bacteria in its environment, the researchers reported in 2017, releasing more antibiotics as more bacteria grow. It will be a while before this is used clinically, but it shows promise, according to the researchers, who are also looking into spider-silk scaffolds for tissue regeneration.

8. A golden age of spider silk might finally be near.

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Despite our long fascination with spider silk, humans have also struggled to harness its powers on a larger scale. We've had trouble farming spiders like we do with silkworms, partly due to the territorial and sometimes cannibalistic nature of its creators. And due to the fineness of their silk, it can take 400 spiders to produce one square yard of cloth. To make the spider-silk cape pictured above, for instance, a team of 80 people spent eight years collecting silk from 1.2 million wild golden orb-weaver spiders in Madagascar (which were returned to the wild afterward). The alternative to spider farming is creating synthetic spider silk, which might be a better option anyway, both for us and for spiders. Yet this has been elusive, too, even after scientists began to reveal the chemical structure of spider silk. A spider-silk gene was first cloned in 1990, according to Science Magazine, letting researchers add it to other organisms that might be better able to mass-produce the silk. Since then, a variety of creatures have been genetically engineered to make spider-silk proteins, including plants, bacteria, silkworms and even goats. The proteins often turn out shorter and simpler than in true spider silk, though, and since none of those other creatures have spinnerets, researchers still have to spin the silk themselves. Nonetheless, after years of frustration, the long-awaited age of synthetic spider silk may finally be near. Several companies now tout their ability to make spider-silk proteins from E. coli bacteria, yeast and silkworms, for purposes ranging from skin lotions to medical devices. We may still have to wait for bulletproof vests and other tough fabrics made from recombinant spider silk — a quest that "isn't quite there yet," Hayashi told Science in 2017 — but in the meantime, scientists have made another breakthrough with a less famous arachnid product: spider glue.

 

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Beads of spider glue cling to a strand of capture-spiral silk.


In June, two U.S. researchers published the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that let spiders produce glue, a sticky, modified silk that keeps a spider's prey stuck in its web. That's a big deal for a couple reasons, the study's authors explain. For one, they used an innovate method that could help scientists sequence more silk and glue genes, which are difficult to sequence due to their length and repetitive structure. Only about 20 complete spider-silk genes have been sequenced so far, and that "pales in comparison to what's out there," the researchers say. On top of that, they add, spider glue should be easier to mass produce than silk, and could offer unique benefits. While it's still a challenge to mimic the way spiders turn fluid dope into silk, spider glue is a liquid at all stages, which might make it easier to produce in a lab. It could also have potential for organic pest control, says co-author Sarah Stellwagen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in a statement. Farmers could spray it on a barn wall to protect livestock from biting insects, for example, and later rinse it off without worrying about water pollution from pesticide-tainted runoff. It could also be sprayed on food crops, thwarting pests at no risk to human health, or in areas plagued by mosquitoes. After all, Stellwagen points out, "This stuff evolved to capture insect prey." Now, some 300 million years after the dawn of spiders, their silk and glue has also captured something else: our imagination. And if spiders can help us learn to make tougher fabrics, better bandages, safer pest control and other advances, maybe we can even forgive them for weaving all those webs at face level.

 

 

Source: Facts About Spider Silk | Spider Silk Facts

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Saturday 24th

 

Fact of the Day - ELVES

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Did you know... Elves take many forms. For starters, there’s the diminutive, pointy-eared elf that often appears in fairy tales. In fantasy literature like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and many role-playing games, elves are human-sized, willowy, and wise. In Northern European folklore, they’re clever, supernatural tricksters. Each December, however, the hardworking, friendly elves under the employ of Santa Claus reign supreme. When Yuletide rolls around, it’s only natural to have elves on the brain. But do you know how those mischievous sprites became Christmas helpers? Or why should you be cautious around a dancing elf? Get in the holiday spirit with these six interesting facts about elves.

 

1. Early Elves Were Mischief Makers

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The concept of elves got its start in Northern Europe, from early Norse mythology to the Germanic folklore of the Middle Ages. Elf myths varied by region, and were often told in conjunction with fairy folklore. While some elves were benevolent, more often than not they were volatile troublemakers. Illnesses, both human and animal, were often pinned on elves, as were bad dreams — supposedly, elves caused them by sitting on the sleeper. (The German word for nightmare, alpdrücken, translates literally to “elf pressure.”) They were even rumored to steal babies. While helpful elves sometimes worked their way into the mythology, early elves were certainly a far cry from the cheery toy manufacturers that came to dominate modern wintertime folklore.

 

2. Dancing Figured Prominently in Elf Mythology

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In Scandinavian mythology, elves are typically portrayed as powerful, supernatural beings, and they often used music and dancing as a way to enchant and ensnare humans — like in the story of The Elf-Woman and Sir Olaf. In the tale, a knight stumbles into the elf world the day before his wedding and encounters elf maidens dancing. He’s asked to join the dance but refuses. As a result, he dies, although the ending differs in the story’s many variations. Another ballad, called “Elvehoj,” has a happier ending: Elf maidens attempt to draw him into dances that would permanently bind him to the elf world, but they’re ultimately unsuccessful. Still another legend tells of the Elf-king’s tune: When a fiddler plays the song, it compels everyone in earshot, including inanimate objects, to dance. The fiddler can’t stop playing once the song has begun, unless he or she can play backwards, or someone cuts the fiddle’s strings. These dance themes continue in later Scandinavian texts, such as Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 tale The Elf Mound, which describes elf maidens performing dances to impress party guests.

 

3. Christmas Elves First Emerged in the 19th Century

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It wasn’t until the 1800s that elves began to be associated with Christmas. One of the earliest references was Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (more commonly known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” from its first line), which described Santa himself as a “jolly old elf.” In 1856, Little Women author Louisa May Alcott wrote a short story called “Christmas Elves” — but that story was never published, so it didn’t popularize the concept. Nonetheless, the concept of Santa’s elves had certainly entered the cultural lexicon by the 1870s, when other works started mentioning elves. A December 1873 issue of Godey’s Lady Book — a highly influential women’s magazine that also helped popularize the Christmas tree as a tradition in America — led with an image of Santa’s workshop, complete with his elf helpers.

 

4. J.R.R. Tolkien Preferred the Middle English Word “Elven” Instead of “Elfin”

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When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his famous Lord of the Rings series, “elven” was considered an obsolete Middle English word. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), it was originally a noun that meant “female elf,” or simply “elf.” When Tolkien wrote the series, “elfish” or “elfin,” which had its first print appearance in 1590, were the terms used to describe “having to do with elves.” Tolkien, also well known for his expertise in language and folklore, deliberately used “elven” and “elvish” instead, which became somewhat of a headache when it came time to proofread The Fellowship of the Ring. “The impertinent compositors have taken it upon themselves to correct, as they suppose, my spelling and grammar,” Tolkien wrote to his son in August 1953, “altering throughout ‘dwarves’ to ‘dwarfs’; ‘elvish’ to ‘elfish’… and worst of all, ‘elven’ — to ‘elfin.’” To this day, neither Merriam-Webster nor Dictionary.com recognizes “elven” as a word, although Merriam-Webster recognizeselvish.” The OED says that “elvish” specifically refers to elves as they’re described in Tolkien’s books, though the word has also become popular in other elf-related fantasy circles.

 

5. The Elf on a Shelf Tradition Started With a Self-Published Book

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The Elf on a Shelf is a Christmas season ritual in which a parent hides a “Scout Elf” doll each morning for kids to find. The idea is that the elf watches the family, reports back to Santa at night if the kids have been naughty or nice, and then sets up in a different spot in the home for the next day. This now-ubiquitous Christmas tradition dates to 2005, when a mother and her twin daughters pitched the idea for a book based on their own family ritual. After they were rejected by publishers, the trio took out credit cards and dipped into retirement funds to self-publish the book The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition, which came with an elf for the reader’s own shelf. It was a runaway success, and over the next 15 years, more than 14.5 million Scout Elves were sold as the practice became a regular part of Christmas for families all over the world. The design of what’s now known as a “Scout Elf” is much older than the tradition itself. It bears a striking resemblance to the “knee-hugger” elves of the 1950s and 1960s; perhaps one of these was the family’s original elf.

 

6. One Elf in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” Lacks a Notable Feature

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There’s much that sets Hermey the Misfit Elf apart from the rest of his North Pole co-workers in the 1964 animated TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The most obvious and central to the plot is that he wants to be a dentist rather than manufacture toys. He also appears to be the only junior employee with a visible hairstyle — a stylish, swoopy blond mop. But another feature sets Hermey apart that you may not have noticed: He does not have the pointy ears typically associated with elves. The other assembly workers, and even the gruff, goateed factory supervisor, all have pointy ears. Once you notice they are missing, it’s hard to unsee it, especially since his actual ears are quite small and rounded.

 

 

Source: Amazing Facts About Elves

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Fact of the Day - Classic Christmas Songs

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The ubiquity of holiday songs on television, radio, and social media from Thanksgiving through Christmas ensures that we'll be able to sing these anthems in our sleep. But lesser known are the backstories behind these famous tunes, which share common themes but draw from vastly different sources. From centuries-old standards to modern classics, here’s a look at the origins of six Yuletide favorites.

 

1. "Silent Night"

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Legend says that an Austrian priest hastily whipped up this classic for his parishioners to sing after mice chewed through the church organ, but the truth is decidedly less dramatic. Having already crafted a poem titled "Stille Nacht," Father Joseph Mohr enlisted schoolteacher and musician Franz Xaver Gruber to compose an accompanying melody on guitar for a performance at Christmas Mass in 1818. Enthusiasm for this simple but powerful piece steadily spread across Europe and overseas, which prompted an English translation by New York Episcopal priest John Freeman in 1859, before both German and English troops famously sang the song during a WWI Christmas ceasefire in 1914.

 

2. "Jingle Bells"

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This ode to outdoor wintertime fun may have been composed in the warm-weather locale of Georgia — despite the claims of a city in Massachusetts. All aside, historians agree that the song was the work of James Lord Pierpont (uncle of Gilded Age tycoon J.P. Morgan), who copyrighted it in 1857 under the title of "One Horse Open Sleigh." First recorded in 1889, "Jingle Bells" never achieved the massive sales recorded by some of the other standards on this list, though it does have the unique distinction of being performed in space in 1965.

 

3. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"

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Tin Pan Alley writer Haven Gillespie wasn't feeling the holiday spirit after attending his brother's funeral in September 1934, but he nevertheless agreed to write a children's Christmas song at the urging of his publisher. Riding the subway after the meeting, Gillespie started reminiscing about his mother's warnings that St. Nick was monitoring his behavior, and within 15 minutes he'd scribbled the lyrics for "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" for composing partner J. Fred Coots. Popular entertainer Eddie Cantor took it from there by singing the ditty on his Thanksgiving radio show, and a holiday standard immediately took root.

 

4. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"

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Tasked with penning a story for a department store Christmas giveaway in 1939, copywriter Robert L. May took a page from the 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and created a now-familiar tale about a reindeer who saves the day with his distinct snout. The book reached some 2 million customers, but true fame only arrived after May reclaimed rights to the story and passed it on to songwriter Johnny Marks the following decade. By the time the song landed in the lap of Gene "the Singing Cowboy" Autry in 1949, there was no slowing its rise to the top of the Billboard charts in early 1950 and Rudolph's ascent to the firmament of Yuletide culture.

 

5. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

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First sung by Judy Garland in 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'' nearly missed out on its prominent introduction to the world. Writer Hugh Martin's early draft had to be rescued from the trash by partner Ralph Blane, and it was subsequently fleshed out with such depressing lyrics that Garland refused to sing them. Martin grudgingly made the changes to satisfy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, only to tweak the lyrics again to provide something more "jolly" for a 1957 Frank Sinatra rendition. Both the original and Sinatra versions have since been re-recorded many times over, by artists ranging from James Taylor to Twisted Sister.

 

6. "White Christmas"

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Another holiday classic with Hollywood roots, this Irving Berlin-composed reflection on the timeless joys of the season was originally earmarked for an earlier project before surfacing in 1942's Holiday Inn. And while Berlin felt that "Be Careful, it's My Heart" would be the film's biggest hit, it was the Bing Crosby-crooned "White Christmas" that instead grabbed listeners and claimed an Oscar in 1943. But even that achievement barely hints at its impact, as Crosby found an insatiable audience for the song while performing for American troops overseas. Along with fueling a 1954 movie of the same name, as well as covers by Elvis Presley, Bette Midler, Michael Bublé, and many other stars, Crosby's "White Christmas" stood as the best-selling single of all time until Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997."

 

 

Source: The Origins of 6 Classic Christmas Songs

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Fact of the Day - MONOPOLY

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Did you know...  Since Monopoly first hit shelves in 1935, the game has left an indelible impact on pop culture. From the thrill of squashing the competition to the soul-crushing realization that there’s no choice but to pay hundreds of dollars in rent, we’ve all had our ups and downs while moving tokens around the Monopoly board. The game was a smash hit upon its release, and has gone on to sell over 275 million copies since its inception. But it’s not just notable for its mammoth sales numbers — Monopoly has a fascinating history that begins in 1903 with a lesser-known anti-monopolist board game that, ironically, inspired the Monopoly we all know today. Roll the dice and keep reading to learn more.

