Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CURSE WORDS

Did you know... In 1939, Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable, ended "Gone With The Wind" with the world's most famous dismissive zinger: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." At the time, it was a bit of a shocker, even though the expletive had been uttered a year earlier in "Pygmalion." 

 

People just don't swear like they used to. As long ago as 1944, H.L. Mencken, the great observer of American language, sadly noted that cursing had been on the decline since the Civil War, and that while there was still obscenity, "it is all based upon one or two four-letter words and their derivatives, and there is little true profanity in it." Taboos against what we would today consider pretty mild exclamations like "damn!" "hell!" and "Jesus Christ!" led the swearers of years past to come up with creative substitutions that gave them some measure of emotional release while keeping within the bounds of propriety. These substitutions are called "minced oaths," and they've left their mark on our vocabulary. Gosh, gee, golly, dagnammit, darn, drat, gadzooks, zounds, heck, and cripes are all minced oaths that are still around to charm us with their innocent old-timey ring. But there are others you may not have heard of. They could come in handy when you get tired of ho-hum obscenity and want something with a little more profane zing. 

By Arika Okrent | March 25, 2013 | Updated: Apr 6, 2021

 

1. Bejabbers!

A substitute for "by Jesus!" that is similar to "bejesus!" but jabbier. Bejabbers is an Irish import, along the lines of "faith and begorrah!" Especially good for toe-stubbing.

 

2. Consarn!
A substitute for "damn." From an 1854 Dictionary of Northamptonshire words: "Consarn you! If you don't mind what you're about I'll give it to you!" Slow down and hit both syllables equally hard, and it's like squeezing a stress ball.

 

3. Dad-Sizzle!

A substitute for "goddamn." "Well, dad-sizzle it!" was one way to show you meant business. There were a whole range of "dad" forms, from dadgum to dad-blast, dad-seize, dad-rat, dad-swamp, and many more.

 

4. Thunderation!
A substitute for "damnation," similar to "tarnation" and "botheration." WTF is so tired. Try "What in thunderation?" instead.

 

5. Great Horn Spoon!
Something you can swear by, used in a way similar to "by God!" It seems to have come from seafaring slang, and might refer to the Big Dipper. But you don't need to know the origin to find it useful. Today the strange randomness of the words makes it feel mystically satisfying to shout.

 

6. 'Snails!
A shortening of "by God's nails!" This kind of shortening also gave us "zounds!" (God's wounds), "Gadzooks!" (God's hooks), "strewth!" (God's truth), and "ods bodikins!" (God's little body).

 

7. Gosh-all-Potomac!
This one goes along with the rest of the "gosh all" family: goshamighty, gosh-all-hemlock, gosh all fish-hooks, etc. "Gosh all Potomac" is the earliest one attested in the Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, and it's about time we brought it back.

 

8. G. Rover Cripes!
One of the minced oaths that approximate the sounds in "Jesus Christ!" it uses all the strategies found elsewhere: the "gee" sound (Gee! Jeepers! Jeez!), the middle name (Jesus H. Particular Christ!), and the "cr" sound (Crikey! Criminy! Cracky! Christmas!).

 

9. By St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of purgatory!
There is no St. Boogar—this is a line from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, published in 1759.

 

10. By the double-barrelled jumping jiminetty!
It's too bad the tradition of productive, long "by the" swears like this one have fallen out of fashion. You could load enough nonsense on there to really scare your kids into cleaning their rooms.

 

 

Source: Old-Fashioned Swears to Spice up Your Cussin'

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day -  SODA

Did you know.... Whether it’s sold in a bottle, can, or poured straight from the fountain, there are few drinks more refreshing than soda. Since carbonated water was invented in the 1700s by Joseph Priestley, brands such as Coke and Pepsi have grown into beloved staples of kitchens and restaurants everywhere. And when it comes to soda, there are plenty of interesting tidbits and historical anecdotes bubbling beneath the surface — like the six facts below.

 

1. Dr Pepper Was Once Marketed as a Warm Beverage

Dr Pepper was first served around 1885 at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas. The drink was created by Charles Alderton in an effort to capture the fruity and syrupy smells wafting through the store. Though Dr Pepper was initially served cold at the time, the drink was briefly marketed as a warm beverage, a plan that was developed to ensure the brand’s continued popularity throughout the colder holiday months. Hot Dr Pepper was first conceived of in 1958, when company president Wesby Parker found inspiration while visiting a bottling plant during a blizzard. The result was a new recipe developed by the company that encouraged consumers to heat Dr Pepper over a stovetop to 180 degrees and then pour it over a thin slice of lemon. The drink was marketed in ads using taglines such as “Devilishly Different” and “Winter Warmer,” and an alcoholic version containing rum, called the Schuss-Boomer, was later popularized. Hot Dr Pepper remained a beloved holiday drink into the 1970s, and though it has since faded in popularity, the beverage continues to be made each year by certain pockets of loyal fans.

 

2. Pepsi Pioneered the Use of 2-Liter Bottles

While it may seem like 2-liter soda bottles have been around forever, they were first designed by PepsiCo in 1970. The idea was the brainchild of John Sculley, a Pepsi marketing vice president at the time and the future CEO of Apple. In 1970, Pepsi was running a distant second in the soft drink market, and Sculley was tasked with designing a new bottle to compete with Coca-Cola’s iconic “contour” bottle. Instead of creating a comparably tiny single-serve bottle, Sculley created the largest bottle he could in an effort to get more of the brand’s product to Pepsi’s customers. Sculley was so successful in this endeavor that he even sold the new bottle to Walmart, a store that had previously refused to sell soda for fear that the bottles broke too easily. While meeting with Walmart founder Sam Walton, Sculley “accidentally” dropped the plastic bottle on the floor to prove its durability, convincing Walton to carry the product.

 

3. 7Up Once Contained Mood Stabilizers

While it’s somewhat common knowledge that early versions of Coca-Cola contained cocaine, it wasn’t the only soda to contain unusual and potentially harmful ingredients. In fact, 7Up’s formula used to contain prescription mood stabilizers upon its launch in 1929 — specifically, a drug known as lithium citrate, which is used in modern times to treat conditions such as bipolar disorder. At the time of 7Up’s inception, the soda was called “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda,” which was descriptive of the product’s actual ingredients at the time, even though it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Though the product’s name was later shortened to 7Up in 1936, it wasn’t until 1948 that lithium citrate was deemed potentially harmful and removed from the recipe after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration outlawed the use of the chemical in sodas.

 

4. Different U.S. Regions Call Soft Drinks “Soda,” “Pop,” or Even “Coke”

Americans are passionate about the words they use to refer to their soft drinks, and different U.S. regions have their own monikers for the sugary beverages. On the West Coast, in New England, and in pockets of the Midwest, you’re more likely to hear the drink referred to as “soda.” But throughout the majority of the rest of the Midwest, as well as the Pacific Northwest, “pop” is a more commonly used term. Things get confusing in the South, as Southerners use the word “coke” to refer to all soft drinks in general, even if they have nothing to do with the Coca-Cola brand. This may have something to do with the fact that “coke” stems from Coca-Cola having been founded in Atlanta, with Southerners proving loyal to their local brand. There are a few hyper-regional terms for these drinks, too. Some 6% of Americans — the majority of whom can be found in Louisiana and North Carolina — use the phrase “soft drink” even in a casual context. In parts of the Deep South, “cocola” is more commonplace, whereas older Americans in the Boston area call the drinks “tonic.”

 

5. Coca-Cola’s Yellow Cap Signifies That It’s Kosher for Passover

While most plastic bottles of Coca-Cola boast a red cap that matches their usual color scheme, in the spring you may notice bottles with yellow caps appearing on shelves. That yellow cap signifies that the drink is kosher for the Jewish holiday of Passover. Prior to 1935, Coke wasn’t kosher at all, but that year the company swapped out beef-tallow glycerin for a vegetable counterpart that made the drinks both kosher and vegan. In 1980, however, Coke began using high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar, making the beverage non-kosher for Passover according to Jewish dietary laws. In order to remedy the situation, Coca-Cola now produces a special yellow-capped bottle each year that signifies the high fructose corn syrup has been swapped out for a sucrose sugar substitute, thus making this version of Coke kosher for Passover.

 

6. Coca-Cola Ads Helped Popularize Santa Claus’ Modern-Day Likeness

Coke has a surprising connection to Santa Claus. In 1931, Coca-Cola hired illustrator Haddon Sundblom to paint Santa Claus for a series of holiday advertisements. Using friend and retired salesman Lou Prentiss as a model, Sundblom produced a version of Santa that depicted the jolly, bearded man with rosy cheeks that we all recognize today. Sundblom would continue painting Santa for Coke’s advertisements until 1964. While the character of Santa Claus predated Coke, of course, he had been depicted in a variety of ways, ranging from tall and thin to looking like an elf. An 1862 drawing of Santa Claus by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly portrayed Santa as a tiny figure compared to the booming presence he is today, though Nast would also be the first to draw Santa wearing a red jacket, and some other Nast drawings showed a version of Santa that resembles the jolly man we now know. Yet all in all, it wasn’t until Coca-Cola debuted its holiday advertisements that Americans began to fully associate Santa Claus with the large, jovial figure we know him as today.

 

 

Source: Satisfying Facts About Soda

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PINOCCHIO

Did you know... The 1940 animated film Pinocchio is a beloved classic, featuring lovable characters and technical achievements that have stood the test of time. Despite being just the second animated feature Disney ever produced, the movie is often considered a masterpiece, and one that helped solidify Walt Disney as a visionary. In celebration of the film’s timeless appeal, here are six facts about Pinocchio that we promise are no lie.

 

1. Jiminy Cricket Wasn’t Originally Meant To Be Narrator

It may be hard to imagine the story of Pinocchio without Jiminy Cricket, but in the original source material, the beloved talking insect had a significantly smaller role. In Carlo Collodi’s 1883 book Pinocchio, from which the movie was adapted, Jiminy was smashed to death early on by an angry Pinocchio, who himself was also a much different and more mischievous character. Disney felt that Collodi’s original interpretation wasn’t suitable for the silver screen, and decided to reimagine Jiminy as the narrator and voice of Pinocchio’s conscience. Disney tasked animator Ward Kimball with conceiving of a new design for the creature, which ultimately featured a tiny top hat and cane, and actor Cliff Edwards was brought aboard to voice Jiminy. Edwards was known for his rendition of “Singin’ in the Rain,” and as Jiminy Cricket, he sang “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which earned the film an Oscar (more on that below). Jiminy Cricket, of course, was a hit and continued to play a valuable role in future Disney anthology series; he has even been referenced in modern Disney Pixar films, such as A Bug’s Life and Up.