 

1. Monopoly Was Based on the Anti-Monopolist Landlord’s Game

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Though Charles Darrow is considered the inventor of Monopoly — he was the one who sold the concept to Parker Brothers in 1935 — he was heavily influenced by another game that preceded his version by several decades. Monopoly was inspired by a predecessor called The Landlord’s Game, which was designed in 1903 by a progressive thinker named Elizabeth Magie. Magie herself had been influenced by the anti-monopolistic teachings of economist Henry George, and worked tirelessly to create a board game based on George’s beliefs. The result was The Landlord’s Game, which she released to critique the actions of business titans such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Magie’s game included two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set that rewarded players for actions that benefited the common good and made sure wealth was shared, and a monopolist rulebook that’s more similar to the modern game of Monopoly (and thus focused on creating monopolies). Magie hoped this dual approach would convince players that the former set of rules was better — but, in practice, the opposite set of rules proved to be more popular. Magie was both a progressive economic mind and a pioneering inventor — at the time she applied for a patent for The Landlord’s Game in 1903, less than 1% of patent applicants were women. There are clear similarities between her version and modern Monopoly: The original board not only featured a path that allowed players to repeatedly circle the perimeter, but also familiar spaces such as the corner jail spot. Over time, word of The Landlord’s Game spread, with players across the country adapting Magie’s concept into their own homemade versions. It was one of those versions — which was played using the pro-monopoly set of rules — that was later shown to Charles Darrow, who ran with the concept and in turn shunned the game’s intended anti-monopolistic message.

 

2. Properties Are Named After Locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey

When Monopoly (as it was by then called) was being adapted into multiple homemade versions around the country in the early 20th century — often cheaper and easier than finding an existing version for sale — it was frequently tweaked to add regional variations. One of these regional versions would later serve as the basis for the version of Monopoly sold nationwide today: the one based on locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This decision can be traced back to a woman named Ruth Hoskins. Hoskins was taught a version of Magie’s Landlord’s Game while living in Indianapolis around the 1920s, though she later moved to Atlantic City and developed a version with her friends that was based on her new hometown. One of those friends, Charles Todd, would present the Atlantic City-themed version to his friend, the aforementioned Charles Darrow. As for the placement of each location on the game board, those decisions were far from random, as they were directly tied to Atlantic City’s actual property values at the time.

 

3. Monopoly Was Used as an Escape Tool by British POWs in WWII

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In 1936, the English printing firm Waddingtons produced the very first licensed version of Monopoly — a London-themed edition. Waddingtons had initially been in touch with Parker Brothers regarding the potential publication of an unrelated card game called Lexicon, though they shifted focus after being sent a copy of Monopoly for testing. The game was received so positively by Norman Watson, the son of Waddingtons’ managing director, that the company struck a deal with Parker Brothers and began producing the game overseas. A few years later, Waddingtons struck an even more consequential deal, this time with the British government. In 1940, the U.K.-based manufacturer was contracted by the British secret intelligence service to create a version of Monopoly that could be utilized by British prisoners of war. As production ramped up, the games were distributed to Nazi-run POW camps as part of larger aid packages, though each copy was actually a sneakily altered version. These devilishly disguised Monopoly boards contained metal tools to aid in escape efforts, hidden maps provided by the intelligence agency, and real money from Axis nations that could be used to bribe guards.

 

4. 68% of Monopoly Players Have Never Read the Rules

According to surveys conducted by Hasbro — the company that acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 — 68% of Monopoly players have never read the game’s official rulebook, and 49% are known to just make up their own rules. In case you’re part of that 68%, here are a few oft-overlooked official rules that you can use to your advantage the next time you play the game. First, if a player declines to buy a property, that property must be put up for auction on the spot, with any player — even the one who declined it — able to make the purchase. And while going to jail may be a nuisance, you can actually still collect rent and buy houses while being locked up behind bars, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Also, the official rules stipulate that players must request rent, and if they don’t notice you haven’t paid before the next dice is rolled, then you’re in the clear.

 

5. Chocolate and Jewel-Encrusted Monopoly Boards Have Been Produced

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Forget about simple cardboard and plastic — some truly special Monopoly boards have been produced over the years. In 1978, American retailer Neiman Marcus offered up a 100% chocolate version of Monopoly in their holiday catalog, opening the ad with the clever marketing line, “PASS GO, and you’ll collect 200 calories.” This indulgent replica featured edible versions of the board, the dice, and the money, all made of various kinds of chocolate and sweets. The product cost $600 in 1978 money (around $2,500 in today’s money), and also came with an inedible version of the game that would last long after the chocolate one had been consumed. No Monopoly board has ever been deemed more valuable, however, than one produced by San Francisco-based jeweler Sidney Mobell. Valued at an estimated $2 million as of 2010, Mobell’s version of Monopoly contained a Scottie dog, thimble, and top hat all made of 18-karat solid gold, a 23-karat gold-plated playing board, money printed on gold paper, and a pair of dice bespeckled with 42 diamond studs to represent the pips. Mobell began work on the board in 1988, and it has been displayed in countless museums.

 

6. Monopoly’s Game Tokens Were Inspired by Charm Bracelets

Upon pitching Monopoly to Parker Brothers, Darrow suggested using household items such as buttons as game tokens. (Many who played the game before Darrow also used small items from around the house.) Darrow changed his tune, however, when he realized that his nieces were fond of playing the game using baubles from their charm bracelets, as well as prizes found in boxes of Cracker Jack. Darrow returned to Parker Brothers with the charm bracelet-inspired idea, which was received quite fondly. Parker Brothers agreed to use four of the metal charms produced by a charm bracelet manufacturer (reportedly the same one that made his nieces’ bracelets), and to incorporate a few new designs on top of that. Those initial tokens included a cannon, thimble, top hat, iron, battleship, and boot.

 

7. McDonald’s Monopoly Game Was Rigged by Its Head of Security

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For many years, beginning in 1987, McDonald’s and Monopoly combined for a wildly successful marketing campaign in which customers would peel Monopoly stickers off their McDonald’s food items in hopes of winning a prize. However, the game was tarnished by a former police officer, Jerome P. Jacobson, who had been hired as head of security to oversee the game’s legitimacy but got involved with the U.S. mafia. Jacobson would secretly funnel winning stickers to friends, family, and others, to the tune of $24 million in winnings prior to being caught during an FBI sting. Jacobson once used his illicit actions for good, however, anonymously donating a $1 million-winning McDonald’s Monopoly sticker to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 1995.

 

8. The Guinness World Record for Most Monopoly Boards Owned Is 2,249
The record for the largest personal collection of Monopoly boards is held by a man in the United Kingdom by the name of Neil Scallan, who was verified to have 2,249 Monopoly boards as of September 5, 2018. As of November 2021, however, Neil claims to have a total of 4,613 Monopoly boards, which includes 3,350 unique boards in his collection, 500 duplicates, and 763 that have been donated to the Monopoly museum in Belgium. Scallan began his hobby after purchasing a local souvenir version in New Zealand in 2005, and sometimes purchases a new board every single day. Oddly enough, Scallan doesn’t even like playing Monopoly anymore, because he prefers to keep the sets sealed in pristine condition.

 

Source: Playful Facts About the Game Monopoly

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Fact of the Day - HOLIDAY TREATS

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Did you know... Even if you don’t love the holidays, you likely appreciate the food. All of us have our favorites, from stuffing and mashed potatoes to latkes and kugel, but the real fun begins with dessert. If you’ve ever wondered why we eat cakes shaped like Yule logs or who first came up with fruitcake, read on — these are the origins of four favorite holiday treats.

 

1. Figgy Pudding

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Even if you've never tried this dessert, you're probably familiar with the lyric "now bring us some figgy pudding" from "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." While that song possibly dates to the 16th century, figgy pudding itself is at least two centuries older than that. In the 14th century, it was used as a food-preservation technique and resembled a porridge consisting of beef, mutton, wines, spices, raisins, and prunes. It wasn't until the 1700s, when fruit was more widely available, that figgy pudding became sweet, rather than savory, and much more similar to what we eat today. You might notice one ingredient conspicuously missing from the original recipe: actual figs. We have the vagaries of Middle English to thank for that, as the word "figgy" (or fygey, ffygey, figgee, and several other spellings) didn't necessarily imply the use of figs, and its meaning changed along with the various recipes.

 

2. Sufganiyot

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Whether you call it a Hanukkah doughnut or sufganiyot, this deep-fried treat filled with jelly and covered in powdered sugar is delicious in any language. And just as Jews eat matzah and other unleavened breads during Passover, there's a reason fried foods like sufganiyot are served during Hanukkah: Doing so commemorates the miracle of the oil. This is among the oldest culinary customs of them all, as eating deep-fried pastries during Hanukkah was already considered a long-standing tradition in the 12th century. As for the name, an Israeli folk tale suggests that God gave Adam and Eve sufganiyot to make them feel better after their exile from the Garden of Eden; this interpretation is rooted in the fact that sufganiyah reads similarly to sof-gan-yud-hey, or "the end of the Garden of the Lord."

 

3. Fruitcake

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Whatever your thoughts on fruit-based desserts, there's no denying that the love-it-or-hate-it mainstay fruitcake remains popular worldwide. (For another fruit-centric argument, be sure to ask your loved ones their thoughts on pineapple pizza.) All roads lead to Rome, and so does this particular dish's history: An early (we're talking 2,000-year-old) variant is said to have included raisins, pomegranate seeds, and pine nuts, but it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that other dried fruits, nuts, and honey were added to the mix.

 

4. Yule Log

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It won't surprise you to learn that this Christmas cake is popular in countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, but did you know that Yule logs are also served in Lebanon and Vietnam? Made to look like, well, a Yule log, this genoise-based sponge cake first became popular in 19th-century France — hence its enduring popularity in Vietnam, a former French colony, as well as its original name, Bûche de Noël. The ingredients — marzipan, meringue, spun sugar, and sponge cake — suggest that this dessert could have been around since the 1600s. Real Yule logs would traditionally be burned starting on Christmas Eve as a symbol of the new year — and, if they worked as intended, bring good luck. However, the cake version has been a more recognizable holiday symbol than its namesake for quite some time.

 

Source: The Origins of Favorite Holiday Treats

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Fact of the Day - TEA

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Did you know... Besides water, no beverage is consumed by more individuals across the globe than tea. For millennia, this beloved drink has been favored by many cultures, from those in China who first cultivated tea to modern customers in quaint cafés. Here are seven refreshing facts about tea for those who want a dash of history and culture with their drink.

 

1. Tea Bags Were Popularized by Accident

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Before individual tea bags came into wide use, it was more common to make an entire pot of tea at once by pouring hot water over tea leaves and then using a strainer. In 1901, Wisconsin inventors Roberta C. Lawson and Mary Molaren filed a patent for a “tea leaf holder,” a concept that resembles the tea bags we use today. It wasn’t until about seven years later, however, that another individual inadvertently helped popularize the concept of tea bags — at least according to legend. Around 1908, American tea importer Thomas Sullivan reportedly sent samples of tea inside small silken bags to his customers. His clients failed to remove the tea leaves from the bags as Sullivan assumed they would, and soon Sullivan realized that he’d stumbled onto an exciting new concept for tea brewing. He later reimagined the bags using gauze, and eventually paper. Tea bags were booming in popularity throughout the United States by the 1920s, but it took a while for residents of the United Kingdom to adopt the concept. In fact, tea bags wouldn’t make their way to the U.K. until 1952, when Lipton patented its “flo-thru” bag, but even then the British weren’t keen to change their tea-brewing ways. By 1968, only 3% of tea brewed in the U.K. was done so using tea bags, with that number rising to 12.5% in 1971. By the end of the 20th century, however, 96% of U.K. tea was brewed with bags.

 

2. The British Have Their Own Official Standard for the Perfect Cup of Tea

The British are serious about tea. So much so that British Standards — a national body that produces technical specifications for products and services — released an edict in 1980 on the official British guidelines for making the perfect cup of tea. Though some may disagree with the standard, the rules include the following: Use a porcelain pot and a ratio of two grams of tea per every 100 ml of water, brew for six minutes, maintain a temperature of 60 to 85 degrees Celsius (140 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit) when serving the tea, and add milk to the mug first if using tea that’s already been steeped.

 

3. Herbal Tea Isn’t Actually Tea

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This may be a shocking revelation, but herbal “teas” like chamomile and peppermint aren’t officially teas at all. In order for a drink to be classified as tea, it must come from the Camellia sinensis plant, from which many white, green, oolong, and black teas do. Herbal teas, however, are known as tisanes, or more plainly infusions that incorporate various leaves, fruits, barks, roots, flowers, and other edible non-tea plants. So while the experience of drinking a minty tea may be indecipherable from drinking a warm cup of green tea, the two beverages fall into completely different categories from a scientific gastronomic perspective.

 

4. The World’s Largest Tea Bag Was 551 Pounds

Saudi Arabia is the site of at least two notable tea records. On September 20, 2014, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the owner of a company called Rabea Tea unveiled a record-setting tea bag weighing 551 pounds and 2.56 ounces, earning it the distinction of being world’s largest tea bag. Eight years later, also in Saudi Arabia, a company called Triple Nine Tea set the record for brewing the largest cup of hot tea — 11,604.28 gallons. When it comes to the largest cup of iced tea, however, the achievement is proudly held in the American South. On June 10, 2016, the residents of Summerville, South Carolina, banded together to create the biggest jug of sweet tea ever made (2,524 gallons), using 210 pounds of loose leaf tea, 1,700 pounds of sugar, and over 300 pounds of ice.

 

5. Besides Boston, Several Other U.S. Cities Held “Tea Parties”

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While most Americans are familiar with the Boston Tea Party — in which colonists dumped chests of British East India Company tea into Boston Harbor as a protest against “taxation without representation” — fewer are aware that many similar events took place along the Eastern Seaboard in the months that followed. Just nine days after the protest in Boston, the Philadelphia Tea Party occurred on December 25, 1773. Although no tea was destroyed as in the Boston protest, a ship carrying a large cargo of tea was refused on its way to Philadelphia, and the captain — under the threat of being tarred and feathered — returned both ship and cargo to England.   The following year saw even more “tea parties,” including the Charleston Tea Party in November 1774, in which the captain of a tea-toting ship feigned ignorance about his cargo but was ultimately forced to dump the ship’s contents into the harbor. Additional protests took place in New York; Annapolis, Maryland; Wilmington, North Carolina; Greenwich, New Jersey; and other American cities. Though none went down in history to the degree of the Boston Tea Party, they were all critical acts of rebellion — against taxation and ultimately British rule — that contributed to the start of the American Revolutionary War.

 

6. Turkey Consumes the Most Tea per Capita of Any Country

Though no country consumes more tea than China overall – 1.6 billion pounds each year — there are several other nations whose tea-drinking numbers are even more staggering when broken down per capita. At the top of that list is Turkey, as each tea-loving Turk consumes around seven pounds of tea annually, compared to just 1.25 pounds per Chinese citizen (as of 2014). Turkish individuals are particularly fond of black tea, and they average three to five cups per day, which comes out to a staggering 1,300 cups per year, give or take. Though they’ve already set the record, tea drinking was also on the rise in Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Turks are so proud of tea as a foundation of their culture that in 2020, the country petitioned UNESCO to add Turkish tea to the organization’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. After Turkey, Ireland finishes second on the list of tea-drinking countries per capita, with the United Kingdom coming in third.

 

7. Cheese-Topped Tea Is Popular in Asia

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Though the combination of cheese and tea may sound somewhat incompatible, it’s a beloved and delicious beverage that has grown in popularity throughout Asia over the last decade or so. Cheese tea is made as a cold beverage using green or black tea, and is topped with a layer of milk and cheese that’s then sprinkled with salt. The drink is a relatively new invention, having originated around 2010 at nighttime drink stalls on the streets of Taiwan, though it’s since boomed in popularity throughout Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and China. Asia isn’t alone, however, when it comes to incorporating cheese into their caffeinated beverages. Though it’s not tea, a Scandinavian coffee drink called Kaffeost features cubes of dried cheese soaking up the liquid inside a mug of hot coffee. And in Colombia, locals add savory globs of melted cheese to a regional hot chocolate known as chocolate santafereño.

 

 

Source: Sip On These Facts About Tea

 

 

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Fact of the Day - MARSUPIALS

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Did you know... Marsupials: They’re not just kangaroos! From iconic Australian wildlife like wallabies and koalas to the furry friends in South American rainforests to the single species of North American opossum, these animals take many forms. What ties them together is how their babies grow: They emerge as embryos and develop the rest of the way outside the womb, usually in a pouch. Each species has its own special quirks, though, including some incredibly adaptable pouch variations. Which notable land animal has equal command of the sea? Which animal is giving the Easter Bunny a run for its money in Australia? What small desert creature is rarely seen by humans? From the unusual feeding habits of mama koalas to why backyard opossums are not as scary as they may seem, these facts about marsupials show the deep diversity in this special order of animals.

 

1. Kangaroos Are Great Swimmers

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On land, a red kangaroo — the largest of the kangaroos — can leap along at more than 35 miles per hour and jump up to 6 feet high. They have a strong command of the water, too, and can even use their forepaws to drown potential predators.

A 1974 research paper described their profound natural instinct for swimming, and noted that red kangaroos observed in a pool reached speeds of about 1 meter (a little more than a yard) per second. Although both kangaroos in the pool had been raised in captivity and had never swum before, it took them only 10 to 15 seconds to adapt and start swimming in a pattern that they wouldn’t use on land, using their back legs to stay afloat. Their forward motion came from stroking using their front legs, with the digits of their paws fully extended. Sweeping their tails horizontally from side to side like the back fin of a fish also helped propel them forward (on land, kangaroo tails typically move vertically).

Kangaroos of multiple species have been observed swimming in the wild, with at least one swimming about 2 miles when threatened. On YouTube, you can see kangaroos swimming along an open coastline and in more sheltered waters alike.

 

2. Wombats’ Teeth Don’t Stop Growing

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Wombats have a lot in common with groundhogs and other rodents found in North America, but these Australian beasts are marsupials and significantly larger, at about 31 to 47 inches long. They all spend a lot of time gnawing on stuff, though, so wombats have very similar teeth: They’re rootless, and they never stop growing.

The common wombat has two pairs of large incisors, one at the top and the other at bottom of their jaw, and 16 molars tucked into its cheeks. As long as wombats stick to their regular diet of highly abrasive grasses, their teeth grind down as they grow — although some wombats, especially those in captivity, require special dental intervention to keep things from getting out of hand after eating less fibrous foods.

 

3. Some Marsupials Don’t Have Pouches

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A fully functional pouch is not a prerequisite for being a marsupial — it’s just a common convenience for animals that give birth to babies that aren’t fully developed — so some joeys are left to just cling to their mothers’ teats and hope for the best. Some species only have the remnants of a pouch. Short-tailed opossums, a species native to Brazil that’s between the size of a mouse and a rat, have no pouch at all. When their embryos emerge, they don’t even have limbs yet, so they use their little nubs (with tiny claws!) to scramble for a nipple and attach. A seal forms that holds the baby on, and the mother can retract her nipples into her body, holding the babies close until they’re ready to detach.

 

4. Water Opossums Have Built-In Swimsuits

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The yapok, also called a water opossum, is native to the lakes of Mexico, Central America, and South America, and has two kinds of pouches: one on male yapoks and one on females. Male yapoks’ pouches don’t serve quite the same reproductive purpose, though. When they’re swimming, moving quickly, or diving, they have a muscle that can pull their pouch up to protect their reproductive equipment and keep it dry. Female yapok pouches are also pretty cool, though: They create a sealed compartment that can keep the babies inside dry while mom is swimming.

 

5. Opossums Have a Natural Immunity to Rabies

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Because of their tendency to crawl around in the trash and hiss at people open-mouthed and drooling, opossums are often thought to carry rabies. Not only are the creatures bluffing when they pretend to be vicious, but it’s actually exceedingly rare for them to contract rabies, possibly because they have a much lower body temperature than other warm-blooded animals like raccoons and bats. Opossums may look scary at times, but they’re one of the better scavengers to find in your backyard. They rarely eat live chickens, but do eat garden pests, small rodents, fruit that has fallen from trees, and messes left behind by less courteous passing critters.

 

6. Australia Has “Easter Bilbies” in Addition to Easter Bunnies

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Easter Bunnies make sense in Europe and the Americas, which have native rabbit species. In Australia, not so much: Rabbits, which were brought from England in the 1800s, are an incredibly invasive species Down Under. Bilbies, on the other hand, are native to Australia. They’re marsupials about the size of rabbits, with similarly long ears and an adorable face, along with a shrew-like snout. They’re also endangered, thanks in part to the interloping rabbits that started pushing bilbies out of their burrows, leaving them vulnerable to cat and fox attacks that were already on the rise with the arrival of European settlers. Enter the Easter Bilby, a now-decades-long Australian tradition. It has its origins in 1968, when a nine-year-old girl wrote a story called “Billy the Aussie Easter Bilby,” which she later published. It really started catching on in the 1990s, though, after the Foundation for Rabbit-Free Australia started a campaign to promote native wildlife. Candymakers caught on, and now you can find Easter Bilbies on Australian shelves every year, often raising money for preservation groups. Easter Bunnies are still sold in Australia, too — but the Easter Bilby has caught on as well, introducing new generations to this uniquely Australian animal.

 

7. Marsupial Mole Sightings Are (Very) Rare

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Marsupial moles, a pair of species native to Australia called kakarratul and itjaritjari, really keep to themselves. Like standard moles, which evolved completely separately, they have no sense of sight (moles have no eyes; marsupial moles have no optic nerves and only vestigial lenses) and live their lives digging underground. Unlike moles, they don’t leave any trail behind, instead moving seamlessly through soft desert sand as if they’re swimming. As is the case with other burrowing marsupials, their pouch faces backward, which shields their babies from the dirt. They live most of their lives underground, and not only do they leave little trace of where they’ve been, but they rarely show their silky golden faces above the surface. A mere sighting can be a newsworthy event. One Australian scientist estimates that humans see them above the surface only about 10 times a decade.

 

 

Source: Amazing Facts About Marsupials

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Fact of the Day - PLATYPUSES

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Did you know... If you know one thing about the platypus, it’s probably that it’s one of the planet’s weirdest species. These Australian creatures are furry mammals, but they reproduce by laying eggs — and if that wasn’t odd enough, they’re also amphibious. Their strange circumstances are matched by their goofy looks, which include duck-like bills, beaver-like tails, and dense fur. Platypuses (yes, that’s a correct plural, although “platypi” is fine too) have a lot of wild things going on, and these seven facts show just how fascinating they can be. They’re bottom-feeders, but how do they hunt without being able to see, hear, or smell underwater? How do they chew with no teeth? Why should you, at all costs, avoid male platypuses’ feet during mating season? Read on to more fully grasp just how weird and wonderful these animals are.

 

1. Early British Naturalists Didn’t Totally Believe in Them

Imagine seeing a platypus for the first time with absolutely no context. When a group of British naturalists first laid eyes on a (lifeless) platypus specimen shipped from Australia in the late 18th century, they thought it could be a kind of taxidermy prank.

"It naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means," wrote English zoologist George Shaw in 1799, although he concluded, after “the most minute and rigid examination,” that it was the real deal. He also noted that the creature appeared to be a combination of a duck and perhaps a small otter or a beaver. And one of the early British colonizers of Australia thought it was an amphibious species of mole. Shaw dubbed the creature the Platypus anatinus, or “flat-foot duck.” A few years later, a German naturalist named it Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, or “paradoxical bird-snout.” It turns out there was already a genus of beetle called Platypus, so science reconciled the two names to Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which is still its scientific name today. “Platypus” stuck as the common name in the Western world. Aboriginal names for the animal have been around for longer, and include “boondaburra,” “mallingong,” and “tambreet,” depending on the region.

 

2.  Their Fur Is Waterproof

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Like many animals, platypuses have two layers of fur for insulation — but unlike in most species, the top layer is waterproof. Their undercoat is incredibly dense, which keeps the platypus warm in cold water. It’s covered by a coat of long, coarse hairs that trap air and keep the inner layer from getting wet, even after hours submerged in the water. The insulation effect, according to the Australian Platypus Conservancy, is comparable to a neoprene wetsuit about three millimeters thick.

 

3. They’re Equipped With Built-In Earplugs, Nose Plugs, and Goggles
Platypuses spend a lot of time hunting underwater and are able to swim far more gracefully than they can walk. Their front claws have retractable webbing for optimal paddling, and they use their hind feet and beaver-like tail for quick and easy turning. Because they’re also land mammals, though, their bodies are built to protect their less-waterproof features while submerged, with specialized skin flaps that cover their ears and eyes, and nostrils that are able to close completely and create a waterproof seal. They’re bottom-feeders, and this allows them to spend plenty of time in muddy lakebeds gathering insects, worms, and small shellfish. Fortunately, they don’t need to see, smell, or hear to track that prey down, because…

 

4. Platypus Bills Have a Sixth Sense

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Platypuses gather food without sight, smell, or hearing underwater, making even alternate navigation systems like sound-based echolocation impractical. Luckily, they have a sensory organ that’s rare in the animal kingdom: They sense electric fields with their bills. Three different receptor cells in their bills detect motion, changes in pressure, and electric signals produced by muscle contractions in their prey. They move their heads from side to side to gather this information, figure out direction and distance, and ultimately go for the catch. This is called electroreception, and only a handful of species have the capability. Besides monotremes, i.e. egg-laying mammals — a category that includes only the platypus and anteater-like echidna, also native to Australia — a few species of fish have it, too, and, to a lesser extent, bumblebees.

 

5. They Chew Their Food Using Rocks They Pick Up While Hunting

When the platypus reaches its dinner and scoops it up from the bottom of a lake or river, it makes sure to take a little gravel with it — after all, platypuses have no teeth, and need to masticate their food somehow. The hunter tucks everything into pouches in its cheeks and comes back up on land to dine, using the rocks to mash it all up in its mouth. After swallowing the soft parts of its prey, it spits out any leftover exoskeletons, along with the gravel. While this might seem similar to what some birds, like chickens, do by picking up grit, it’s not quite as sophisticated. Birds use rocks to digest food in a second part of the stomach called the gizzard; platypuses literally just crunch them around in their mouths. In fact…

 

6. Platypuses Have No Stomachs

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When platypuses eat, their food goes directly from the gullet to their intestines, with no stomach to break down food further. It’s not unheard of in mammals — they share this trait with their fellow monotremes — but most stomachless animals are species of fish. The intestines have their own enzymes that break down food, and many stomachless species eat diets rich in calcium carbonate from sources like coral and shellfish. One theory is that with such an acid-neutralizing diet (imagine if you ate large quantities of Tums for every meal), acid-rich stomachs essentially became worthless wastes of energy somewhere along the evolutionary line.