 

2. Mel Blanc Voiced a Character Without Any Lines

You’ve probably heard the voice of Mel Blanc, the man behind beloved cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Barney Rubble, and more. But toward the beginning of his career, Blanc was still trying to make a name for himself, and repeatedly pushed Disney for an audition. His efforts finally paid off when he was cast as Gideon the cat in Pinocchio. He was paid $50 per day for 16 days of recording, during which he was asked to record several takes of his “drunk” impression, which features multiple hiccups. Upon the film’s release, Blanc was dismayed to find that all of his dialogue had been cut — except for a single hiccup. While Blanc would go on to have a prolific voice acting career working for Warner Bros., Pinocchio would be the only Disney-produced film he lent his talents to. Blanc wasn’t the only famous voice actor to appear as an animal in Pinocchio, however. Thurl Ravenscroft was the voice behind the villainous Monstro the whale — and would eventually go on to serve as the voice of the cereal mascot Tony the Tiger.

 

3. “Pinocchio” Was Initially a Box-Office Bust Because of World War II

Made with an estimated budget of $2.6 million, Pinocchio initially struggled to earn its money back upon its debut in February 1940. The ongoing global conflict of World War II prevented the film from being released in European and Asian markets, and the result was dismal box-office numbers that especially paled in comparison to the film’s predecessor, Snow White. Initially, the film only grossed around $1.4 million. Thankfully, things improved from there: Beginning with its first re-release in 1945, after the war ended, Pinocchio went on to net $164 million at the box office, making a large profit in the end.

 

4. Walt Disney’s Favorite Character was Figaro the Cat

Of the many cats that appeared in Pinocchio, one stood out above the rest as Walt Disney’s favorite character. That was the black-and-white kitten Figaro, who went on to star in several short films of his own, including 1943’s Figaro and Cleo (which also featured Cleo the goldfish from Pinocchio). Figaro even appeared alongside other major characters such as Pluto and Minnie Mouse in various Disney titles that were unrelated to the Pinocchio universe. In fact, Disney decided to make Figaro Minnie Mouse's official pet, first replacing Minnie’s dog Fifi in the 1944 cartoon First Aiders. All told, Figaro’s minor role in Pinocchio was the beginning of eight total appearances in the Disney universe.

 

5. “Pinocchio” Was the First Animated Feature to Win a Competitive Academy Award

Walt Disney took home his first set of Oscars in 1933, seven years before Pinocchio’s release. In that ceremony, his short cartoon called Flowers and Trees was awarded an Oscar in the Best Short Subject (Cartoons) category, and Disney himself received a special award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. Disney also earned a unique honor in 1939 for his work on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for which he was awarded a custom Oscar statuette placed alongside seven miniature ones. At the 1941 Oscar ceremony, the success of Pinocchio earned Disney yet more accolades — the film became the first animated feature to win an Academy Award. Two, actually: The movie won both Best Original Score and Best Original Song, the latter for “When You Wish Upon a Star.” It was a rare feat for many decades, as no other animated film took home a Best Original Song Oscar until 1989’s The Little Mermaid finally won for “Under the Sea.”

 

6. Multiple Songs Were Cut From the Film

Known for its award-winning music, the final release of Pinocchio also left several songs on the cutting-room floor. The two most complete were “Three Cheers for Anything” and “Straight Ahead.” The former was meant to be sung by the wayward boys on their journey to Pleasure Island, and described all the “rotten things they’re going to do, like swiping a pie or telling a lie.” It was cut for pacing, however, as the tune dragged on for too long. “Straight Ahead,” meanwhile, was sung by the Blue Fairy (the being who brings Pinocchio to life), and offered words of wisdom to Pinocchio. That song was cut as Jiminy Cricket’s role in the film grew, thus rendering its message less important. There are also several snippets initially meant for larger songs that are instead used for a handful of measures at various points throughout the soundtrack. And while some songs copyrighted by Disney in 1939 were left off the final release, one of those, “Figaro and Cleo,” was later performed in the 1943 cartoon of the same name.

 

 

Source: Classic Facts About the 1940 Film “Pinocchio”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PASSOVER

Did you know... Every spring, Jews celebrate when God led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt. The commemoration begins with a seder (Hebrew for “order”), a ceremony full of symbolic foods and rituals. Over the following week, Jews may eat matzo, a flat cracker that doesn’t have leavening (yeast, baking powder, or baking soda), and strictly avoid leavened flour products like bread and cookies. (Other dietary restrictions during Passover also apply for some Jews, depending on their culture.) The restriction against leavened foods honors the fleeing slaves who didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise, and ate it flat instead. The seder story comes from the second book of the Old Testament, Exodus, a Latin word that means “exit” or “departure.” It is a story of miracles, acts of bravery, and deliverance from oppression that has inspired people for centuries.

 

1. The Passover Story Features Some Strong Women

In the first chapter of Exodus, the king of Egypt, probably Pharaoh Ramses II, commands two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill all newborn boys they deliver for Hebrew women. At the time, the Hebrews in Egypt were enslaved. Risking his anger, the midwives let the boys live. When the pharaoh asks why, they give him an excuse: Hebrew women are “vigorous.” That is, “Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” Pharaoh does not punish the midwives, but orders the Hebrews to drown all newborn boys in the Nile. The defiance continues, with women at the center. First the mother of Moses defies the law, placing the newborn Moses in a basket to float on the river, followed by his sister, Miriam. When the pharaoh's daughter comes to bathe in the Nile and sees the basket and that it holds an infant, Miriam steps in and offers to find a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child. Pharaoh's daughter agrees, later adopting Moses as her son.

 

2. The Name of the Holiday May Mean “Compassion”

Turning the tables on the pharaoh, God orders the death of the first-born sons of the Egyptians. Jews are instructed to put blood from a sacrificed lamb on their doorposts as a sign to God to “pass over” their houses and allow their children to live. Jews learn that this is the origin of the holiday’s name, which is Pesach in Hebrew and Passover in English. However, the Hebrew term translated in that passage of Exodus as “pass over” has also been translated as meaning “having mercy” or “I will have compassion.”

 

3. The Last Supper May Have Been A Seder

Religious paintings, most famously one by Leonardo da Vinci, show Jesus, who was Jewish, eating his last meal with his disciples gathered around him. The meal is described as a seder in the Gospel of Mark and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  Although scholars have found evidence that suggests the meal was a seder, there are arguments against this idea. The Gospel of John places the crucifixion as being on “the day of preparation of the Passover,” at noon, which suggests the last supper was the evening before. Whatever actually happened, some American Christians celebrate their own seders or join with Jews in interfaith services.

 

4. Passover Inspired a Black Spiritual

“Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old pharaoh to
Let my people go
Now, when Israel was in Egypt land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go”
The lyrics from this spiritual, immortalized by Paul Robeson and Louis Armstrong, quote directly from Exodus 5:1. When enslaved Africans sang it while working in pre-Civil War America, their enslavers may have heard only a biblical reference, and not understood the song as rebellious against their enslavement.

 

5. Abraham Lincoln Was Assassinated During Passover

Americans learned on April 10, 1865 that the South had surrendered and the bloody Civil War was finally over. It was the morning before Passover; Jews held their seder, their own celebration of freedom from slavery, that very night. When President Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, and died the next morning, Jews would hear the news as they were on their way to synagogue or already worshipping on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, with the specific service for Passover. In Congregation Shearith Israel, in New York, the oldest Jewish congregation in the nation, the rabbi recited the prayer for the dead for Lincoln, although it was not the custom to recite it for non-Jews. Following the prayer for Lincoln, the service most likely moved to the story of the Valley of the Dry Bones from the Book of Ezekiel, in which the prophet sees a field of bones fill with life and become a “great army.” There is a moving connection here to Lincoln’s own words: in his famous “House Divided” speech, Lincoln uses language referring to that passage. Around the country, the first eulogies for Lincoln were delivered by rabbis.

 

6. Israeli Backpackers Flock to Huge Seders Abroad

Young Israelis who have just completed their military service often go backpacking for months before they return to Israel for their education. Many go to Nepal, sometimes between visits to Thailand and India, traveling in groups. Most Israelis go to seders, even if they aren’t religious, so the international Hasidic Jewish organization Chabad holds a huge dinner every year in Kathmandu for some thousand guests. There are also seders for thousands in Gondar, Ethiopia, and on the Thai Island of Ko Samui.

 

 

Source: Facts About Passover

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BOARD GAMES

Did you know... Game night is a great way to let loose, foster some friendly competition, and bring people together. Even losing is fun when you do it with loved ones. But with literally thousands of games to choose from, narrowing down your options can be a little overwhelming. We’ve picked a few of our favorites to help guide you, whether you’re looking for classic board games, team-based party games, strategic tabletop games, guessing games, or something else. One thing they all have in common? A good time!

 

All featured products and deals are selected independently and objectively by the author. Interesting Facts may receive a share of sales via affiliate links in content.

 

1. Sequence

Sequence has been a game night staple since the 1980s. Playable by as few as two players and as many as 12, it’s part board game, part card game, part strategy, part luck of the draw. The object of the game is to complete sequences, or rows of connecting poker chips, by playing cards that correspond to spaces on the board. Some lucky cards even let you remove your opponent’s chips to block them from completing a sequence. (Recommended for ages 7 and up.)

 

2. Carcassonne

An award-winning game that is particularly popular in Europe — where its namesake, the French city of Carcassonne, is located — this board game is different from many others in that it requires you to actually build the board as the game progresses. Players lay terrain tiles (featuring various combinations of cities, roads, fields, or monasteries) to create a medieval landscape and claim control of different territories with their “meeples.” It’s sort of similar to Catan but perhaps a little simpler, and the versatility of the build-as-you-go board ensures you’ll never play the same game twice. (Recommended for ages 7 and up.)

 

3. Ticket to Ride

All aboard this cross-country adventure game! Ticket to Ride is a favorite of family game nights, and has been for nearly two decades. Accessible, fast-paced, and engaging, it can be played by two to five people, who will have to channel their inner railroad magnates to create literal paths to victory across the United States. The object of the game is to rack up points, which you do by claiming railway routes throughout North America and connecting the cities on your destination tickets. It requires a certain amount of strategic thinking, but it’s easy to learn and endlessly replayable. (Recommended for ages 8 and up.)

 

4. Monopoly

First sold in the 1930s (and inspired, ironically, by the anti-monopolist Landlord’s Game), Monopoly is one of the bestselling board games of all time, with more than 275 million copies sold in the last 90 years. Players have been buying, selling, and charging rent on the game’s fictional properties for decades, all in a bid to “dream and scheme their way to riches.” We’re partial to classic Monopoly — and its rich history — but there are also thousands of special editions themed around pop culture phenomena such as Stranger Things, Star Wars, Disney animated films, and Pokémon. You can’t lose with any of them — unless, of course, you go bankrupt. (Recommended for ages 8 and up.)