 

7. Male Platypuses Store Potent, Painful Venom in Their Heels

Platypuses are pretty cute, in a weird way — but don’t let that deceive you. While they’re not on par with other Australian horrors like the box jellyfish, they have the dubious distinction of being one of the few venomous mammals on Earth, along with slow lorises, vampire bats, and some animals from the order eulipotyphla, which includes moles, hedgehogs, and shrews. However, unlike most venomous mammals, they have a unique ability to really ruin a human’s day. Platypuses attack by viciously and repeatedly jamming specialized hind leg spurs into their opponents. When inflicted on people, these attacks cause extreme pain, which has been described by researchers as “immediate, sustained, and devastating.” One attack can cause near-total immobility for weeks, with lingering effects like increased sensitivity to pain and decreased mobility for months. Even morphine won’t dull the pain; those unlucky enough to experience platypus venom require nerve blockers for relief, sometimes for days. Fortunately, there have been no reported fatalities in humans. The venom is present only in males and only during mating season, and researchers are not 100% clear about what its purpose is; the usual assumption is that the males primarily use it on each other to eliminate competition. While the attacks can be brutal, they’re not fatal to other platypuses, and usually only result in temporary paralysis.

 

 

Source: Interesting Facts About Platypuses

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - ELIZABETH TAYLOR

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Did you know... Headline maker. Timeless beauty. Academy Award winner. Tireless activist. Savvy businesswoman. Global icon. These are only a few of the many phrases to describe golden age movie star Elizabeth Taylor Born in London in February 1932 to American parents, Taylor and her family packed up and moved to the United States in 1939, where the actress soon began her film career. Taylor made her big-screen debut with a small role in 1942’s There’s One Born Every Minute but gained popularity after scoring the lead role as a horse-crazed girl in 1944’s National Velvet. Throughout her illustrious career, Taylor starred in more than 50 movies, and was never afraid to take a chance in both her personal and professional lives. “I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I’m not afraid to look behind them,” she once said. Read below to learn how Taylor’s life was as epic as the roles she played.

 

1. Taylor Had “Violet” Eyes and a Double Set of Eyelashes

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In 1970, when Hollywood Reporter film critic Todd McCarthy first met Taylor, he was stopped in his tracks by “a pair of eyes unlike any I’ve ever beheld, before or since; deep violet eyes of a sort withheld from ordinary mortals.” However, while Taylor’s eyes are typically credited as violet, they were more likely a deep blue with an uncommon amount of melanin in the irises, which made them appear violet when she wore specific colors. This inspired her to often wear black eyeliner with blue, purple, or dark brown eyeshadow to bring out her trademark color. Framing those famous eyes were Taylor’s double row of eyelashes, known as distichiasis, the result of a mutation of FOXC2, a gene responsible for embryonic tissue development. While this heavy, second set of eyelashes can cause complications for some, they quickly became a notable part of Taylor’s beauty at a young age. When she was filming Lassie Come Home (1943) at the age of 9, Taylor was accused of wearing too much mascara, and when production members tried to clean it off, they realized the dark shade was her own eyelashes. As Taylor’s Lassie co-star Roddy McDowall remembered, “Who has double eyelashes except a girl who was absolutely born to be on the big screen?”

 

2. Taylor Was Married Eight Times

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The star famously said “I do” eight times to seven different men: Conrad “Nicky” Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton (twice), John Warner, and Larry Fortensky. While many of these marriages seemed out of a movie, it was her first wedding that was a direct part of a Hollywood production. In 1950, at the age of 18, Taylor — who had already been engaged twice before — wed hotel heir Hilton at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Taylor wore a $3,500 gown gifted by MGM as part of a promotional effort for her film Father of the Bride, which premiered the following year.  Designed by MGM’s chief costume designer Helen Rose, the high-collared, long-sleeved gown was covered with pearls and with a 15-foot train. MGM added more movie magic by selecting studio stock players as Taylor’s bridesmaids, and set designers decorated the church. In attendance were 700 guests including Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, and Fred Astaire, and waiting outside were 3,000 cheering fans. Lauded as the social event of the year, MGM boasted that at the wedding were “more stars than there are in heaven.” No matter the fairy-tale event, the tumultuous marriage lasted less than nine months.

 

3. Taylor Was the First Actress To Earn $1 Million

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Taylor was the first actress to earn more than $1 million for a single movie, for 1963’s Cleopatra. When the movie was first planned, her $1 million salary was half of the original budget. As the film’s budget boomed to $31 million, Taylor’s paycheck did as well — to $7 million (around $54 million in 2022). From her youth, Taylor had been a bold negotiator and wasn’t afraid to ask for what she was worth or to end a negotiation that wasn’t going her way. Originally, she had little interest in starring in Cleopatra, which inspired her bold pay request of $1 million and 10% of the box office gross, thinking there was no chance 20th Century Fox would agree to her terms. To everyone’s surprise, they did. As she would later say, “If someone is dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.”

 

4. Taylor Popularized Celebrity Perfumes

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When Taylor’s debut fragrance, Passion, hit shelves in 1987, it was not the first celebrity fragrance — but it was the start of the first celebrity perfume franchise in a line ultimately made up of 16 perfumes. Her most popular scent, White Diamonds, generated more than $1.5 billion in the 25 years after it appeared on the market in 1991. With a $20 million marketing budget, White Diamonds was launched with a cross-country tour, lavish magazine ads, and a cinematic black-and-white commercial that aired both on television and in movie theaters. Featuring Taylor at a high-stakes poker game where she tosses one of her diamond earrings into the pot, the actress improvised the now-iconic line: “These have always brought me luck.”

 

5. Taylor’s a Dame

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One of the most legendary stars of Hollywood’s golden age, Taylor was nominated for four Academy Awards, won two — for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf — and ranks as the seventh-greatest female American screen legend by the American Film Institute. Her star power was felt across the pond in her native U.K. and in 2000, the actress was designated Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. Considering it one of the great honors of her life, Taylor humorously said of the event, "Well, I've always been a ‘broad.' Now it's a great honor to be a dame!"

 

6. Taylor’s Jewelry Collection Was Worth More Than $100 million

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Taylor loved jewelry and had a deep knowledge of the pieces in her collection. Despite W magazine naming her collection the third-most important in the world, as she once explained, "I’ve never thought of my jewelry as trophies. I’m here to take care of it and to love it, for we are only temporary custodians of beauty.” The icon died in March 2011, age 79, from congestive heart failure. Her famed jewels were auctioned by Christie’s that same year for $115.9 million and broke the record for the most valuable private collection of jewels sold, with 26 pieces selling for more than $1 million and six for more than $5 million. Many of the pieces were given to Taylor by her seven husbands. Among the record-breaking highlights was Taylor’s 19th-century tiara given to her by third husband, Mike Todd. The sparkling headpiece was worn several times in 1957 and became a cherished object to her after his fatal plane crash in 1958. Additionally, Taylor’s Cartier pearl necklace, named La Peregrina, sold for more than $11 million, setting the record for the most valuable pearl sold at auction at that time. Given to her as a Valentine’s Day gift by her most legendary love, Richard Burton, the 1-inch long natural pearl is one of the world’s most famous, once belonging to Spanish monarchs and appearing in portraits by Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez.

 

 

Source: Timeless Elizabeth Taylor Facts

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Fact of the Day - DÉJÀ VU

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Did you know.... Déjà vu (French for “already seen”) is not just the feeling that you’ve experienced something before — it’s also the sense that the feeling is eerie, uncanny, or even wrong. Scientists are still trying to figure out this mysterious but common glitch in the brain. Here are a few facts about déjà vu, from its early reputation as a paranormal phenomenon to its possible neurological origins.

 

1. Déjà Vu Was First Identified in 1876

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Émile Boirac, a French philosopher, described the sensation of déjà vu as “an illusion of memory” in the journal Revue Philosophique in 1876. “Upon seeing for the first time a monument, a landscape, a person, I suddenly and in spite of myself concluded: I have already seen what I see,” he wrote. “Impossible to say in what place or at what time; the recognition and the feeling of déjà vu was nonetheless very lively and very clear.” For years afterward, perhaps because Boirac also wrote about psychic phenomena and investigated psychic mediums, déjà vu was thought to be a kind of paranormal experience. Today, scientists have accepted the definition of déjà vu as “any subjectively inappropriate impression of familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past.”

 

2. Déjà Vu Is Pretty Common

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It isn’t easy to study such a fleeting and subjective phenomenon, but scientists estimate that about 60% of the healthy population have experienced déjà vu in their lives. Studies have suggested that younger people and those who are highly educated, well-traveled, and open-minded are more likely to experience it. The chance of having déjà vu also seems to decrease with an individual’s age, and it affects men and women equally. Stress and fatigue might trigger déjà vu, but it also occurs when people are relaxed and in social settings. In short, a lot more research is needed to understand it fully.

 

3. Déjà Vu Might Be a Result of Mismatched Brain Signals

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Déjà vu is linked with memory, and memory is associated with the brain’s temporal lobe. This connection has led some scientists to suggest that déjà vu is the result of a “mismatch” between what a person sees and hears in the present and memories stored in the temporal lobe. Usually, when people experience something new, that sensory information gets stored and recalled as short-term memories. During an episode of déjà vu, the new experience bypasses the short-term stage and brings up an older memory. But the mismatch means that the older memory doesn’t feel completely real or appropriate to the situation. Akira O’Connor, a lecturer in psychology and neuroscience at the University of St. Andrews, has suggested that the feeling of uncanniness may stem from decision-making areas in the brain’s frontal lobe “fact-checking” the mismatched signals it receives from the temporal lobe.

 

4. Déjà Vu Is Linked to Epilepsy and Dementia

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Another theory for the origin of déjà vu is based on evidence that people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) or dementia often have déjà vu more frequently and for longer periods, and it doesn’t go away when the patients alter their gaze or surroundings. These experiences seem to suggest that déjà vu is a “random mental event” not tied to people’s perceptions of their environments. Research in the past two decades has focused on identifying the brain networks, in addition to the structures, that might underlie déjà vu; and whether there may be distinct types of déjà vu experienced by healthy people and those with TLE.

 

5. Déjà Vu Is a Plot Device in Countless Novels and Movies

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Characters who have moments of déjà vu pop up in works as different as David Copperfield and The Matrix. In Charles Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield’s two instances of déjà vu suggest premonitions of his future; in the Wachowskis’ 1999 sci-fi thriller, Neo’s observation of a black cat walking by twice in exactly the same way (a “glitch in the matrix”) signals the possibility that worlds exist on multiple planes of perception. Other works in which déjà vu appears include Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and the 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan.

 

6. The Opposite of Déjà Vu Is Jamais Vu

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The sense that your surroundings are new and odd, despite realizing that you are familiar with them, is called jamais vu (“never seen”). It may be associated with different brain signals and it’s much less common than déjà vu, though it also occurs more often in people with TLE. Some researchers think there are more subtypes of déjà vu out there, such as déjà vécu (“already lived through”), in which the person has a strong but misplaced recollection of having lived through an experience that is new; and déjà visité (“already visited”), in which a person recognizes a specific landscape they’ve never been in.

 

 

Source: Intriguing Facts About Déjà Vu

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Fact of the Day - FRAMK SINATRA

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Did you know.... Frank Sinatra was a man of many names — “The Sultan of Swoon,” “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” and “Chairman of the Board,” to name just a few — but it was his reputation as “The Voice” that made him one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century. He began his career in 1935 when he joined a local singing group called the 3 Flashes (later known as the Hoboken Four), and within five years, he had recorded his first big hit, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. By 1942, the U.S. was fully in the grips of “Sinatramania.” His fame continued to grow over the next several decades, thanks to songs such as “My Way,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “New York, New York,” as well as acclaimed performances in films including From Here to Eternity, Guys and Dolls, and The Manchurian Candidate. His personal life was the stuff of legend, too — full of glitz, glamour, and controversy. The crooner rubbed elbows with (and even romanced) some of Hollywood’s biggest stars — including actresses Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, whom he married in 1951 and 1966, respectively — but he also reportedly fraternized with certain unsavory types. Read on for the story behind that and other fascinating facts you may not know about the singular star.

 

1. He Was Thought to Be Stillborn at Birth

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Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey — and his birth was complicated, to say the least. He weighed 13 pounds and had to be delivered using forceps, which left his face permanently scarred, and when he came out, he was blue and unresponsive, so doctors thought he was stillborn. If not for the heroic efforts of his grandmother, who ran her newborn grandson under cold water and slapped his back, Sinatra might never have lived his remarkable life.

 

2. He Was One of America’s First Teen Idols
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Fourteen years before Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips incited a frenzy on The Milton Berle Show, 27-year-old Frank Sinatra caused a commotion with his own surprisingly huge teenage fangirl following. On the first night of a series of shows at New York City’s Paramount Theater in December 1942, Sinatra came face-to-face with a throng of screaming girls. “The sound that greeted me was absolutely deafening,” Sinatra recalled years later, adding that he “was scared stiff” by the pandemonium. That encounter was just the first of many. Young fans — known as “bobby-soxers” because of the ankle socks they often wore — pledged their love and loyalty to the crooner and made a show of swooning over him in public. In the early days of his career, his publicist George Evans added to the hype by auditioning and paying young women to act extra-enthusiastic, but this supposedly faux love affair turned genuine as America fell under the spell of “Sinatramania.”

 

3. The FBI Kept a File on Him for 40 Years

Bobby-soxers weren’t the only ones who followed Sinatra’s every move. The FBI kept a massive file on him, detailing his life and relationships for four decades. They were especially interested in his alleged ties to people involved with organized crime. Sinatra reportedly had a friendship with Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana, and was also said to have received gifts from Joseph and Charles Fischetti, who ran an illegal gambling operation. The file even includes an account of him making an appearance in Atlantic City during the wedding of Philadelphia mob boss Angelo Bruno’s daughter. Sinatra wasn’t exactly shy about his social interactions with mafiosi — they owned many of the establishments where he performed, after all — but he steadfastly denied having any close personal or business connections to the mob, and resented the many rumors implying otherwise. He famously took issue with The Godfather because of the perception that the character Johnny Fontane, a singer with ties to organized crime families, was based on him. According to author Mario Puzo, who wrote the novel that inspired the film, he and Sinatra got into an argument over the insinuation at a restaurant near Beverly Hills. Sinatra’s FBI file wasn’t just a record of his own comings and goings, of course. It also included threats made against him by would-be extortioners and blackmailers, as well as details of the bureau’s investigation into the 1963 kidnapping of his son Frank Sinatra Jr. (Frank Jr. was rescued, and all three kidnappers were caught and convicted.)

 

4. He Was a Member of Two Rat Packs
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The Rat Pack is best known as a group of entertainers including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. They frequently teamed up both on- and off-screen, most famously in the 1960 heist film Ocean’s 11 and as regulars on the Las Vegas circuit. But the Rat Pack most of us know was actually the second iteration of the group. The first Rat Pack formed in the 1950s around actor Humphrey Bogart, whose wife, actress Lauren Bacall, came up with the name after a wild weekend in Vegas with friends including Sinatra, Judy Garland, and David Niven. The story goes that Bacall took one look at the disheveled and sleep-deprived crew and told them they looked like a “rat pack.” The sobriquet stuck, and a Hollywood legend was born. After Bogie’s death in 1957, Sinatra took over the group and added some of his close friends as members, though they reportedly referred to themselves as “the Clan” or “the Summit.”

 

5. He's Credited With Creating the Modern Concept Album
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Sinatra’s contributions to and influence on the music industry cannot be overstated. There’s a reason he was known as “The Voice” — his singular baritone set the standard for many well-known tunes in the Great American Songbook. He is also credited as one of the first artists to pioneer and popularize the modern concept album. Pop records used to be simple collections of songs with one or two hits and little to no connective tissue between them, but Sinatra changed that with 1955’s In the Wee Small Hours. For his ninth studio album, he aimed to create a pervasive feeling of loneliness and heartbreak that stretched from the first song ("In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning") to the last ("This Love of Mine"), and even to the melancholy cover art.

Sinatra went on to create several other thematic albums over the next few decades — standouts include 1956’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! and 1970’s Watertown — but eventually artists such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles adopted the idea and cemented the concept album as an indelible piece of rock ’n’ roll canon.

 

6. He Has an Asteroid Named After Him
Frank Sinatra left this world on May 14, 1998, at the age of 82, but his star power lives on in an actual celestial body. Named 7934 Sinatra in the singer’s honor, the asteroid was discovered in September 1989 by E. W. Elst at the European Southern Observatory. It’s located in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, where it can “play among the stars” and “see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”

 

 

Source: Fascinating Facts About Frank Sinatra

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - FEMALE RULERS

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Did you know.... Even today, the highest position of executive power is held by a woman in only 15 countries (at the time of writing). Yet throughout history — dating back to the early civilization of Sumer — women have been making moves to speak up, fight back, and take action, continuing the millennia-long battle for gender equality in leadership. From Hatshepsut in ancient Egypt and Queen of Sheba in southwestern Arabia to Catherine the Great of Russia and British royals such as Queen Elizabeth I and II and Queen Victoria, many female rulers have carved out their place in history — yet so many other greats have also made major strides but remain overlooked. Here are six of the strongest women who have ever ruled.

 

1. Elizabeth of Russia

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The daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth of Russia (born Yelizaveta Petrovna in 1709) remained relatively quiet during the reigns of her father (who ruled from 1682 to 1725), her mother Catherine (from 1725 to 1727), Peter II (1727 to 1730) and Anna (1730 to 1740). However, when Anna Leopoldonva stepped in as Russia’s regent for her son Ivan VI, Elizabeth staged a palace coup in 1741 and became empress. Elizabeth immediately made bold moves, like ending the government cabinet council system and bringing back the Senate system her father had established. While many of her acts were reminiscent of her father’s reign, she also paved new ground, founding Russia’s first university in Moscow and an arts academy in St. Petersburg, as well as building the Winter Palace. But perhaps her greatest act was in May of 1744, when she demanded all the state prisons cease executions without a royal decree, requiring detailed reports of each prisoner on death row. While this didn’t formally abolish the death penalty, not a single person was executed during her 21-year reign from 1741 to 1761.  

 

2. Queen Tomyris of Massageta

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Among the many paintings hanging in the Red Room of Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland is an oil canvas by Victor Wolfvoet from the 1600s titled The Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris. In it, Persian king Cyrus the Great’s severed head is being forced to drink human blood, literally at the level of Tomyris’ feet. The queen’s triumphant moment symbolizes the victory of the Central Asia nomadic tribe of Massagetae over Persia across the river — a storied part of ancient history, which has cemented her lasting reputation as the “bad-ass Queen of the Steppes,” as described by Red Sonia comic book artist Mark Russell. While many tales of Cyrus’ death have been told over the years, it’s generally believed he died around 529 BCE under the direction of Tomyris, who was merely trying to protect her dominion. After conquering Babylon, Cyrus turned his focus on Massagetae and how to best outsmart Tomyris. His first attempt: offering to marry her. But she saw right through that. Outraged, he started building ways to get across the river, but Tomyris is said to have responded, “Be content to rule in peace your own kingdom, and bear to see us reign over the countries that are ours to govern.” Cyrus refused to give up and captured her son Spargapises in a bloody surprise attack to which she retorted: “Restore my son to me and get you from the land unharmed, triumphant over a third part of the host of the Massagetai. Refuse, and I swear by the sun, the sovereign lord of the Massagetai, bloodthirsty as you are, I will give you your fill of blood.” And it is with that motherly instinct mixed with pure sovereignty that she succeeded in making that promise come true.

 

3. Queen Salamasina of Samoa

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The male-dominated society of Samoa seemed like an unlikely place for a female ruler in the 15th century, but that was exactly what happened when Salamasina was given the “highest office in the western islands of Samoa.” But the traditions were so well-entrenched that several scholars have even referred to her as a “son” of Tuia‘ana Tamaalelagi. Her reign came to be as a complex maneuvering of titles through bloodlines, some which were even strategized before her birth. Her adopted grandmother was set on making her tupu o’Samoa — the ruler of all Samoa. “One day she said, ‘This is it. This is the girl who can bring Samoa together,’” a historian explained in a Tagata Pasifika documentary, Women of Power in the Pacific. While born into the role, Salamasina used it to ignite one of Samoa’s most peaceful periods — 60 years without warfare.

 

4. Queen Boudica of Britain

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Married to the king of Iceni (where modern East Angila is), Prasutagus, the Celtic queen Boudica is thought to have been born around 30 CE to a well-to-do family. When Romans took over southern England in 43 CE, Prasutagus was allowed to continue ruling, as long as he remained an ally. Upon his death 13 years later, both his kingdom and his family’s land were taken by the Romans since he didn’t have any male heirs. To make matters worse, Boudica was publicly flogged and her daughters were raped.

But Boudica was a trained warrior, unwilling to stand aside and watch this injustice and violence. “Nothing is safe from Roman pride and arrogance,” she said. “They will deface the sacred and will deflower our virgins. Win the battle or perish, that is what I, a woman, will do.” And around 60 CE, she led a revolution against the powerful Roman Empire. Against the odds, she defeated the Roman Ninth Legion and destroyed Camulodunum, the center of Roman Britain, as well as London and Verulamium. But in the end, the Roman forces were just too strong. Boudica and her daughters are thought to have taken poison and killed themselves to avoid surrendering.

 

5. Princess Enheduanna of Akkad

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More than 4,000 years ago, Enheduanna, the daughter of the world’s first emperor, Sargon the Great, was given an essential task as the high priestess of the ancient city of Ur at the mouth of the Euphrates River: She had to find a way to to unite the various city-states of Sumer, which her father had conquered in the 24th and 23rd centuries BCE. The priestess title meant that she was also the empire’s supreme religious leader, tasked with joining those who looked up to the Sumerian goddess of love and fertility, Inanna, with her dad’s deity, the goddess of war and sexuality Ishtar. And the Akkadian princess found the most innovative way to do so — with words. As the first known poet, she had such a way with her verses and prayers that she’s seen as one of the most influential figures in religion, literature, and politics, making her “really powerful, and not just in a political domain: ritual supports politics and vice versa,” as St. John’s University art history professor Amy Gansell told National Geographic.

 

6. “King” Tamar of Georgia

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I have long been fascinated by King Tamar,” Hillary Clinton said at a Town Hall with Georgian Women Leaders in 2010 when she was Secretary of State. “And some… may not know that King Tamar was a woman who led what is referred to as the Golden Age in Georgia.” Indeed, the only daughter of the nation of Georgia’s King Giorgi was Tamara (also called Tamar), who the king made a co-ruler in 1178. When King Giorgi died in 1184, his daughter took over completely. While she was and is often referred to as “King Tamar,” she was a female ruler, and a prime example of standing up for women’s rights. Forced into an abusive relationship, she divorced her first husband, Prince George Boboglyubski of Kiev, and sent him into exile. When he recruited a rebel army to take her down, she triumphed once again. After her 1213 death, she was made an Orthodox Church Saint for leading one of the greatest periods in the nation’s history.

 

 

Source: Female Rulers Who Deserve More Recognition

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Fact of the Day - Time

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Did you know... Whether it’s the calendar, the clock, the tides, or the rising and setting of the sun, most of our lives are structured around the passing of time. So it makes sense that the concept of time is woven into many idioms and phrases across virtually every language. In English, we reference time in expressions like  "in a jiffy" and "once in a blue moon." But how much time do these phrases refer to? We say, "it's about time" to learn more about these sayings.

 

In A Jiffy

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To do something “in a jiffy,” is generally understood to be very fast. But this figurative idiom is rooted in the sciences, where a “jiffy” is a concrete, measurable unit. It’s used by scientists in different ways to denote a very, very tiny amount of time. For physicists, it indicates how long it takes for light to travel one femtometer (a millionth of a millionth of a millimeter). A “jiffy” is also used by electrical engineers to measure the length of a single cycle of alternating current where it equals 17 milliseconds. In computer science, it’s variable; a jiffy equals one to 10 milliseconds.

 

In the Nick of Time
Something happening at the very last possible moment is a good way to describe this idiom. The saying goes back to the 16th century when the Tudors reigned in England. A “nick” was a small notch or cut used to portray extreme precision at the time (typically on measuring sticks or in tally marks). So, something happening in a "nick" would mean it happened very close to the beginning. Before the 16th century, the phrase “pudding time” was used instead of “in the nick” because pudding (a savory dish of meat) was the first portion served during Medieval meals. Eventually, pudding (in Great Britain at least)  came to connote  sweet dishes served last (dessert), so the saying was changed to “in the nick.”

 

A Whale of a Time

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Having a “whale of a time” suggests that someone is greatly enjoying themselves. This saying doesn't refer to a specific unit of time, but rather explains the quality of time. The origins of this idiom are murky, but it’s been around for a few centuries. It likely came from seafaring whalers, who began using the term to describe anything unusual or grand (referencing the lore surrounding whales). The idiom began popping up at the end of the 19th century to describe someone exceptionally skilled or brilliant, as in, “She’s a whale in chemistry.” It was also used to describe something very large, as in, “a whale of a crowd,” or finally, something very cheery — “a whale of a time.

 

In a Few Shakes
Be back in a shake” isn’t just an idiom; it’s a real unit of measurement, just like the “jiffy.” In physics, a "shake" is the unit of time used to measure the one step of a nuclear chain reaction. This equals 10 nanoseconds (10 billionths of a second). So technically, it would be impossible for a human to do anything "in a few shakes,” but it’s understood that it's going to be quick.

 

Turn Back the Hands of Time

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Gen Z might be a little fuzzy on this one, but this idiom has been used in songs, movies, and other pop culture references for decades. It refers to an analog clock with a face and hands. The pointers that move around the face of a clock are called “hands,” so, turning back the “hands of time” metaphorically means to go back in time.

 

The Crack of Dawn
This 19th-century saying originated as “at the crack of day,” which would refer to something happening very early in the morning, if not at the exact  moment the sun rises. The symbolism in this idiom refers to the thin line of sunlight that appears to make a bright crack in the sky as the sun appears over the horizon.

 

Once in a Blue Moon

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Once in a blue moon” means it happens incredibly rarely. Someone using the idiom likely doesn’t know exactly how rare that is, but astronomers could calculate it. A “blue moon” is a special type of full moon that happens once every two or three years when a single month has two full moons. That rare, second full moon is the “blue moon.” The idiom as it’s used today was first published in an 1821 book called Real Life in London by Pierce Egan. The line was, “How’s Harry and Ben? – haven’t seen you this blue moon” — a usage very similar to what we might say today.