 

5. Codenames

Codenames is a great option if you don’t have a lot of time — it can be played in 15 minutes, according to the box — or if you want a quick party game you can replay over and over for hours on end. The premise is simple: At the start of the game, each team elects a “spymaster,” and 25 cards bearing random words (or “codenames”) are laid out in a five-by-five grid. A separate key card, viewable only by the spymasters, indicates which cards in the grid are the codenames for each team’s secret agents. The spymasters have to use simple one-word clues to get their teammates to correctly identify all of their agents, without accidentally choosing codenames belonging to the other team or — worse — unmasking the dreaded assassin. (Recommended for ages 14 and up.)

 

Click the link below  to read more about Board Games.

 

 

Source:  Endlessly Entertaining Board Games for Your Next Game Night

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BONES

Did you know.... Bones are the unsung heroes of biology. Always working beneath the surface, they’re the ossified architecture that makes our bipedal existence possible — not to mention the existence of thousands of other species. And their amazing durability gives archaeologists and paleontologists an unparalleled glimpse into early human history and beyond. Here are seven amazing facts about bones to shine some much-needed light on these building blocks of our bodies.

 

1. Less Than 5% of Animal Species on Earth Are Vertebrates

All animals on Earth fall into one of two categories: vertebrates or invertebrates. This distinction is based on whether an animal has a spinal column. (Those that do, including humans, are the former; those that don’t are the latter.) Although all mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish are vertebrates, they’re vastly outnumbered by invertebrates, which include worms, sea sponges, arthropods, and jellyfish (not really fish, despite their name). In fact, of the estimated 1.37 million surviving species on Earth, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, only 66,800 have a spine. It turns out that a backbone is a bit of a biological rarity. The largest invertebrate group by far is that of the class Insecta, which includes around 900,000 known living species (about 80% of the species on Earth) and millions more that have not yet been described by science. (Some estimates put the number of unnamed insect species as high as 30 million, though it’s likely less than that.) Insects don’t have spinal columns; instead, they have exoskeletons, which, while lacking a backbone, do have some spine-like features. And speaking of spines…

 

2. Pythons Have Nearly 20 Times More Vertebrae Than Humans

The average human is born with 33 distinct vertebrae, which are connected to one another through flexible joints called facets. Birds, meanwhile, have anywhere from 39 to 63 vertebrae. But even they can’t compete with snakes, especially large species of snakes like pythons. The Australian Oenpelli python (Morelia oenpelliensis), for example, may have as many as 600 vertebrae. That’s nearly three times as many bones as an adult human has in their entire body — though only two times as many as that same human has at birth. Which brings us to the next fact…

 

3. Human Babies Have More Bones Than Adults

Babies pack a lot of bones in their tiny bodies — around 300, in fact, which is nearly 100 more than adult humans have. The reason for this is biologically genius: These extra bones, many of which are made entirely or partly of cartilage, help babies remain flexible in the womb and (most crucially) at birth, making it easier for them to pass through the birth canal. As a baby grows into childhood and eventually early adulthood, the cartilage ossifies while other bones fuse together. This explains the “soft spots” in a baby’s skull, where the bones have yet to fuse completely. It also explains why kids may be more susceptible to injury — fracture rates are high around the ages of 11 to 15, when many young people experience growth spurts due to puberty. This is because children’s bones have growth plates, which are particularly sensitive to trauma. Those growth plates eventually close as we age, and a child’s bone count decreases until it settles at 206. Our bones continue to change in a process called “bone remodeling” throughout our lives, but the number typically remains stable once we reach adulthood.

 

4. Half the Bones in Our Bodies Are in Our Hands and Feet

Perhaps surprisingly, the lion’s share of those 206 bones in the human body are in our hands and feet. Each foot contains 26 bones, and each hand contains 27, for a grand total of 106 bones in just those four extremities. Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), the hand and foot are similar in terms of bone structure. On our hands, for example, each finger has three bones — the distal, middle, and proximal phalanges — except for the thumb, which has two (just the distal and proximal). Our feet are the same, with three phalanges in each of the smaller toes, and two in the big toe. The five metacarpals — that is, the bones that make up the palm of your hand — are also arranged similarly to the five metatarsals in your foot. The hand, however, has an extra bone called the pisiform, which is located on the outside edge of the wrist and attaches to various tendons and ligaments.

 

5. The Femur Is the Longest and Strongest Human Bone

The bones in our hands and feet are relatively small, though not as small as the stapes, the smallest bone in the human body, found in the middle ear. On the other end of the spectrum is the femur, notable for being the longest and strongest bone. The average adult femur — named for the Latin for “thigh,” where it’s located — stretches to about 18 inches in length and can support as much as 30 times the weight of your body. Because of this, it plays a crucial role in our ability to stand and move. It also connects to many muscles, tendons, and ligaments in our hips and knees.

 

6. Only One Bone Isn’t Connected to Another Bone in the Human Body

Bones provide necessary skeletal scaffolding, and that means they’re usually connected to other bones via joints woven together with ligaments and tendons. However, there is one notable exception in the human body — one bone that is not connected to any other bone nearby. That exception is the hyoid, a small U-shaped bone in the neck, at the root of the tongue. Instead of connecting to other bones, the hyoid is linked only to muscles, ligaments, and cartilage, making it something of a “free-floating” loner. That’s not to say it’s superfluous, though. The hyoid aids in the very vital human activities of talking, chewing, and swallowing, so it’s actually pretty important.

 

7. Your “Funny Bone” Is Not a Bone

Your “funny bone,” named as such for its location near the humerus bone — “humorous,” get it? — is not really a bone at all. Rather, it’s part of the ulnar nerve, which runs from your neck all the way to your hand. Nerves are usually protected by bone, muscle, and fat, so they can perform their bioelectrical functions undisturbed, but a small part of the ulnar nerve in the back of the elbow is a little more exposed. There, the nerve is protected only by a tunnel of tissue, known as the cubital tunnel, so when you hit your “funny bone,” the ulnar nerve presses against the medial epicondyle (one of the knobby ends of the humerus bone), which in turn sends a painful sensation throughout your lower arm and hand. And because the nerve gives feeling to the pinky and ring fingers, those two digits may feel particularly sensitive compared to your other three fingers.

 

 

Source: Spine-Tingling Facts About Bones

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - AUCTIONS

Did you know.... From fine art to classic cars, many incredibly valuable items have been offered up at auction. But while some bidders have their sights set on buying a prized gem, others are more keen on bidding for quirky and unusual items that are once-in-a-lifetime finds. Certain people will pay any price for the chance to add a weird relic to their collection, whether it’s a decades-old pastry or even the surgically removed body part of a famous musician. Here are six of the strangest items ever sold at auction.

 

1. A Slice of Cake From Queen Elizabeth II’s Wedding

On November 20, 1947, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were married in a lavish ceremony. Following the service, a reception was held at Buckingham Palace, where the 2,000 guests in attendance were each given a slice of the 9-foot-tall, four-tier wedding cake designed by confectioner Fredrick Schur. The indulgent cake included ingredients from across the British empire: dried fruit from Australia, butter from New Zealand, flour from Canada, brandy from South Africa, and Jamaican rum. But while some guests chowed down on the delicious dessert, others held on to their portions for decades to come. In 2013, a slice of said cake went up for sale at Christie’s auction house, with an eventual hammer price of £1,750 (more than $2,000 today). The slice was wrapped and placed in a box inscribed with the words “EP Buckingham Palace 20th November 1947.” The package also included a card reading, “With the Best Wishes of Their Royal Highnesses The Princess Elizabeth and The Duke of Edinburgh.” Despite some evident decay, the dessert — which had been given to a man who formed part of the Guard of Honour at the royal wedding — attracted many bids. Two years later, in 2015, yet another slice of the cake went up for auction, this one selling for £500 (around $610 now). 2022 saw a portion of Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding cake go up for sale yet again, and this time the auction house warned potential buyers that the item is no longer edible.

 

2. The Self-Destructing Banksy Painting

Banksy is an anonymous graffitist who is heralded as one of modern art’s most prolific figures. Among his most notable works is 2006’s “Girl with Balloon,” a canvas version of which was put up for auction in 2018. Moments after the work sold for $1.37 million, a motor within the painting’s frame initiated a self-destruct sequence. The canvas began slowly descending through the frame, which shredded part of the spray-painted work into dangling strips while a shocked auction gallery looked on. Banksy — who later posted an anonymous video taking credit for the self-destructive act — claimed that he had installed the shredder to destroy the painting should it ever be auctioned. While Banksy’s intent may have been to render the painting worthless, it did quite the opposite. In 2021, the partially shredded work, now renamed “Love Is in the Bin,” went up for auction yet again, this time selling for $25.4 million.

 

3. John Lennon’s Tooth

Sometime between the years 1964 and 1968, the Beatles’ John Lennon gave his housekeeper, Dot Jarlett, a tooth of his to dispose of. Lennon had had the tooth removed at the dentist earlier that day, though later changed course and said that Jarlett should give the tooth to her daughter, who was a huge Beatles fanatic. The family held on to Lennon’s stained and partially rotted tooth for decades before the molar ultimately hit the auction block in 2011, when it sold for $31,200. The tooth was purchased by a Canadian dentist named Michael Zuk, who even wrote a book about celebrity teeth. He claimed that when he heard about the auction, he “had to have it.” Oddly enough, the tooth isn’t the only body part of a famous musician to sell for thousands. In 2009, a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair from the year 1958 sold for $18,300.

 

4. Justin Timberlake’s Leftover French Toast

Around the early 2000s, eBay was all the rage, as the online auction site had debuted just a few years prior. At the same time, few bands were more popular than ’N Sync, and heartthrob Justin Timberlake was a member. On March 9, 2000, Timberlake participated in an interview at New York’s Z-100 radio station, during which he partially consumed some French toast. Rather than throw the two slices of uneaten French toast in the trash, the station DJ took the food and listed it on eBay. The half-eaten breakfast sold for $1,025 to 19-year-old ’N Sync superfan Kathy Summers, who claimed that she planned to “probably freeze-dry it, then seal it… then put it on my dresser.”

 

5. The World’s Largest Cat Painting

In 2015, Sotheby’s put the purr-fect painting up for auction. Considered the world’s largest cat painting, “My Wife’s Lovers” was created around 1893 by Austrian artist Carl Kahler, who spent three years on it. The painting measures 75 inches by 102 inches and weighs a staggering 227 pounds — so humongous that Sotheby’s had to construct a special reinforced wall to ensure it could be safely displayed. Kahler was commissioned to create the painting by San Francisco philanthropist Kate Birdsall Johnson, a devoted cat lover who cared for around 350 cats. Of those 350, 42 made it into the piece, most prominently her cat Sultan, who had been purchased for $3,000 on a trip to Paris. Cat lovers came out in droves to view the painting in person while it was on display prior to the auction, with the work ultimately selling for a whopping $826,000.