 

 

Source: It’s about Time — Learn More About a ‘Jiffy,’ a ‘Shake,’ and a ‘Whale of a Time’

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Fact of the Day - FLORIDA EVERGLADES

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Did you know.... The Everglades is the largest subtropical wetland ecosystem in North America, covering 1.5 million acres of central and southern Florida. This protected region is both a national treasure and a vital ecosystem for wildlife such as alligators and wading birds. Over a million people visit this wilderness every year. Before you join them, check out these five fascinating facts about one of the most amazing places on Earth.

 

1. Indigenous Peoples Have Resided in the Everglades for Thousands of Years

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Indigenous populations have long inhabited the Everglades. Among the earliest to call the area home were the Calusa Native Americans, who arrived sometime around 1000 BCE. They developed a powerful society that controlled much of South Florida. The Seminole and Miccosukee peoples also prospered here, and visitors can learn more about the history and culture of the former at the Big Cypress Reservation. Another notable group who made their living off the Everglades are Gladesmen, the husbands and sons of some of the area’s first Anglo American settlers in the early 20th century. They navigated the waterways via narrow boats called glade skiffs, at times spending several months in isolation while hunting and fishing in the vast wilderness.

 

2. The Everglades Is a River

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While many assume that the Everglades is one enormous swamp, it is technically a shallow and slow-moving river. Conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who campaigned against development in the area, christened it the “River of Grass” in 1947 because of the swaying sawgrass marsh that grows up from the waterbed. Water in the region flows south from Lake Okeechobee — Florida’s largest lake — toward the Gulf of Mexico. Freshwater sloughs, which are deep marshy rivers, channel water through the wetlands and flow at approximately 100 feet per day. The two main sloughs are Shark River Slough, on the west, and Taylor Slough on the east.

 

3. The Everglades Is One of the World’s Largest Wetlands — But Was Once Much Larger

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The Everglades covers an area of about 1.5 million acres, making it one of the largest and most complex wetland ecosystems on the planet. Geologists have identified nine distinct habitats here, including coastal lowlands, marine waters, and pine rocklands. However, around 200 years ago, the Everglades formed part of a watershed that occupied almost one-third of Florida. It extended over 3 million acres from the Kissimmee River to Florida Bay; the rest has been lost over time to draining and reclaiming the land for agriculture and urban developments. In 1947, the southern portion of the original Everglades was protected as Everglades National Park.

 

4. It’s Teeming With Hundreds of Fascinating and Endangered Wildlife Species

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Thanks to the various habitats that exist in the wetlands, the region flourishes with extraordinary wildlife. More than 360 bird species have been sighted here, including 16 varieties of wading birds, such as the wood stork and white ibis. Almost 300 fish species are found in the freshwater marshes and along the marine coastline. Consequently, fishing is one of the most popular sporting activities inside the national park. Among the 40 mammal species, two of the most fascinating are the Florida panther and West Indian manatee. The Florida panther was once widespread throughout the southeastern United States, but it is estimated that less than 100 live in the wild today.

 

5. There’s a Missile Base Located Inside the Park

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Perhaps the last thing visitors to the Everglades expect to find when traveling around the breathtaking natural scenery is a preserved relic of the Cold War. Located a short drive from the city of Homestead, the Nike Missile HM-69 defensive base was constructed after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Completed in 1964, it remained in use until 1979 and was once staffed by 140 soldiers. Tours of the barracks, missile barns, and other areas are available between December and March.

 

Source: Surprising Facts About Florida’s Everglades

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Fact of the Day - TITANIC (movie)

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Did you know...  It’s been a quarter century since the historic epic Titanic, directed by James Cameron, hit the big screen on December 19, 1997, and became one of the highest-grossing films of all time. A technical and artistic marvel, Titanic forever changed the cinematic landscape with its groundbreaking set design and special effects, won over audiences with its romantic plotline, and catapulted the careers of now A-listers Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film portrays the tragic sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic during its maiden voyage across the Atlantic on April 4, 1912, from the perspective of two young passengers of different social classes — Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by Winslet) and Jack Dawson (played by DiCaprio) — who fall in love onboard and are forced to navigate the deadly disaster unfolding in the background. Even 25 years later, the film holds multiple records and is etched in pop culture memory. But how much do you know about what went into making Titanic? From the massive, custom-designed set to Kate Winslet’s famous improvised scene and the film’s controversial ending, discover seven facts about Titanic in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary.

 

1. No Film Has Won More Academy Awards Than “Titanic”

Titanic swept the 1998 Academy Awards, winning 11 of the 14 awards for which the film was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Director. That matched a previous record set in 1960 by the religious epic Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston. Only one other film since then has equaled Titanic’s awards haulThe Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2004 — but as of 2022, none has exceeded it. In addition, no film to date has secured more than Titanic’s 14 nominations, a record the film shares with the 1950 comedy All About Eve and 2017’s La La LandTitanic was not only an awards success but also a box-office juggernaut. It held the worldwide record for highest lifetime gross for more than 20 years. The current record-holder is 2009’s Avatar, also directed by James Cameron, but Titanic still holds the No. 3 spot, just behind Avengers: Endgame. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Titanic kept playing in theaters for nearly 10 months after it was released.

 

2. The Watery Set of “Titanic” Held Nearly 17 Million Gallons of Water

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The film’s epic story required an elaborate custom-designed set that cost an estimated $20 million to build. The set’s primary feature was a horizon tank, a specialized tank that allows filmmakers to film an ocean scene with a view of the horizon without plunging actors into the middle of an actual ocean. There are only a handful of these tanks in existence worldwide. According to the technical journal JOM, the tank built for the film at Fox Baja Studios near Rosarito, Mexico (where the majority of the shots were filmed), was the largest shooting tank in the world at the time, containing nearly 17 million gallons of salt water. This allowed for a 774-foot-long set of the ship itself, although not everything was filmed in the giant tank. The dining room and the staircase, for example, were constructed on a hydraulic platform at the bottom of an interior tank, and were designed to be flooded with water piped in from the ocean. After shooting wrapped on Titanic, Fox continued to use the giant tank for other sea epics, including Pearl Harbor (2001) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), until they sold the studio in 2007 to a group of local investors. Since then, recent projects filmed there include the second season of Fear the Walking Dead and the Netflix project Selena: The Series.

 

3. A Utah Video Store Once Charged $5 To Make “Titanic” More Family-Friendl

Titanic earned its PG-13 rating in particular with two famously sexy scenes between Rose and Jack — one in which Rose poses nude so Jack can draw her portrait, and another where the pair steam up the backseat of an automobile in the cargo hold. Even though all we see in the latter scene is a hand against a steamy window, it was too much for some viewers — so the owner of a small video store in Utah came up with a creative solution. Sunrise Family Video in American Fork, about 25 miles northwest of Provo, began charging customers $5 to edit one or both of the racy scenes out of their home VHS copies. For an extra $3, employees would cut out any other scene customers wanted removed. The service was apparently popular, even after Paramount Pictures threatened legal action — by September 1998, the wait time for the service was five weeks.

 

4. James Cameron Drew the Iconic Nude Portrait of Kate Winslet’s Characte

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In the film’s famous portrait scene, Rose instructs Jack to “draw me like one of your French girls.” But it wasn’t actor Leonardo DiCaprio who sketched the portrait of Rose reclining in her suite wearing only the “Heart of the Ocean” diamond — it was, surprisingly, James Cameron. The director, also a talented sketch artist with a background in life drawing, used reference photos of Winslet to make the finished product, which he wanted to get exactly right. “I figured it was time to put all that time I spent doing life drawing to work,” he reflected in his book Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron. In the film, the sketch eventually ends up in Cal’s safe, but in real life, it ended up in the hands of the highest bidder, going for a reported $16,000 at auction in 2011.

 

5. A Mysterious Poisoning Incident Plagued the Crew During Filmin

While filming in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in August 1996, more than 50 people working on Titanic — including star Bill Paxton, producer Jon Landau, and director James Cameron — were sent to the hospital after eating a late-night meal and beginning to feel confusion, nausea, and other strange bodily effects. (Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio weren’t filming in Nova Scotia at the time.) It certainly didn’t help that the dish apparently responsible for the incident — a chowder that crew members alternately described as lobster, clam, or mussel — was apparently quite delicious. It was later determined that the cause of the incident wasn’t food poisoning, but rather someone who spiked it with PCP, a hallucinogenic also known as angel dust. Paxton, Cameron, and set painter Marilyn McAvoy have all recalled the ensuing chaos in the press over the years. Cameron got lost on a set that he’d built himself and later got stabbed with a pen by another crew member feeling the effects. At one point, there was even a conga line. The person responsible has never been found, even though local police apparently investigated the incident for more than two years. Cameron suspected a disgruntled crew member who had been fired the day before for starting trouble with the caterers.

 

6. Spitting On Cal Was Kate Winslet’s Idea

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In a memorable scene from the film, Rose’s fiancé Cal (played by Billy Zane) grabs her arm as she attempts to run away from him, so she spits on him. The original script called for Rose to stick Cal with a hat pin — but Kate Winslet decided to spit in his face instead. Cameron called the move “genius,” a callback to the scene in which Jack taught her to “spit like a man.” Winslet reportedly swished K-Y Jelly around in her mouth beforehand for maximum effect. Zane, however, wasn’t as thrilled about the change, especially after filming multiple takes. “There are few things you remember as well as being spat upon, let [alone] 17 times,” Zane told Entertainment Tonight in 1997. Still, he “felt being on the receiving end of that juice was better than preparing it in one’s mouth prior to launch.”

 

7. James Cameron Insists That Jack’s Death Was Necessary

One of the most controversial scenes in Titanic is Jack’s watery death at the end. Many contend that there was plenty of room for him to survive on the wooden board that Rose was floating on in the icy waters after the ship sank. The TV series Mythbusters even aired an episode on the topic in 2012. The show ran multiple simulations to determine whether Jack’s survival was possible, but in most scenarios, they found that Jack’s death was inevitable, as the weight of their two bodies would have sunk the board too low in the water. To James Cameron, however, the question misses the point entirely. “The script says Jack died. He has to die,” he said in response to the Mythbusters episode in 2012. “So maybe we screwed up and the board should have been a little tiny bit smaller, but the dude’s goin’ down.” Cameron doubled down on his stance in a 2017 interview with the Daily Beast: “Look, it’s very, very simple: You read page 147 of the script and it says, ‘Jack gets off the board and gives his place to her so that she can survive.’ It’s that simple.”

 

 

Source: Unsinkable Facts About “Titanic”

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - UNSUAL TRANSPORTATION

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Did you know... Planes, trains, and automobiles are by no means the only way of getting from one spot to the next. Some forms of transportation are born of necessity — like the Colombian schoolchildren who brave a ride across a river valley every day by zipline. Others are more about pure pleasure, like the commuters in Ottawa who choose to ice skate to work in winter. From bamboo trains to windsleds, these lesser-known modes of transportation may “drive” you (sorry) to reconsider how you get around.

 

1. Suspension Railway (Wuppertal, Germany)

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To get a sense of the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, the world’s oldest suspension railway, watch this two-minute-long film taken from inside the train in 1902. A journey in itself, the film shows the path this futuristic mode of transportation takes through a small German city, where men in bowler hats and women in long skirts walk down unpaved streets alongside horse wagons. Fortunately, the unique train still exists today — with updated cars but the same gorgeous old stations — and carries 85,000 daily passengers. Much of its eight-mile route follows the path of the Wupper River, which the suspended train carriages float 39 feet above.

 

2. Autonomous Personal Pods (London, England)

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Since their 2011 debut, 21 of these driverless pods have zipped back and forth along the trackless 2.5-mile guideway between Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and its parking lot. The lightweight personal rapid transit pods, which collectively carry 800 passengers each day on average, run on electricity and require very little infrastructure, which has reduced emissions and traffic congestion. After parking their cars, passengers walk to one of the two stations and summon their own pods by pressing a button. One of the small vehicles pulls forward to whisk each passenger and his or her luggage directly to Terminal 5 without stopping for other riders. A similar system of autonomous rapid transit, but one that carries multiple passengers at a time, runs between the three campuses of Morgantown’s West Virginia University.

 

3. Yellowstone Snowcoach (Wyoming)

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If you think that Yellowstone National Park is stunning in summer, wait until you arrive in the park in deep winter to find it blanketed in snow. Unlike summer, when the park’s roads are congested with cars and buses, visitors cannot drive their own car in the park during the winter, except for the road between the north and northeast entrances. How then to witness the glory of the quiet season? Arrive on a snowcoach, or what the National Park Service refers to as a modern sleigh. Some of the vehicles look like monster trucks crossed with SUVs and fitted with immense snow tires. Others, like the Bombardier snowcoach, have skis instead of front wheels and tank treads in back. You won’t be able to sneak up on any wildlife in these big vehicles, but you won’t get stuck in the snow, either.

 

4. Bamboo Train (Battambang, Cambodia)

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In Cambodia’s countryside, roads used to be either nonexistent or badly maintained. There was a single set of train tracks built for a national train line that was inconsistent during peaceful times and disrupted by frequent unrest. In search of a reliable way to transport supplies and passengers, a group of ingenious locals used the country’s plentiful bamboo to build platforms that could be mounted on steel wheels and then propelled by pole along the existing tracks through the encroaching tropical foliage, like gondolas through the jungle. In the 1990s, boat engines were added to these bamboo trains or (known locally as “noories”) so that they could move quickly (and noisily) between stops, carrying goods and passengers. The Cambodian government has recently invested in better roads and more train tracks, mostly rendering the noories obsolete, but a stretch still operates mostly for tourists from the Battambang station.

 

5. Windsleds (Madeline Island, Wisconsin)

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In addition to being the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior is also the coldest. The small town of La Pointe — located on Madeline Island in the picturesque Apostle Islands of Lake Superior — finds itself stranded by icy waters several months a year. The town harbor often freezes over, so the ferry that usually runs to Bayfield, on the mainland in Wisconsin, can’t operate. When the water freezes to a consistent 11 inches deep the entire way from Madeline Island to Bayfield, cars and vans can drive on the ice road that forms on the lake. But before that happens, there are a couple of long months without transportation. A pair of brothers who own a construction company on the island designed a vehicle to bridge those cold but not solid days before midwinter: a windsled. With two large fans mounted on the back, this 9,000-pound boat on skis stoutly sleds across the thin ice at 18 miles per hour, ferrying the island’s schoolchildren over to the mainland.  

 

6. High-Speed Maglev Train (Shanghai, China)

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In July 2021, the world’s fastest train made its debut in Qingdao, China, reaching speeds of 373 mph — before it was stashed back in the train shed to await a full network of tracks that could accommodate its maglev (magnetic levitation) technology. The technology works by using the opposing forces of magnets, similar to when you try to push opposites together and they resist coming close. Using that force to elevate the streamlined train cars above the tracks eliminates any friction between track and wheel, which may slow its forward motion. Until enough tracks are built in China for viable commercial service, only one high-speed maglev train is currently operational, a train that connects downtown Shanghai with Pudong International Airport, 19 miles away. Japan and South Korea operate limited maglev service in some areas, and multiple other countries have plans in place to construct their own systems.

 

7. Road-Rail Vehicles (Various Locations)

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The passengers who can board road-rail vehicles are typically limited to railroad employees, but the unique design of these trucks and construction vehicles harken back to more public forms of transportation, like rail buses. In the modern era, road-rail vehicles are used for track maintenance. Train riders can sometimes spot the hybrid vehicles parked in rail yards outside stations or on railroad sidings alongside their route. They have regular rubber tires so that they can run on roadways, but also have retractable steel wheels that run on the rails. The most common form of these vehicles is a large truck, but more specialized versions of forklifts and backhoes have also been fitted with the dual-function undercarriage.

 

8. Central Mid-Levels Escalator (Hong Kong)

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A covered and connected network of 20 escalators and inclined moving sidewalks travel the half-mile distance between Hong Kong’s Central and Mid-Level districts (hence the seemingly redundant name). The world’s longest outdoor escalator system, it climbs nearly 445 feet in altitude along the route. The 20-minute motorized journey travels only one direction at a time, moving downhill from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. (to cater to commuters) and then uphill from 10:30 a.m. to midnight (primarily for tourists). Passengers can exit the covered escalator at cross-streets along the way up and down. The escalators were opened in 1993 as a solution to the traffic that blocked the steep streets that zigzag between these two Hong Kong neighborhoods. While street traffic is still an issue, 78,000 people a day take the moving stairs.  
 

 

Source: World's Most Unusual Modes of Transportation

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Fact of the Day - THE SUN

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Did you know....While there’s a lot happening on Earth, the sun is the real star of our show — pun intended. Hanging out at an average 93 million miles away from Earth, the sun is a perfect mixture of hydrogen and helium that spit-roasts our planet just right as we travel around its bright, glowing body. But although the sun is central to our survival, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it. For decades, space agencies have been sending missions to explore the sun and find answers; in 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to “touch” the sun by entering its upper atmosphere (still some 4 million miles away from its surface). Based on research from these missions and more, here are some of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the sun — and some of our best guesses at what its future might look like.

 

1. The Sun Is Middle-Aged

The sun seems eternal — an ever-present, life-giving fireball in the sky — but not even it can escape the wear and tear of time. Some 4.6 billion years ago, the sun formed from a solar nebula, a spinning cloud of gas and dust that collapsed under its own gravity. During its stellar birth, nearly all of the nebula’s mass became the sun, leaving the rest to form the planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system. Even today, the sun makes up 99.8% of all mass in the solar system.

Currently in its yellow dwarf stage, the sun has about another 5 billion years to go before it uses up all its hydrogen, expands into a red giant, and eventually collapses into a white dwarf. So at 4.6 billion years old, the sun could be best described as “middle-aged” — but we don’t think it looks a day over 3 billion.

 

2. 1.3 Million Earths Could Fit Inside the Sun

The Earth is big, but the sun is bigger — way bigger. Measuring 338,102,469,632,763,000 cubic miles in volume, the sun is by far the largest thing in our solar system, and some 1.3 million Earths could fit within it. Even if you placed Earth in the sun and maintained its spherical shape (instead of squishing it together to fit), the sun could still hold 960,000 Earths. Yet when it comes to stars, our sun is far from the biggest. For instance, Betelgeuse, a red giant some 642.5 light-years away, measures nearly 700 times larger and 14,000 times brighter than our sun.

 

3. It Takes a Long Time for Light to Escape the Sun

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The sunlight that reaches your eyes is older than you might think. It takes a little over eight minutes for photons from the surface of the sun to reach Earth, meaning every time you glimpse the sun (hopefully with sunglasses!), it actually looks as it appeared eight minutes ago. However, this photon blazing at the speed of light is at the end of a very long journey. Once a photon enters the sun’s “radiative zone,” the area between the core and the convective zone (the final layer which stretches to the surface), energy is absorbed after a very short distance into another atom, which then shoots that energy into yet another direction. The overall effect is what scientists call a “random walk,” and the result is that it can take a single photon thousands of years — up to 100,000 years — to escape the sun. As our knowledge of the sun grows, scientists will likely refine this number, but for now it’s safe to say that it takes “a long time.”

 

4. The Sun’s Atmosphere Is Much Hotter Than Its Surface

As you travel farther from the surface of Earth, things usually get colder and colder. Planes traveling at 35,000 feet, for example, travel through the stratosphere and experience temperatures around -60 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the sun’s atmosphere works in exactly the opposite way. While the surface of the sun hovers around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere (or corona) of the sun is hundreds of times hotter, with temperatures reaching up to 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists aren’t exactly sure why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than the surface. One leading theory is that a series of explosions called “nanoflares” release heat upwards of 18 million degrees Fahrenheit throughout the atmosphere. Although small when compared to the sun, these nanoflares are the equivalent of a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb, and approximately a million of them “go off” across the sun every second. Another theory is that the sun’s magnetic field is somehow transferring heat from its core, which rests at a blazing 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, to its corona.

 

5. Different Parts of the Sun Rotate at Different Speeds

The sun doesn’t rotate like your typical planet. While the Earth’s core does rotate ever so slightly faster than the planet’s surface, it mostly moves as one solid mass. The sun? Not so much. First of all, it’s a giant ball of gas rather than a rigid sphere like Earth. The gases at the sun’s core spin about four times faster than at its surface. The sun’s gases also spin at different speeds depending on their latitude. For example, the gases at the sun’s equator rotate much faster than the areas at higher latitudes, closer to the poles. A rotation that takes 25 Earth days at the sun’s equator takes 35 days to make the same journey near the poles.

 

6. The Sun Completes Its Own Galactic Orbit Every 250 Million Years

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Picture a grade-school model of the solar system, and it’s easy to forget that the sun is on its own galactic journey. While the Earth orbits the sun, the sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. On its orbiting journey, it travels roughly 140 miles per second, or about 450,000 miles per hour (by comparison, the Earth travels around the sun at only 67,000 miles per hour). Although blazing fast by Earth standards, it still takes our star roughly 230 million years to complete a full revolution.

 

 

7. In About 1 Billion Years, the Sun Will Kill All Life on Earth …

In 5 billion years, the sun will enter its red giant phase and engulf many of the inner solar system planets, including Earth. However, Earth will lose its ability to sustain life much earlier than that, because the sun is steadily getting hotter as it ages. Scientists estimate that anywhere between 600 million and 1.5 billion years from now, the Earth will experience a runaway greenhouse effect induced by our warming sun that will evaporate all water on Earth and make life on our blue marble impossible (except for maybe some tiny microorganisms buried deep underground). Eventually, Earth will resemble Venus, a hellish planet warmed beyond habitability due to its thick atmosphere and proximity to the sun. Luckily, humanity has at least several hundred million years to figure out a plan B.  

 

8. … But Life Only Exists Because of the Sun in the First Place

You can’t get too mad at the sun for its warming ways, because life couldn’t exist without it. Earth is perfectly placed in what astronomers call a star’s “goldilocks zone,” where the sun isn’t too hot or too cold but just right. This advantageous distance has allowed life to flourish on Earth, with the sun bathing our planet in life-giving warmth. The sun also gives plants the light they need to grow and produce oxygen, which in turn forms the bedrock of the web of life — and it’s all thanks to the middle-aged, hydrogen-burning, massively huge star at the center of our solar system.
 

 

Source: Dazzling Facts About the Sun

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Fact of the Day - THE WILD WEST

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Did you know... The Wild West — sometimes called by the more subdued name of the Old West — is the star of many romanticized American stories. Tales of rebellious bands of outlaws, small-town sheriffs, and brave cowboys have made indelible marks on the cultural landscape, from spaghetti Western films to country music ballads. A well-made cowboy hat is an instantly recognizable symbol of ruggedness. One of the most popular video games of all time is about the Oregon Trail. Old-timey celebrities of the era are still household names — among them Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, and Billy the Kid. The stories below go deeper, from unsung heroes to forgotten tragedies. Which famous mail delivery service was a flash in the pan? What iconic American animal was almost driven to complete extinction? What stomach-churning flavors could you expect to find in an Old West saloon?

 

Here are six interesting facts you may not know about the Wild West.

 

1. Most People Didn’t Use the Pony Express

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The Pony Express mail service — which used horses and riders in a continuous relay to deliver mail — is one of the most iconic operations of the era, but it wasn’t part of everyday life for most people in the Old West. The service was expensive (around $130 in today’s dollars for just a half ounce of mail), and there were cheaper alternatives, like mail sent by stagecoach or ship. Most of the clientele were big businesses, newspapers, and government entities, who all regularly dealt with time-sensitive documents. Even those dispatches were printed on tissue-thin paper to save money, though. The Pony Express also wasn’t around for that long. It lasted just a year and a half, between April 1860 and October 1861, when the Western Union Transcontinental Telegraph Line introduced a safer, much faster, more reliable way to deliver urgent messages. Still, for its brief existence, the Express bridged an important communications gap, delivering around 35,000 pieces of mail overall.

 

2. Some Gold Rush Prospectors Sailed Around South America to Get to the West

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When you picture the pioneers and prospectors of the Old West, you probably imagine long journeys by stagecoach, horse, or wagon train. But at the beginning of the California Gold Rush, before major trails were established, travelers from the American East Coast actually had a harder time getting to California than those seeking their fortunes from China and Australia. While the latter enjoyed travel on well-worn trade routes to reach California, most early American Forty-Niners took an arduous 17,000-mile-long sea voyage all the way around Cape Horn, very near the southern edge of South America. It’s a dangerous patch of ocean to sail through, and was even more treacherous if the ship took a shortcut through the narrow Strait of Magellan. The full voyage often took five months to complete (and could take up to eight months). All told, around 40,000 travelers arrived in California by sea in 1849, most via what’s now known as San Francisco.

 

3. Cowboys Were More Diverse Than in the Movies

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The image of the gunslinging, freewheeling cowboy — strictly, a man on horseback that drives cattle to and from pasture — is burned into the American cultural experience, but it’s missing a few historic truths. For example: As many as one out of four cowboys in the Wild West were Black. When wealthy American enslavers moved to Texas (first part of Spain, then Mexico) in the early 1800s to start cattle ranches, they brought enslaved people with them in droves. Even in 1825, when Texas was still part of anti-slavery Mexico, enslaved folks made up around 25% of the settler population. These ranch owners, many of whom eventually fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, relied on slave labor to keep their cattle contained. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 made slavery illegal (Texas had joined the U.S. in 1845), these ranchers started having a lot of trouble with runaway cattle. Recently freed Black Americans who had been enslaved on cattle ranches were highly skilled in wrangling, and suddenly, paid cowboys were in extremely high demand — so many of them took up the cowboy trade. While they faced high levels of discrimination at the ranches, in towns, and on the plains alike, they forged tight bonds with their white and Mexican colleagues in cowboy crews.

 

4. Whiskey in the Old West Was Not Very Good

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High-end whiskey brands often use Old West imagery to sell their products, but if they were really selling what the cowboys drank, you’d definitely want to save your money. Absent copyright laws and regulation, the quality of “whiskey” varied wildly from saloon to saloon. Something labeled as an aged, straight Kentucky bourbon could actually just be neutral grain alcohol, often distilled from low-grade molasses, re-distilled with a variety of additives that could include burnt sugar, glycerine, prune juice, iodine, tobacco, or even sulfuric acid. Of course, good whiskey existed — but the Wild West is not known for being particularly refined. In the late 19th century, whiskey producers that did not want their name slapped on bottles of boozy tobacco juice made some attempts to self-regulate, and separating real bourbon from the fake stuff led to the “bottled in bond” label that manufacturers still use today. More labeling laws came with the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act.