 

6. The Roman Empire

Didius Julianus is far from the most notable Roman emperor, but he was certainly one of the wealthiest. On March 28, 193 CE, the then-reigning emperor, Pertinax, was assassinated by Rome’s Praetorian Guard, leaving no apparent successor. The soldiers — who served as protectors of the throne — vowed that no successor would be allowed without their approval, which in turn led to an auction to determine who would ascend to the throne. Didius Julianus, who boasted vast wealth, outbid Pertinax’s father-in-law, Titus Flavius Suspicianus, to purchase the position of Roman emperor for himself. Julianus’ bid is believed by some historians to have been in the range of 25,000 sesterces per Praetorian soldier, equating to a total payment of over 200 million sesterces. After handing over the winning bid, Julianus was declared emperor by the Roman senate, despite the fact that he was both feared and abhorred by that body. Julianus’ reign was short-lived, however — he was killed on June 1, 193 CE, by invading Danube forces.

 

 

Source: The Strangest Items Ever Sold at Auction

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DOLPHINS

Did you know..... Dolphins are some of the most beloved creatures on the planet. After all, what isn't to like about these seafaring cetaceans? They’re highly intelligent. They make adorable noises. They're friendly to humans. They even like to surf. But beyond these crowd-pleasing theatrics, dolphins also boast impressive physiological capabilities and exhibit an array of mind-boggling behaviors. Here are six fascinating facts you may not know about them.

 

1. Dolphins Call Each Other by Their Names

The meanings behind much of the dolphin repertoire of squeaks, grunts, and clicks remain a mystery to marine biologists, but they do know that certain sounds represent an identifying call. For example, the common bottlenose dolphin develops a unique melodic pattern of whistles that makes it recognizable to others within earshot, even when murky underwater conditions distort the voice of the sender. Furthermore, recent research has shown that dolphins "address" each other by imitating the whistles of close companions and family, suggesting a capability for sophisticated interaction rarely seen outside the human world.

 

2. Dolphins Turn Off Half Their Brains to Sleep

As oxygen-dependent mammals that reside in water and voluntarily control their breathing, dolphins simply cannot let themselves slip into a state of complete unconsciousness. As a result, they experience what's known as unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, in which only half the brain sleeps at a time and the other remains awake at a low level of alertness. Dolphins typically float motionless or swim slowly near the water's surface when in this state, with the eye opposite the resting side of the brain remaining closed. And while people and dolphins have very different slumbering habits, dolphins typically get about four hours of slow-wave sleep for each side of the brain in a 24-hour period, which matches up with the doctor-recommended eight hours of shut-eye per night for humans.

 

3. Dolphins Teach Each Other to Use Tools

To further prove just how intelligent these creatures are: Bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, have been observed using marine sponges to protect their snouts when rooting around the seafloor for small fish. Mothers pass on this nifty foraging method to their offspring, though females usually show far more interest in learning than males. Additionally, scientists have observed dolphins in this region engaging in peer-to-peer learning for another technique known as "shelling." The dolphins chase fish into empty giant snail shells, push the shells to the surface, and then tip the waiting prey into their mouths.

 

4. Dolphins Have Three Stomachs

While dolphins are cunning hunters, they forgo any semblance of dining manners by wolfing down their food without chewing. Thankfully, they have a three-chambered stomach designed to handle the rapid intake. The easily stretchable forestomach is primarily used to store the food, the main stomach is where the majority of digestion takes place, and the pyloric chamber completes digestion and regulates passage into the small intestine. This streamlined process supports the bottlenose dolphin's average daily intake of 25 to 50 pounds of fish, squid, and crustaceans.

 

5. Dolphins Have Remarkable Powers of Recuperation

Dolphins possess something of a superpower when it comes to recovering from major tissue injuries. Dr. Michael Zasloff shed light on this ability in a 2011 letter to the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, in which he described studies of dolphins that had withstood significant flesh loss from shark attacks. These animals not only stemmed the blood loss and sustained no infections on the open wounds, but they also regenerated the torn-out tissue to regain their full-body contour within approximately 30 days. The dolphins displayed no sign of distress throughout the process, suggesting that a naturally triggered form of pain relief accompanies their extraordinary healing capabilities.

 

6. The U.S. Military Uses Highly Trained Dolphins

Since 1959, these smart, adaptable deep divers have served Uncle Sam in the Navy's Marine Mammal Program, alongside a cadre of equally patriotic sea lions. Dolphins are typically taught to handle two tasks: They use their inherent sonar capabilities to pinpoint and mark the location of underwater mines, and they help apprehend uninvited swimmers by tagging the trespassers with a buoy that drags them to the surface. And these dolphins aren't just used for training simulations: Dolphins were deployed in the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and they currently help protect America's large nuclear stockpile at Naval Base Kitsap outside Seattle, Washington.

 

Source: Fin-Tastic Dolphin Facts

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BUNNIES

Did you know... Bunnies are one of the harbingers of springtime, whether they’re feasting in newly green fields or nibbling on freshly planted gardens and the first soft blooms of the year. Some, like the mythical Easter Bunny, even perform the much-welcomed deed of delivering baskets of chocolate or facilitating a large-scale Easter egg hunt. Here are six facts about rabbits to ponder as spring welcomes them (and us!) out of wintertime dens.

 

1. Rabbits Live on Every Continent Except Antarctica

More than 29 species of wild rabbits can be found throughout the world, on every continent except for Antarctica. However, one region has an exceptional population: North America is home to nearly half of the world’s rabbits, and the species has developed more biodiversity there than on any other continent. Australia, conversely, doesn’t have any native rabbit species; the European rabbit was introduced by immigrants for sport hunting there in the late 1700s, and today the creatures are considered invasive.

 

2. Rabbits and Hares Are Two Different Species

The word “hare” is often used interchangeably with “rabbit,” though it’s not an accurate swap, since rabbits and hares are actually separate species within the Leporidae family. The species have major temperament and anatomical differences, starting from birth. Hares have longer pregnancies than rabbits (about 42 days compared to about 30 days), and their newborns, called leverets, are fully developed when born, meaning they have fur and can open their eyes. Rabbits, on the other hand, are born earlier and have no fur, and they can’t open their eyes until about a week later. Both animals have sleek pelts that shed, but only hares have  dramatically color-changing fur; for example, the snowshoe hare sheds its summertime brown pelt for a white coat as cooler weather arrives, allowing it to blend into snowy ecosystems. While rabbits can be domesticated as pets or livestock, hares are incredibly skittish and untrusting. In the wild, rabbits live communally in colonies of up to 20 bunnies, and dig extensive underground tunnels called warrens. Hares (which do not burrow) aren’t as sociable, but will group up at mealtimes to safely forage for food. If frightened, hares can move at top speeds, covering distances equal to 37 of their body lengths per second — in comparison, cheetahs, the world’s fastest land animal, only move at 23 body lengths per second.

 

3. Rabbits Sleep With Their Eyes Open

Despite being blind for their first week of life, rabbits develop an amazing range of vision. Once they can peek through their eyelids, bunnies have a nearly 360-degree view, which helps them spot predators. Rabbits also have the ability to sleep with their eyes open, because of a nictitating membrane, aka a translucent third eyelid, which keeps the eyes moist. Beyond their eyes, bunnies rely on two other noteworthy senses — their sound and smell. Rabbits breathe only through their noses, which allows them to smell the world around them, even while eating, and detect danger. Their ears are also incredibly sensitive; rabbits can rotate each ear 180 degrees, picking up on sounds and potential threats up to 2 miles away.

 

4. The Word “Bunny” Was Once Used for Both Rabbits and Squirrels

Modern English speakers often refer to rabbits as bunnies, a word that likely came from 16th-century England. Back then, the word “bun” was used in England for both rabbits and squirrels. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “bunny” appears to have become a more widely used term by the 1700s. Elsewhere in Europe, rabbits were called “coneys,” from the French word conil, with further roots in the Latin word cuniculus. The term “rabbit” was often used for young coneys, but over time “rabbit” became the more popular word. Today, the word “coney” survives in the place name Coney Island.

 

5. One Hare Breed Caused an Adoption Frenzy in the Early 1900s

Beatrix Potter, the Victorian-era author behind The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, had a love for rabbits and hares — which just so happened to be a popular pet in the late 19th century. Some, like the Belgian hare (which Potter owned and based her Peter Rabbit character on) became so sought-after that adopting one was an extravagant purchase. Belgian hares were first bred in their namesake Belgium, using both domestic and wild hares, and made their way to American rabbit shows in 1877. Between 1898 and 1901, thousands were imported to the U.S. for adoring buyers. A near-mania called the “Belgian hare boom” emerged, with hares sold at extravagant prices, including a record $5,000 for one creature (about $179,000 today). Around 1900, it was believed that more than 60,000 Belgian hares could be found in Southern California alone. However, like all fads, the Belgian hare market burst when the breed fell out of favor around 1917, and by the 1940s, they were scarcely seen in the U.S. Today, breeders have worked to keep Belgian hares from going extinct.

 

6. No One Knows the True Origins of the Easter Bunny

There are many theories as to how bunnies became associated with Easter — like the supposed Anglo-Saxon goddess who turned an egg-laying bird into a rabbit, or how Neolithic communities in Europe buried hares in religious rituals. What is known is that by the 1600s, English hunters specifically sought out hares for Easter meals, possibly linked to a folk tradition thought to scare away witches, who supposedly took the form of hares to cause mischief and illness. Around the same time, German children celebrated spring’s arrival by receiving gifts from the “Easter hare,” whom they anticipated by making nests for the hare to lay its eggs — possibly the origin of the Easter basket. German immigrants relocating to America brought this tradition with them, and over time it transformed into the chocolate-delivering Easter Bunny many children await each spring.

 

 

Source: Floppy Facts About Bunnies

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - REMOTE PLACES

Did you know..... Few things intrigue avid travelers like the unknown. Some of the world’s least-traversed destinations require a difficult journey — whether that’s a 30-mile hike through dense forest or two weeks at sea — while others are completely off-limits to visitors or have never been reached by humans. Wondering what lies beneath the most remote part of the Pacific Ocean? Or in what tiny locale you can find the world’s smallest flightless bird? Here are eight interesting facts about some of the most isolated, inaccessible, and hard-to-reach places on the planet.

 

1. A Colombian City Was Completely Forgotten by Outsiders for 400 Years

For centuries, Ciudad Perdida (“Lost City” in Spanish) — located in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of Colombia — was a thriving urban center for the Tairona people. But the site was mysteriously abandoned after the 16th century, along with any knowledge of its existence as far as the outside world was concerned. Despite a detailed archeological survey of the area, it was a group of treasure hunters who ultimately rediscovered the city in the 1970s. Archaeologists soon uncovered a vast network of stone structures and tiered terraces, some dating back to the seventh century. Around 80 of the site’s 400 acres are now open to the public, but visiting is no easy feat: It requires a four- to six-day round-trip hike through 30 miles of steep terrain and humid, mosquito-laden tropical forests. Hiring a local guide is required. While there isn’t vehicle access, the good news is that visitors will find campsites, water stations, and even snack stands (at least one with Wi-Fi) along the way, many run by the Indigenous Kogi people who live in the area. Another upside to the grueling trek? The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region is a UNESCO-designated Biosphere Reserve, with a wide variety of flora and fauna, including nearly 630 bird species — many of which you won’t find anywhere else on Earth.

 

2. There’s a Space Junk Graveyard in the Remote Pacific Ocean

In 1992, a survey engineer named Hrvoje Lukatela discovered the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, the spot in the ocean farthest away from any land. More familiarly known as Point Nemo, the pole is located nearly 1,700 miles from three roughly equidistant islands: Ducie Island in the Pitcairn Islands to the north, Easter Island to the northeast, and Maher Island in Antarctica to the south. To put its remoteness into perspective, the closest humans to this remote stretch of the Pacific Ocean are those aboard the International Space Station, which orbits about 250 miles above the Earth. The discovery of Point Nemo didn’t have much usefulness, at least for most people on Earth. Not only is the area extremely difficult to get to, but it’s also within the South Pacific Gyre, a region that resists nutrient-rich waters. Point Nemo is, however, widely used for one purpose: disposing of space junk. Since the 1970s, the South Pacific Gyre has been the preferred spot for the United States, Japan, Russia, and several countries in Europe to drop their decommissioned equipment, since debris is less likely to hit the human population. When the International Space Station is retired in 2030, it will join more than 200 abandoned pieces of space equipment surrounding Point Nemo.

 

3. There’s Another North Pole — And It’s Even Harder to Visit

There’s the geographic North Pole, which is the northernmost point of the Earth's axis of rotation, and then there’s the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility, a spot at the center of vast ice fields about 400 miles away from the geographic North Pole. Similar to the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, this is the point in the Arctic Ocean that is farthest away from the nearest landmass. Despite being first discovered in 1909, nobody has actually managed to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility in the past 100-plus years — although the most intrepid adventurers keep trying. Making matters more complicated: The pole is also a moving target, shifting around as new islands are discovered, and researchers anticipate more movement due to rising sea levels. A British team led by explorer Jim McNeill has made several attempts to reach the pole over the last two decades. However, they have faced numerous challenges: A 2003 mission never left basecamp after McNeill fell ill with a flesh-eating bacterial infection, and in 2006, McNeill made it 168 miles away from land before falling through disintegrating ice, forcing the team to retreat. The team’s most recent attempt was in 2019. The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility, the corresponding point in Antarctica farthest from the nearest landmass in the Southern Ocean, has proved to be much more accessible. In the late 1950s, the Soviet Union built a meteorological research station there, along with a bust of Vladimir Lenin to mark the exact spot.

 

4. St. Helena Island Is Home to the World’s Oldest Tortoise

St. Helena — a remote British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic best known as the location of Napoleon’s final exile in 1815 — has another (more current) claim to fame: Jonathan, a Seychelles tortoise who is Earth’s oldest known living land animal, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Now believed to be 190 years old, Jonathan was at least 50 years old when he was gifted to Sir William Grey-Wilson, a future governor of the island, in 1882. He still lives at the governor’s residence (31 governors later), along with fellow giant tortoises Emma, David, and Fred. “While wars, famines, plagues, kings and queens, and even nations have come and gone, he has pottered on, totally oblivious to the passage of time,” Joe Hollis, Jonathan’s caregiver told the Washington Post in early 2022. Tortoises were a popular diplomatic gift at the time because they were easy to transport, since they were stackable and could go without food and water for an extended period. They were also considered a delicacy — a fate which Jonathan fortunately avoided. It’s much easier to get to St. Helena than it was in Napoleon’s time, but it’s still fairly difficult. One of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, St. Helena is located about 1,200 miles west of Angola and 2,500 miles east of Brazil. Until 2017, visitors needed to board a five-day boat trip from South Africa, but with the opening of the island’s first airport, you can now catch the six-hour flight from Johannesburg every other Saturday.

 

5. The Planet’s Smallest Flightless Bird Is Endemic to a Tiny, Remote Island

About 1,300 miles south of St. Helena, the island of Tristan da Cunha is also a British Overseas Territory, but much more difficult to reach. While St. Helena now has an airport, visiting Tristan da Cunha still requires a weeklong ocean journey from Cape Town (which can sometimes take even longer, depending on the weather). Tourists also need permission from the Island Council to visit. “Tristan da Cunha” also refers to a group of islands. About 25 miles off the southwest coast of the island of Tristan da Cunha is the aptly named Inaccessible Island. Totaling just 5.4 square miles, the tiny island is surrounded by steep cliffs, making it difficult to even land a small boat there. That has resulted in a uniquely pristine ecosystem, which has allowed the world’s smallest extant flightless bird, the Inaccessible Island rail, to evolve and thrive. (At only about 5 or 6 inches big, it’s a little smaller than a dollar bill.) Current estimates place the island’s population around at least 9,000 birds. The Inaccessible Island rail’s closest relatives are two South American bird species that are able to fly, but when their common ancestor landed on the island, it evolved in an entirely different direction. The birds developed longer bills and sturdier legs, and their wings turned stubby, with much smaller feathers. Since the birds could get most of their prey on the ground — such as moths, seeds, berries, and worms — and predators were scarce, flying became less of a priority. The island doesn’t even have any mice or rats that could pose a risk to chicks.

 

6. Australia’s Tallest Mountain Is a Remote Volcano Named Big Ben

Located in the Southern Ocean about 2,500 miles southwest of Perth, Heard Island is home to one of Australia’s two active volcanoes and the country’s only glaciers. If you thought the sea journey to Inaccessible Island was arduous, expect a journey to this remote spot to take two weeks, depending on weather, through notoriously rough waters. While 7,310-foot Mount Kosciuszko is the tallest mountain on the Australian mainland, Big Ben, covering much of Heard Island, is the country’s tallest mountain overall — over 9,000 feet above sea level. Because of the remote location and harsh conditions, very few people have attempted to summit Big Ben. Only three parties have ever completed the ascent: two expedition groups in 1965 and 1983, and one mountaineering club associated with the Australian Army in 1999/2000. Not only is the journey to reach Heard Island lengthy, but actually landing a vessel there is also quite challenging. For this reason, few tourist groups visit the island. Most visitors are researchers in fields such as volcanology, ecology, and oceanography, along with environmental management organizations.

 

7. The World’s Northernmost Settlement Requires Radio Silence

With a latitude of 78.55 degrees north, Ny-Ålesund, Norway, is the world’s northernmost year-round settlement, located just north of Longyearbyen, in the Svalbard archipelago. The town is home to approximately 40 permanent residents, who can send mail from the world’s northernmost post office. While Ny-Ålesund does welcome visitors, there are some unique rules tourists must follow. The most important of these is to turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on all devices. The former mining town, established in 1916 and still owned by the King’s Bay mining company, has doubled as a research station since the 1960s, and surrounding it are finely tuned instruments that measure the Earth’s slightest movements. As smartphones can interfere with their measurements, visitors must observe radio silence while visiting. They should also avoid approaching the town’s dog yard; the dogs here are trained to alert the town at the first whiff of a polar bear (although you can observe them from a safe distance). Ny-Ålesund doesn’t have overnight accommodations for tourists, but it does offer a free museum and the world’s northernmost gift shop, along with many cultural artifacts, including remnants of the mining town, and stunning glacier views. The town is part of the icy Svalbard archipelago, known for its five-month-long polar night and excellent opportunities to view the northern lights. Most visitors stay in Longyearbyen, which has a significantly higher population of about 2,400, along with schools, churches, a grocery store, and a few breweries. Longyearbyen also offers various lodging options, from luxury hotels to remote cabins. However, visiting can be logistically challenging — flights typically run to Longyearbyen from Oslo only three days per week, and flights from there to Ny-Ålesund run twice weekly.

 

8. A Remote Egyptian Oasis Has Its Own Language
To reach the Siwa Oasis and its 200 springs and thousands of palm and olive trees, you’ll have to travel 350 miles through the desert southwest of Cairo, Egypt. Despite Siwa being a well-established — albeit somewhat hard to reach — tourism destination, the culture and language that evolved in this isolated location is dominant among the local Berber peoples. Around 20,000 people speak the Siwi language, a dialect of the Tamazight language spoken across North Africa, and it is much more common in homes than Arabic. However, Siwa is not taught in schools, to the concern of Siwa residents and language preservationists. (The U.N. has also classified the language as “endangered.”)

It can take up to 12 hours to reach the Siwa Oasis by car or bus from Cairo, or three hours from the nearest Egyptian airport, Mersa Matruh. There’s plenty to see once you arrive: Cleopatra’s Spring, a large stone pool with surrounding cafes, is the most famous of the many springs in the oasis. The remains of the Temple of the Oracle, built in the sixth century BCE, are also a must-see. Visitors can rent bikes or even go sandboarding on the surrounding dunes.

 

 

Source: Interesting Facts About the World’s Most Remote and Inaccessible Places

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ALTERNATE COUNTRY NAMES

Did you know.... Have you ever set foot in Cambria? Wondering where you’ll find the Land of Noah on a map? Nations in various corners of the globe are often known by different names for a variety of historical, cultural, or political reasons. Check out these alternate country names that you might never have encountered before.

 

1. Cambria (Wales)

For most people, the small nation set on the southwestern coast of Great Britain is known as Wales, but others call it Cambria. While many historians agree that Cambria is the Latinized spelling of the Welsh name Cymru, some also point to the legend of the Trojan hero Brutus. In his 12th-century chronicle The History of the Kings of Britain, the cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth references Brutus landing in Britain and becoming its first king. Brutus changed the island’s name from Albion to Britannia and split it into three kingdoms, one for each of his sons. Locrinus received Logres (England), Albanactus was given Albany (Scotland), and Camber got Cambria (Wales). The moniker Cambria survives in the names of Welsh landmarks and tourist attractions. Among them are the Cambrian Mountains and the Cambrian Line scenic railway, which crosses them. Hikers can trek nearly 300 miles from Cardiff to Conway via the Cambrian Way trail. Cambria is also referenced in “Men of Harlech,” a military song that retells the events of a siege of Harlech Castle in the 1460s.

 

2. Suomi (Finland)

Tune into the Olympics or watch an international ice hockey match and you might see uniforms with the word “Suomi.” This is the Finnish name for Finland, the Northern European country known for thousands of lakes, the northern lights, and the wilderness of Lapland. The word’s origins are unclear, but there are a number of hypotheses. One suggests that it comes from suomma, which translates to “swampland,” and could relate to an ancient belief that the nation’s lakes were once swamps. An alternate theory considers the word suomo (“fish scale”) and implies that the Finnish people made clothes from fish skin. Some linguists speculate that the words Suomi and Sami — which refer to the native peoples of Finland, Norway, and Sweden — are derivations of zeme, a Proto-Baltic word for land or territory. Travel to Finland and you’ll hear most Finns proudly refer to their nation and language as Suomi. In fact, Finland wasn’t a name invented by the Finnish; instead, it likely comes from the Old English word finna, once used to describe Scandinavian people. Interestingly, the letter “f” didn’t even exist in the Finnish alphabet, and was introduced through words borrowed from other languages .