 

5. One “Gentleman Outlaw” Left Poetry After Robberies

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In his ordinary life, Charles Boles was a well-dressed businessman, sporting a silky white mustache and living in luxury. But he didn’t earn his fortune in the mining business, as he claimed to his San Francisco social circles. In reality, he was robbing stagecoaches, which he took up in middle age. He may have ripped his moniker, Black Bart, from the pages of a thriller about, appropriately, a stagecoach robber, focusing exclusively on Wells Fargo routes — and covering up his well-groomed visage with flour sacks. Keeping with the literary theme, he wrote poetry to leave behind at the scene, although he did so in only two of at least 28 suspected robberies. “I’ve labored long and hard for bread/For honor and for riches,” reads his best-known one, “But on my corns too long you’ve tred/You fine haired Sons of B****s.” His gentlemanly life would ultimately be his undoing. During his last robbery in 1883, he was injured and attempted to flee the scene. In the process, he dropped a handkerchief marked with the number he was supposed to use to pick up his laundry, which Pinkerton detectives used to trace him. Ultimately, he was convicted of just one robbery, and served four years in San Quentin before slipping into obscurity.

 

6. Buffaloes Were Almost Driven to Extinction

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In the mid-19th century, the wild bison — popularly known as buffalo — population was still in the tens of millions; by the end of the 19th century, it had dropped to only around 300. But it wasn’t just increased hunting that spelled the doom of this once-wild species. During this era of rapid westward expansion, the American government ratified around 400 treaties with Plains Indians… only to break the vast majority of them during the fervor of the gold rush, the aggressive pursuit of Manifest Destiny, and railroad construction. These Indigenous tribes, including the Lakota and the Sioux, had become fiercely protective of their land, and the United States government began attempting to confine them to reservations through a storm of military conflicts. Some government officials started promoting mass destruction of buffalo as a way to leave tribes starving and desperate. The craze quickly spread from the military to private companies and citizens. Trappers and adventurers slaughtered the animals by the thousands. Trains would even stop to let passengers shoot bison from the windows. Some notorious buffalo hunters became celebrities — for example, Buffalo Bill, notorious for his anti-Native American sentiment at the time, got his name from his bison body count. The damage had been done, both to Indigenous tribes and the wild buffalo population. However, those 300 buffalo were hiding out in Yellowstone National Park, and Congress voted to protect them on park lands. Today, the vast majority of bison are bred as livestock, but thousands of wild buffalo still make their home in Yellowstone.

 

 

 

Source: Facts You Might Not Know About the Wild West

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Fact of the Day - Geography

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Did you know... Have you ever wondered about the difference between an ocean and a sea? Or questioned why Australia is a continent instead of an island? You’re not alone. The Earth is so mind-boggling in its size and scope that it fosters genuine curiosity. From the deepest point in the world to the Earth’s real age, here are 15 geography facts you’ve always wondered about.

 

1. How Old Is the Earth? (And How Do We Know Its Age?

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Although there is no way to know the Earth’s exact age, scientists have calculated it to be roughly 4.54 billion years old, give or take 50 million years. But how did they arrive at this number? Although scientists have pondered this question for centuries, more recent technological advances have made it easier for researchers to understand the Earth’s age. Above all else, radiometric dating has been the most helpful in figuring out the Earth’s birthday because it allows scientists to pinpoint the age of rocks. The oldest rocks on Earth — 4.03 billion years old — were found in Canada, while Greenland, Australia, and Swaziland are home to rocks that range from 3.4 to 3.8 billion years. To top that, scientists have discovered stardust that’s a staggering 7 billion years old, which means the Earth is relatively young in comparison to the rest of the universe.

 

2. What Does the Prime Meridian Denote

A meridian is an imaginary line that runs from north to south on a map. With 360 meridians around the globe, the prime meridian is the starting point for measuring all other meridians. At a longitude of 0 degrees, it also denotes the separation between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres — with 180 meridians to the east and 180 meridians to the west. The implementation of the prime meridian in Greenwich, England, in 1884 unified the globe in its time and space measurements, resulting in all maps being drawn according to the prime meridian’s longitudinal location.

 

3. What Is the Tropic of Cancer?

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The Tropic of Cancer is a latitudinal line, also known as a parallel, that runs from east to west around the globe. In addition to the equator, it is one of the five major parallels on Earth (the other three being the tropic of Capricorn, the Arctic Circle, and the Antarctic Circle). Located 23.5 degrees north of the equator, the Tropic of Cancer plays an important role in the sun’s geographical relationship to the Earth. It denotes the northernmost point on Earth where the sun is directly overhead at high noon, which happens annually on the summer solstice (for the Northern Hemisphere) in June. After reaching this point, the sun’s rays travel south until they reach the same angle at the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, which happens in December on the winter solstice.

 

4. Why Is the International Date Line Where It Is?

After the world was divided into time zones, the International Date Late (IDL) became one of the most important meridians on Earth. Located halfway around the globe from the Prime Meridian, the IDL approximately follows the 180-degree meridian, with a few zig-zags here and there. Despite its significance, the IDL’s location was chosen arbitrarily, as it can be found in a section of the globe that is almost entirely ocean. In a sense, the International Date Line also makes time travel real — when you cross it, travelers will either add or subtract 24 hours from their day. However, since the International Date Line has no legal status, countries are free to choose which side they are on, which accounts for the IDL’s disjointed course.

 

5. What Is the Difference Between an Ocean and a Sea?

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In everyday vernacular, the words “ocean” and “sea” are often used interchangeably. But in geographical terms, the two are quite distinct. While oceans are referred to as the large bodies of water that take up much of the globe, seas are much smaller entities, a term geographers use to describe the location where the land meets the ocean. For example, the Bering Sea is part of the Pacific Ocean, but since it is located between the landmasses of Alaska and Russia, it is classified as a sea.

 

6. What Is the Deepest Point in the Ocean

Located in the Mariana Trench southwest of Guam, the Challenger Deep — named for the first crew to record its depth — measures an astounding 36,200 feet deep, which is three times deeper than the average depth of the ocean floor. Using a sounding rope, the HMS Challenger calculated the trench’s depth to be 26,850 feet in 1875. As more teams flocked to the western Pacific over the years, researchers used advanced sonar techniques to measure the current recorded depth. To this day, the Challenger Deep is the deepest known point on Earth. But with an astounding percentage of the ocean yet to be explored, we never know what other fathomless depths will be discovered in the future.

 

7. Is a Marsh the Same as a Swamp

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While they may appear similar, marshes and swamps are technically quite different. Although they both are a type of wetland, a swamp can also be compared to a lowland forest, as it is classified based on the type of tree that grows in its ecosystem. For example, depending on the predominant tree, a swamp can be classified as a hardwood swamp, a cedar swamp, or a cypress swamp (like South Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp). On the other hand, a marsh has no trees and instead is dominated by plants and grasses that thrive on the waterlogged soil. Although many people believe the Everglades to be a swamp, it is actually the largest marsh system in the U.S. — before it was partially developed, it took up an astonishing 4,000 square miles of the Florida landscape.

 

Click the link below ⬇️ to read more about Geography Facts

 

 

Source: Geography Facts You've Always Wondered About

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Fact of the Day - JUDY GARLAND

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Did you know... Judy Garland, sometimes billed as “the world’s greatest entertainer,” accomplished a lot during her short and storied life, from her childhood vocal performances and breakout role in The Wizard of Oz to her dramatic comeback in A Star Is Born. Known for her giant voice, even at an early age, and magnetic stage presence, Garland won the hearts of showbiz executives, other entertainers, and adoring fans alike. Today, Garland is well known not just for her performances but for a volatile behind-the-scenes life that made her career both successful and inconsistent — leading to tabloid scandals, breaks from public life, and, eventually, epic resurgences. Despite those slower periods, Garland managed to create an outsized legacy in just 47 years alive on this planet. Where did her stage name come from? Why is her only Academy Award pint-sized? What happened later in her career? These six facts about Judy Garland will have you strolling down a yellow brick memory lane.

 

1. She Started Performing When She Was Two Years Old

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Judy was born to a pair of vaudeville performers and theater operators, and by the time she came along, her two older sisters had already started appearing onstage — so in some ways, showbiz was inevitable. After begging her parents to let her perform, she got her big debut at the family’s theater when she was just two years old. She had been tasked with singing her favorite holiday song, “Jingle Bells,” and got so excited that she sang it more than once in a row. This started a new era of Judy and her sisters performing as a trio, although she emerged quickly as the standout of the group. While all three were talented, and even appeared together in the 1929 short film The Big Revue, it was Judy who caught the attention of performers and promoters on the road. At just 13 years old, she signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and started going to school on the MGM lot with other child stars, including Mickey Rooney.

 

2. The Stage Name “Judy” Came From a Hoagy Carmichael Song

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Judy’s legal name was Frances Ethel Gumm, after her parents, Frank and Ethel. The couple had expected a boy after having two girls, and planned to name him Frank Jr., so Frances was both a compromise and an inside joke. In everyday life, she was simply known as “Baby” or “Baby Gumm.” The last name “Garland” came about while she and her sisters, then known as the Gumm Sisters, were touring. ”Gumm Sisters” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and a popular comedian emceeing a series of performances came up with “Garland Sisters.” “Judy,” however, didn’t come until later, and for a time she was known professionally as Frances Garland. The first name came along after one of her older sisters decided to go by a stage name. Sick of both “Baby” and “Frances,” she picked her own fresh moniker from Hoagy Carmichael’s latest hit, “Judy.” She was especially drawn to one line: “If she seems a saint but you find that she ain’t, that’s Judy.” She encountered some family resistance to the new name, but refused to respond to anything but “Judy” as soon as she’d made her decision, so it stuck pretty quickly.

 

3. MGM Made Her Wear Nose-Altering Accessories

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Garland rose to superstardom with her doe-eyed look, but in her days at MGM, she was considered, however unfairly, a kind of ugly duckling compared to the more willowy starlets in the MGM stable. In her earlier years, when the priority was preserving her childlike look, she carried rubber discs in a small carrying case, along with caps for her teeth. She’d insert the discs in her nose to give it a more upturned look. Because the studio wanted to keep her looking as young as possible, her breasts were also often bound. Once she was a little older and starring in less-childlike roles, such as Esther Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, she started wearing a canvas and metal corset that required two people on either side to pull the strings tight. (It’s a wonder she was still able to sing.)

 

4. "The Wizard of Oz" Helped Earn Her an Itty-Bitty Academy Award

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While she was nominated a few times, Garland’s only Academy Award came in 1940, and it was actually a miniature version of the iconic statuette. Garland was one of just a handful of people to win the special award known as the “Juvenile Oscar,” first awarded to six-year-old Shirley Temple in 1935. The award typically celebrated a young actor’s achievement in the previous year, and in 1939 Garland had starred in two films: Babes in Arms and The Wizard of Oz. At the time she accepted the award, presented by her former classmate and previous Juvenile Oscar recipient Mickey Rooney, she was just a few months shy of her 18th birthday. The award really does look tiny with a teenager holding it — and even tinier next to full-size Academy Awards, like the one her daughter Liza Minnelli won for Cabaret in 1973. The Juvenile Oscar wasn’t awarded every year, so it took a special situation to warrant the special trophy. Just 12 were awarded in the 26 years it existed; the last one was awarded in 1961 to Hayley Mills, who appeared in Pollyanna the year before. A 16-year-old Patty Duke won a regular Best Supporting Actress award two years later.

 

5. She Was Under Five Feet Tall

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Another thing that set her apart from other singer-actresses at the time was her height. Garland stood just 4 feet, 11 inches. When she was a child actress, she was still around the same height as her frequent costar Mickey Rooney, but was already noticeably shorter than other MGM stars such as Deanna Durbin. Ever notice how the famous ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz have enough of a heel to add a couple of inches? And Garland didn’t get any taller with age. Because she had a particularly short upper body, the height difference was a little more noticeable when she was seated next to someone — high heels can’t do much for you if you’re not standing up.

 

6. In 1959, She Was Told She’d Never Work Again

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After decades of overwork, substance abuse, and mental health struggles, Garland was in pretty rough shape by the time her late 30s rolled around. In late November 1959, she was admitted to New York’s Doctors Hospital with a barrage of symptoms both physical and mental, severe enough to be life-threatening. Over the next three weeks, her future seemed uncertain, and doctors drained 20 whole quarts of fluid from her body. After a bevy of tests, the lead physician on her case said that this would be the end of her career, permanently — she was to limit physical activity for the rest of her life, and “under no circumstances” could she work again. Garland apparently responded “whoopee!” before collapsing back into bed. She’d later tell LIFE that the news made her feel “relieved”: “The pressure was off me for the first time in my life.” She did stop working… for a time. She was in the hospital for a total of five months, then four more recovering at her Beverly Hills home. By the end of the summer, she was excited about music again. In a career full of comebacks, this may have been her greatest. Garland embarked on a national tour that got rave reviews, and took a serious, non-singing role in the drama Judgment at Nuremberg that earned her an Oscar nomination. After delivering consistent, showstopping performances across the country, Garland recorded her famous live album, Judy at Carnegie Hall. The show was legendary: Despite a near lack of promotion, it sold out within hours. Audience members left their seats to crowd the stage (she asked them to sit down so others could see, and they obliged). After multiple encores, fans lingered at the stage entrance for an hour and a half. After it was released, the album won four awards at the 1962 Grammys, two attributed to its star performer: Album of the Year (beating the soundtracks to both West Side Story and Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Best Female Solo Vocal Performance, Best Engineering, and Best Album Cover. Garland would continue to have ups and downs for the last several years of her life, but the proclamation her doctor made in 1959 certainly didn’t bear out.

 

 

Source: Interesting Facts About Judy Garland

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