 

3. Land of Noah (Armenia)

Armenia, the landlocked nation in the Caucasus region between Europe and Asia, is also known as the Land of Noah. The nickname stems from an extract in the Book of Genesis that states, “On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” It refers to Noah’s Ark and Mount Ararat, the first mountain that rose above the waters after the Great Flood. Although not located in Armenian territory today (it’s now in Turkey), Mount Ararat is a national symbol and revered by Armenians. It’s featured on the nation’s banknotes and coat of arms, which portrays Noah’s Ark on the mountaintop.   The Land of Noah’s biblical connections run deeper than the rumored resting place of the ark, however. Hayk, who claimed to be the great-great-grandson of Noah, is the forefather and founder of the first Armenian kingdom. In 301 CE, it became the world’s first country to adopt Christianity as the official state religion.

 

4. Sakartvelo (Georgia)

If you ever visit Sakartvelo, you’d find yourself in a nation that stretches from the eastern shoreline of the Black Sea across the Caucasus Mountains. To much of the world this country is known by its western name of Georgia, but to Georgians themselves, it is Sakartvelo. This native name translates to “Land of Kartvelians,” and refers to the people who inhabited the country’s central region of Kartli. One of the first documented uses of Sakartvelo is found in the ancient Georgian Chronicles, and by the 1200s it referred to the entire unified medieval Kingdom of Georgia. So why is the country widely known as Georgia? Some argue that it derives from gurgan, the Persian term for Georgians, while others say that it represents the native’s enthusiasm for St. George, or that it comes from a Greek word that means “tiller of the land.” Throughout much of the former Russian Empire, the country goes by the name Gruziya.

 

5. Wadadli (Antigua)

Antigua and Barbuda is an independent Commonwealth country located in the Caribbean, known for its pristine beaches and verdant rainforests. The country is made up of two islands, the lively and populated Antigua and the quieter Barbuda. Upon seeing Antigua for the first time in 1493, Christopher Columbus named the island Santa Maria de la Antigua after the miraculous virgin of a namesake chapel in Seville, Spain. Antiguans, however, call their island by its native Carib name of Wadadli. The name is associated with wadli, the Indigenous word for “oil,” and appeared in the 17th-century dictionary of the missionary Father Breton. The story goes that Dominican Caribs traveled to Antigua and collected oil to be utilized in medicines and as lighter fluid. Visit one of Antigua’s dozens of beachfront bars and restaurants and there’s a good chance that you’ll find Wadadli lager beer and Wadadli Premium Gold on the menu. The soundtrack to a blissed-out Caribbean vacation is often the reggae beats of the Wadadli Experience Band — Antigua and Barbuda’s first Rastafarian band.

 

 

Source: Alternate Country Names You Might Never Have Heard Before

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LOWEST POINTS

Did you know.... Most of the planet’s surface is either at or below sea level, which isn’t surprising, given that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. In fact, many of the lowest places on Earth are on the surface of lakes. Just how low can you go? Below, explore the planet’s eight lowest points.

 

1. Salton Sea, California (-236 Feet Below Sea Level)

Once a thriving resort community in the mid-20th century, the ever-shrinking Salton Sea has been called “the biggest environmental disaster in California history.” For decades, local farmers using water from the nearby Colorado River for agricultural purposes allowed the fertilizer-contaminated runoff to flow back into the lake basin. Since the lake basin has no drainage flow, this caused a huge rise in the water’s salinity and massive subsequent die-offs of fish and birds, among other wildlife. As a result, the lake began to emit a nasty odor, which drove tourists away. Today, many of the beach towns remain abandoned, although a community of artists linger in the area, and tourism is slowly rebounding.

 

2. Akjagaýa Depression, Turkmenistan (-266 Feet)

The Akjagaýa Depression is located in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan, one of the driest areas in the country. The depression is actually contained within Sarykamyska Lake, the waters of which fluctuate in elevation — so much that the lake itself has disappeared and then reappeared several times. The desert is also where you’ll find the Darvaza Gas Crater, also called the “Door to Hell,” a natural gas field that has been perpetually burning since 1971.

 

3. Badwater Basin, Death Valley, California (-282 Feet)

Death Valley holds the dual distinction of being the hottest place on the planet and one of the lowest. On July 10, 1913, a reading of 134.1 degrees Fahrenheit was taken at the desert’s Furnace Creek Ranch, which is the hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth. Extremely hot temperatures aren’t unusual in the world’s very low places, because air warms as it gets lower (and cools as it rises). And very low places are common in this part of California, thanks to the San Andreas Fault running beneath it and periodic water breakthroughs from nearby rivers causing erosion. The lowest point in Badwater Basin is actually within an area of salt flats, but the flats can be treacherous to traverse since they are composed of mud covered by a thin crust of salt. Technically, the sign that marks the lowest point is located a few miles east.

 

4. Laguna del Carbón, Argentina (-344 Feet)

Located within the Great San Julián Depression (Gran Bajo de San Julián), this salt lake is part of Argentina’s southernmost Patagonia region. The depression ends in high cliffs before it drops off into the Atlantic Ocean, which lies just to the east. The lake’s name translates to “Coal Lake,” and dinosaur fossils have been found in the endorheic basin. Unlike some other low points in the world, there’s not much tourism centered around the site, which sits on private property and isn’t accessible by public road (although the depression can be viewed from afar from the highway). Mountains loom in the distance, and the small port city of Puerto San Julián is about 30 miles east, but until then, there’s nothing but salt, scrub, and howling winds to be seen in the lake basin and its surroundings.

 

 

5. Danakil Depression, Ethiopia (-410 Feet)

In northeast Ethiopia is another one of the hottest places on Earth — and it’s home to the planet's sixth-lowest point, located in the Danakil Depression, which sits inside the larger Afar Depression (also called the Afar Triangle). Created by the convergence of three tectonic plates and characterized by active volcanoes, sulfur springs, lava lakes, and toxic gasses in the air, the Danakil Depression contains one of Earth’s most otherworldly landscapes, often compared to the surface of Venus. Temperatures average in the mid-90s but regularly soar to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Visitors can take tours on camelback to view the colorful neon-toned landscape of oranges, greens, and yellows, which are caused by oxidized iron and sulfur deposits. (However, Ethiopia is still entangled in a civil war as of 2022, and travel from overseas is not currently advised.) The Danakil Depression is also the site where the famous Australopithecus fossil known as Lucy was discovered in 1974.

 

6. Vpadina Kaundy, Kazakhstan (-433 Feet)

Vpadina Kaundy is located inside a 25-mile-long karst trench called Karagiye, on the Mangyshlak peninsula near the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. Translating to “Black Mouth” or “Black Jaw” in Turkic, Karagiye was formed when a series of limestone, dolomite, and gypsum caves collapsed. (Vpadina Kaundy is the name for the lowest point within the trench, not the trench itself.) A seasonal lake lies at the bottom of the trench, as well as a stream originating from a human-drilled well that flows back into a hole in the ground. Karagiye is known for creating its own unusual long rain clouds, which rise above it. Snakes, hares, wild mouflon sheep, and yellow corsac foxes live along the verdant floor inside the trench, while the air above it is home to a population of vultures. Locals also visit the trench to gather mushrooms, the only ones that grow on the Mangyshlak peninsula.

 

7. Qattara Depression, Egypt (-435 Feet)

At an elevation only two feet lower than Vpadina Kaundy, this 7,500-square-mile sinkhole in northwestern Egypt, near the Mediterranean Sea, is famous for its high cliffs and spectacular black sand dunes. First measured by English geologist Dr. John Ball in 1917, the Qattara Depression is about the size of Lake Ontario, and comprises wild palm and acacia groves, salt marshes, and dry but occasionally flooded lake beds — the latter are characterized by swaths of sticky mud covered by a salt crust. The sinkhole was formed over millennia as salts in the soil slowly eroded the bedrock into sand, which was then blown away by the wind, exposing the water table beneath the bedrock. Qattara means "dripping" in Arabic, a reference not to the mud or flooded lake beds but a natural spring, Ain El Qattara, one of a handful of natural oases found here. The Qattara Depression is home to fauna such as gazelles, jackals, cheetahs, and wild sheep, as well as cattle, which are bred by nomadic Bedouin ranchers. The depression was also the scene of a crucial defeat against the Axis powers in the First and Second Battles of Al Alamein in 1942. Tanks couldn’t pass through the swamp, so the British Empire’s forces were protected.

 

8. The Dead Sea, Jordan, Israel, and The West Bank (-1,412 Feet)

In the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea is situated on the mostly north-south geopolitical border that separates Jordan and Israel, and the West Bank’s southeastern corner also falls within the lake. With shores located at 1,412 feet below sea level, the world’s lowest point blows all other contenders out of the water, so to speak. A hypersaline lake, the Dead Sea is 9.6 times saltier than the ocean. Anyone can easily float in the water as a result of its high salt content. As such, it’s one of the world’s oldest health resorts, patronized even by the biblical Herod the Great, and tourists still flock to its shorelines on all sides. The name “The Dead Sea” never actually appears in the Bible, however. In Hebrew, it was called Yām ha-Melaḥ (the Sea of Salt), and in other texts it was referred to as ha-Yām ha-kadmoni (The Eastern Sea) or Yām ha-‘Ărāvâ (The Sea of the Arabah).

 

 

Source: The Lowest Points on Earth

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - JAMES BOND

Did you know.... Since the character was first introduced in Ian Fleming’s 1953 spy novel Casino Royale, James Bond has only grown in popularity, serving as the protagonist of one of the most beloved film franchises of all time. From Sean Connery to Daniel Craig and every actor in between, those who have portrayed Bond have done so with a charisma that has become synonymous with Agent 007. In honor of the franchise’s 60 years of history, here are six not-so-secretive facts about James Bond.

 

1. The Character Is Named After a Real Ornithologist

Though many of us know James Bond as a debonair spy, the character’s name was actually inspired by an unassuming real-life ornithologist. The true James Bond was an American researcher and scientist known for writing the 1936 book Birds of the West Indies. The work was a trusted resource for avid bird lovers, and it was relied upon by Bond creator Ian Fleming, who lived in Jamaica. While developing his most famous character in 1952, Fleming co-opted the name “James Bond.” (He later said, “I wanted a really flat, quiet name.”) As the character grew in popularity during the early 1960s, the real Bond and his wife began receiving phone calls asking to speak to the super spy. Concerned, the couple reached out to Fleming regarding the use of the name. Fleming admitted that he was directly inspired by the birding book, and invited the couple to his Jamaican estate to discuss further. The pair arrived one day in 1964, and the meeting was an amicable one. As the pair departed, Fleming gave them a signed first edition of his new novel, You Only Live Twice, with the inscription: “To the real James Bond from the thief of his identity, Ian Fleming, Feb. 5, 1964 (a great day!).”

 

2. Sean Connery Earned a Record Paycheck for “Diamonds Are Forever”

After appearing in the first five Bond films, Sean Connery departed the titular role. The character was taken over by George Lazenby, whose only Bond film proved to be 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Connery returned to play James Bond in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, but not before negotiating a lucrative contract. Connery was lured back in part by a record paycheck that saw the actor earn $1.25 million. That number was good enough to be enshrined in Guinness World Records as the highest salary earned for a single acting role at the time. Connery also earned 12.5% of the movie’s gross, and negotiated the right to not have to interact with the film producers (with whom he was feuding). It wasn’t entirely about getting a major payday for Connery, however: The leading man ended up donating his salary to a charity he founded, known as the Scottish International Education Trust.

 

3. Three James Bond Theme Songs Have Won an Oscar

Not only are the Bond movies renowned for their intense action sequences and complicated characters, but the films’ soundtracks have earned critical acclaim as well. Seven James Bond-related films have earned Oscar nominations for Best Original Song, though oddly enough, the first such nomination came for the theme song of a 1967 parody of the novel Casino Royale, starring David Niven. That song was titled “The Look of Love,” composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and sung by Dusty Springfield. The first official Bond film to be nominated for Best Original Song was Live and Let Die, whose title track was written by Linda and Paul McCartney. Later, the 1977 Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me earned a musical nomination for Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better.” 1981’s “For Your Eyes Only” was also nominated for its title song, sung by Sheena Easton. The Bond franchise finally took home a Best Original Song Oscar for the 2012 movie Skyfall, an award won thanks to a haunting tune performed by Adele. The series followed that up with yet another win in 2015 for Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” from the movie Spectre, and most recently in 2021 for Billie Eilish’s performance of the title track from No Time to Die. Eilish not only became the youngest artist to record a Bond song at just 17 years old, but was also the first person born in the 21st century to win an Academy Award.

 

4. Desmond Llewelyn Appeared in the Most James Bond Films

No individual has appeared more frequently as James Bond than Roger Moore, who starred as the spy in seven official films. But in terms of total appearances by any character, actor Desmond Llewelyn has Moore beat. Beginning with 1963’s From Russia With Love, Llewelyn portrayed Q — the quartermaster of the MI6 lab known for coming up with inventive gadgets and his humorous interactions with Bond — on 17 different occasions. Llewelyn continued to play Q through 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, when he retired from the role. Though Llewelyn tops the list of most acting appearances in the Bond franchise, Lois Maxwell also reached double digits. Maxwell showed up as Moneypenny, a secretary at MI6, in 14 different films, first portraying the role in the very first Bond movie, 1962’s Dr. No. Maxwell reprised the character for each canonical Bond film starring Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore, before both she and Moore finally retired after 1985’s A View to a Kill. In doing so, Maxwell became the last actor from the original film to depart the franchise.

 

5. “From Russia With Love” Was the Last Movie John F. Kennedy Ever Saw

President John F. Kennedy was among the Bond franchise’s fervent early supporters, having been gifted a copy of the novel Casino Royale while recovering from back surgery in 1954, long before Bond became widely popular. Kennedy was such a fan that he even invited Ian Fleming to his house during the 1960 presidential campaign, where the pair discussed foreign affairs. In 1961, shortly after JFK’s inauguration, the new President told reporters that Fleming’s novel From Russia With Love was among his favorite books. The remark caused James Bond to spike in popularity. After Kennedy’s comments, Bond books began flying off the shelves, which in turn helped convince Eon Productions to produce a film version of one of Fleming’s novels. The result was 1962’s Dr. No, which was screened at the White House shortly after its release. During that event, Kennedy commented that they should turn his favorite novel — From Russia With Love — into a movie, which producers did the following year. On November 20, 1963, JFK was shown a rough cut of the film From Russia With Love, just one day before he left on his fateful trip to Dallas.

 

6. Children’s Author Roald Dahl Wrote “You Only Live Twice”

Roald Dahl is one of history’s most prolific children’s authors, responsible for literary works including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Dahl’s work didn’t just cater to youths, however, as the author also embarked on a screenwriting career that saw him produce the script for 1967’s You Only Live Twice. Dahl coincidentally lived a life akin to James Bond in a lot of ways, having served in a New York-based branch of the British intelligence service during World War II known as the British Security Co-ordination. According to a 2010 Dahl biography, the author was viewed by his peers as a cunning flirt who successfully seduced high-profile American women into supporting the British wartime effort. Given Dahl’s experience, it only made sense that he was brought aboard to adapt Fleming’s 1964 novel into a film. During pre-production, Dahl scrapped much of the book’s original story line, though he retained villainous characters such as Blofeld, who became a mainstay of the Bond franchise. Dahl was also inspired by the sci-fi elements of Goldfinger — the only Bond movie Dahl had seen to that point — and wrote a story centered around space-age technology that in turn became a smash hit.

 

 

Source: Not-So-Secretive Facts About James Bond

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LOUDEST SOUNDS

Did you know..... You may think your upstairs neighbor’s 1 a.m. vacuuming session is noisy, but it’s nothing compared to what nature (and the occasional human-made marvel) can throw at us. Sounds can injure your ear immediately once they reach 120 decibels, the typical volume of a police siren if you’re right beside it, but the loudest sound ever recorded was more than 300, loud enough to increase atmospheric pressure to a point that causes damage to far more than just human ears. Decibels are logarithmic measures of sound intensity — so keep in mind that the scale gets exponentially bigger as the number goes up. Doubling the volume on your stereo does not even come close to doubling the decibel output. So when an undersea creature produces a noise around 30 decibels higher than the loudest rocket launched by NASA (true story), you know you have a seriously big sound on your hands. Which natural phenomenon produced the loudest known sound? What widely misunderstood sea giant generates an ear-shattering kind of Morse code? Just how loud is an asteroid impact? These six giant sounds will put that garage band next door in some serious context.

 

1. Krakatoa Eruption

 

The loudest sound ever recorded was an 1883 volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa, clocking in at an estimated 310 decibels. Not that anybody who heard the explosion at full blast lived to tell the tale; it was estimated to have a force equivalent to 10,000 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and destroyed most of the island while shooting unstable clouds of hot gas to the surrounding area. However, plenty of witnesses farther away did survive — and there were a lot of them. Some 100 miles away in North Jakarta, the noise still reached around 172 decibels. Violent tsunamis shook the Indian Ocean, and the waves even rocked boats in South Africa. Atmospheric pressure spikes reached as far as England, and a cloud of ash bathed an area of 300,000 square miles around the volcano in darkness. The global temperature even dropped, and didn’t return to normal until five years later.

 

2. Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Eruption

 

The closest we’ve come to a repeat of Krakatoa was likely the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption near the Polynesian island of Tonga in January 2022. Sonic booms were felt as far north as Alaska, and researchers more than 6,000 miles away at Boise State University in Idaho recorded subterranean frequencies equivalent to about 100 decibels. The force, which was about half that of Krakatoa, sent a wave of pressure around the globe. Fortunately, this blast wasn’t nearly as deadly, with three fatalities recorded compared to Krakatoa’s estimated 36,000. Still, it wreaked a lot of havoc. Tonga was largely cut off from the rest of the world for days, ash blanketed large swaths of the surrounding area, and tsunamis caused major damage along the coastlines. On one of the closer outlying islands, all the homes were destroyed. The volcano had created its own new island several years before; that was entirely obliterated, along with large chunks of two nearby islands.

 

3. Sperm Whales

 

Planet Earth is full of loud animals. Howler monkey cries can be as loud as gunshots, for example, and some species of bats emit high frequencies that could be harmful to us if they were low enough to hear. But nobody holds a candle to the sperm whale, whose clicks and calls have been measured as high as 230 decibels. That number drops significantly if the sound is traveling through air, but at 170 decibels, it’s still ear-shattering. Scientists had thought for a long time that sperm whales were silent, but whalers had long told stories of what sounded like knocking on ships’ hulls when sperm whales were present. Once scientists listened to sperm whales with an underwater receiver, they thought the “muffled, smashing noise” was coming from inside the ship at first, before realizing they were picking up the atypical sounds of sperm whales, which don’t have the song-like quality of other species. These Morse code-like clicks, used by sperm whales to communicate with one another, form an elaborate language, including phrases of clicks called codas. Different groups of whales even have different dialects within their codas. In addition to their communicative clicks, sperm whales also send out waves of sound at multiple frequencies as a form of echolocation while hunting their favorite food: giant squid.

 

4. Tsar Bomba

 

You’ll often see explosions compared to the force of a nuclear blast — but no blast was bigger than Tsar Bomba, aka Big Ivan, a Soviet thermonuclear bomb detonated as a test on a small island in the Arctic Ocean in 1961. It was at least 3,300 times more powerful than the United States bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, although its potential capacity was twice that. The flash was seen more than 600 miles away, and monitors as far away as New Zealand recorded three rounds of pressure waves. As for the sound itself: A cameraman recording the event described it as “a remote, indistinct and heavy blow, as if the Earth has been killed.” The blast is typically referred to in terms of its force rather than its decibel level, but 224 decibels is a common estimate.

 

5. Saturn V Rocket

 

It’s no secret that rocket launches are really, really loud, but the Saturn V rocket, launched in the 1960s and 1970s during the Apollo program, was notoriously noisy. In testing, it measured as high as 204 decibels, although NASA notes that it typically maxed out at 195 — still plenty noisy enough to be dangerous. Legends have circulated about this noise, some of them myths. It didn’t melt the concrete underneath it or start grass fires a mile away. Still, launch viewers had to stand around 3.5 miles away from the pad for their own safety. NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rockets will be even louder and more powerful, but the launch pads will have built-in sound dampening capabilities, using around 450,000 gallons of water that will rush onto the pad at launch to protect both eardrums and the equipment itself.

 

6. The Tunguska Even

 

Asteroid impacts, like the 2013 Chelyabinsk Event, have created some of Earth’s biggest sounds, but the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia is perhaps the most legendary. Scientists believe that a space rock around 120 feet in diameter entered Earth’s atmosphere at about 33,500 miles per hour. After the resulting heat and pressure destroyed the rock itself, it became a fireball, releasing a destructive level of energy with no impact crater. Researchers were able to track ground zero from the pattern of the trees in the decimated forest around it; they fanned out radially away from the crash site until the very center, where trees stood upright, but entirely stripped of bark and branches. One witness describes the impact’s sound as “a mighty crash… followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing.” He had been working at a trading post 40 miles from the impact, and had been knocked out of his chair by a heat blast that made him feel as if his shirt was on fire. Later, scientists would estimate the sound of the blast at around 197 decibels.

 

 

Source: The Loudest Sounds on Earth

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - JACKIE ROBINSON

Did you know.... On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson trotted out to first base for the Dodgers at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, thereby erasing the color line that had kept Black players out of the top level of professional baseball for 63 years. While his success at opening the door for the great Black, Latino, and Asian players who followed is well known — and commemorated every April 15 by Major League Baseball — the achievement tends to overshadow other areas of his remarkable life. Here are six lesser-known facts about this American icon.

 

1. A Young Robinson Was Known for Getting Into Trouble

According to Arnold Rampersad's Jackie Robinson: A Biography, the young Robinson ran with a group of troublemakers in his native Pasadena, California, known as the Pepper Street Gang, who shoplifted and got into fights. He was also once arrested for swimming in the city reservoir. Fortunately, the charismatic teen had enough guidance to avoid spoiling the opportunities his athletic gifts would bring. The responsible adults in his life included a Methodist minister, a local mechanic who organized events to keep kids off the streets, and Robinson's mother, Mallie, who ran the home as a single mother with a firm but loving hand when not cleaning houses to support her five children.

 

2. Jackie Robinson Was the First Student-Athlete to Letter in Four Sports at UCLA

After rewriting the record books at Pasadena Junior College, Robinson continued to dazzle spectators as UCLA's first four-sport letterman. One of the top football players in the country, he helped the Bruins to an undefeated season in 1939, and twice led the nation in punt-return yardage. Robinson also won the NCAA long-jump title in 1940 as part of the track-and-field squad, and twice topped the Pacific Coast Conference Southern Division in scoring as an undersized basketball star. Surprisingly, baseball was easily his worst sport in college, as Robinson hit just .097 in his lone season for the UCLA baseball team.

 

3. Jackie Robinson Was Court-Martialed After Refusing to Move to the Back of a Bus

About 11 years before Rosa Parks made history by refusing to budge from her seat, Second Lieutenant Robinson of Fort Hood, Texas, did the same while riding a military bus in July 1944. (Robinson had been drafted into the Army in April 1942.) The incensed driver summoned military police to settle the matter, and Robinson's staunch insistence that he had done nothing wrong fueled additional charges of insubordination. Fortunately, the jury determined that he had acted appropriately throughout the incident, thanks in part to the shaky testimony of the prosecution's witnesses, and Robinson was found not guilty of all charges the following month.

 

4. Jackie Robinson Starred in a Movie About Himself (in the Middle of His Career)

Following his successful entry into the major leagues, Robinson sought to capitalize on his fame with a book, 1948's My Own Story, and a version adapted for the big screen, starring himself. However, the top Hollywood studios were loath to accept a project centered on the triumphant tale of a Black man; one allegedly wanted to add a part in which Robinson learns his exciting style of play from a white coach. The movie rights eventually went to the financially unstable Eagle-Lion Films, and while the untrained star was understandably a little stiff in his non-baseball-playing scenes, The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) proved popular enough with audiences to earn back five times its original investment.

 

5. Jackie Robinson Remained Engaged in Civil Rights After Retiring From Baseball

Although Robinson left baseball behind to become a vice president with the Chock full o’Nuts Corporation in 1957, he wasn't content to simply sit in an executive suite as the battle for equality raged on. Along with authoring a syndicated column that gave him a prominent voice on social and political matters, the ex-athlete became a board member of the NAACP and frequently appeared alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at fundraising events and demonstrations. Additionally, Robinson sought to help out Black entrepreneurs as a founder of the Freedom National Bank of Harlem in 1964, and he later launched the Jackie Robinson Construction Company with an eye toward building housing for low-income communities.

 

6. Robinson’s Hall of Fame Plaque Initially Left Out His Integration of MLB

When Robinson earned baseball's highest individual honor with induction into the Hall of Fame in 1962, his Hall of Fame plaque noted several batting and fielding statistics, but nothing about his role in breaking the color barrier. This apparently was at the behest of Robinson himself, who wanted to be judged by his qualifications as a ballplayer and not by any special racial designation. Nevertheless, this glaring omission was corrected in 2008, with the blessing of his wife and daughter, and his plaque inscription was amended to close with: "Displayed Tremendous Courage and Poise in 1947 When He Integrated the Modern Major Leagues in the Face of Intense Adversity."

 

 

Source: Facts About Baseball Trailblazer Jackie Robinson

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS

Did you know..... Some of the items found in our homes have unusual origins, and we’re not just talking about those hot dogs buried in the freezer. Whether acquired in a department store, grocery, or the local pharmacy, these common goods now enjoy widespread acceptance, but at one point were used for different purposes — or even viewed with suspicion. Read on to learn more about six household objects with a colorful past.

 

1. Forks Were Considered the Devil’s Handiwork

According to Amy Azzarito's The Elements of a Home: Curious Histories Behind Everyday Household Objects, From Pillows to Forks, the first dining forks surfaced in the Byzantine Empire during the first millennium CE. However, their eastern migration via the marriage of Maria Argyropoulina to the son of the Doge of Venice in 1004 was met with horror by the Venetians, who considered these pronged utensils to be tools of the devil; when Argyropoulina died a few years after the marriage from the plague, it was viewed as God's revenge for her spiteful vanity. It wasn't until candied fruits became popular in the 15th century that the satanic connotations around the implement disappeared, and Italians again wielded forks to devour the messy treats.

 

2. Salt Has a Long History as a Currency

Salt has long been treasured as a resource both for flavoring meals and keeping meat and fish fresh, rendering it a particularly vital commodity in the dark days before refrigerators. Roman soldiers were reportedly paid in rations of salt known as salarium — the origin of the word “salary” — while Saharan trade routes throughout the Middle Ages frequently featured the exchange of large bricks of the mineral. Recent research indicates that the Maya of South and Central America also used salt as money some 2,500 years ago, suggesting that humankind’s salty cravings are possibly as old and powerful as the desire to accumulate wealth.

 

3. Beds Were Bequeathed in Medieval Wills

Beds occupied an important place in medieval dwellings: Not only were they comfortable spots for people to read, pray, socialize, mate, and give birth, but they were often the most expensive pieces of furniture in a home. As a result, beds were often passed along by the same legal means used to transfer the deceased’s ownership of property or family jewels. Women were nearly twice as likely to bequeath beds than men, according to one examination of a set of wills from 1392 to 1542, though that’s probably because the rarer female testator was usually a widow and therefore more inclined to give away important household items.

 

4. “Concealed” Shoes May Have Been Used to Ward Off Evil Spirits

Ever want to give those uninvited evil spirits a good kick in the pants? Apparently, the best way to do so in 19th-century England was to stash a well-worn shoe in a hidden compartment near a home's opening, be it a door, window, or fireplace. As there are no written records of this custom, the witches-be-gone theory really represents the best guess of many historians; others have speculated that it spread as a good-luck token among builders. Regardless of how and why the practice came about, enough hidden footwear has been discovered in old homes of Western Europe — as well as in the northeastern United States and Canada — for England's Northampton Museum to oversee a Concealed Shoe Index.

 

5. People Once Used Breadcrumbs as Erasers

Yes, you read that correctly; until the late 18th century, the best way to eliminate graphite markings was with moistened, rolled-up pieces of bread. However, a big breakthrough came in 1770, when English theologian Joseph Priestley realized that rubber was "a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil." That same year, English engineer Edward Nairne began selling rubber erasers, which he claimed to have invented after mistakenly grabbing a piece of rubber instead of the intended breadcrumb. Nairne is largely credited for popularizing erasers, but there's no need to feel bad for Priestly, who eventually received his due for discovering oxygen.

 

6. Early Forms of Kleenex and Kotex Were Used on World War I Battlefields

During the Great War, the Kimberly-Clark company of Wisconsin shipped huge supplies of their wood pulp-based "cellucotton" to be used as bandages and gas mask air filters. So what became of this thin, absorbent crepe paper once battlefield demand ceased with the armistice of 1918? The first step was to turn it into a women's sanitary pad, which hit stores in 1920 under the brand name of Kotex. Four years later, Kimberly-Clark introduced another cellucotton product named Kleenex; originally marketed as a makeup and cold cream remover, it soon enjoyed a surge in popularity as a disposable alternative to the soggy handkerchief.
 

 

Source: Bizarre Facts About Everyday Household Objects

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - APRIL FOOL'S PRANKS

Did you know.... On April Fools’ Day, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction, as mischievous pranksters pull lighthearted gags around the world. On some occasions throughout history, April Fools’ pranks have even blossomed into ruses that fooled hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Whether it’s corporations, magazines, or broadcasting networks getting in on the fun, here are six famous and funny April Fools’ Day pranks.

 

1. The Spaghetti Tree

On April Fools’ Day 1957, the BBC informed viewers in England that there was a purported “spaghetti farm” in Switzerland where pasta grew on trees. The network aired a fabricated video featuring Swiss women harvesting spaghetti from an orchard, narrated by war correspondent Richard Dimbleby — a veteran broadcaster known for his straightforward demeanor, which only added to the prank’s believability. In his narration, Dimbleby noted that the annual harvest was expected to be particularly bountiful thanks to the eradication of the “spaghetti weevil,” which was considered to be the plant’s main predator. At the time, many Brits were unfamiliar with Italian food, and hundreds of viewers called the BBC asking how they could grow spaghetti-producing plants of their own. In response, phone operators instructed the gullible callers to “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” The prank proved to be so believable that it even fooled BBC staff members, including the network’s general director, who researched the purported farm utilizing several independent sources before concluding that it was all a ruse.

 

2. Sidd Finch, the Flamethrowing Baseball Prospect

In 1985, the sports world was abuzz about a newly discovered pitching prospect for the New York Mets, named Hayden “Sidd” Finch. Finch was the focus of a lengthy Sports Illustrated magazine profile written by George Plimpton, though there was a catch. The article ran on April 1, 1985, and it was entirely fabricated. Plimpton’s article introduced the nation to a “pitcher, part yogi and part recluse,” nicknamed after Siddhartha Gautama, aka Buddha. Finch’s shocking scouting report claimed that Sidd was capable of throwing a baseball 168 miles per hour, and was also pretty good at playing the French horn. The article was made more believable with quotes from well-known Mets players and coaches, as well as a detailed series of photos showing Finch in full uniform playing his French horn by the seaside and wearing only one shoe on the pitcher’s mound. In reality, photographer Lane Stewart had recruited a friend, Joe Berton, to stand in as Finch for the piece. Berton attended Mets’ Spring Training posing as Finch, interacting with other players and signing autographs for fans who were none the wiser.

 

3. Richard Nixon’s 1992 Presidential Campaig

If you were listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation program on April 1, 1992, then you likely heard the shock of a lifetime. During that episode, disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon — who had resigned the presidency in 1974 — announced that he would seek the office in the 1992 election. Listeners were understandably confused, and called in to profess their opposition to the unexpected Nixon campaign. Later, though, they came to realize it was all a prank. The ruse was concocted by NPR’s John Hockenberry, who had teamed up with political impersonator Rich Little. Little took to the airwaves doing his best Richard Nixon voice to announce his new campaign slogan: “I never did anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” Given that Nixon had already been elected President twice, he was ineligible to run again, but that didn’t stop mayhem from ensuing before NPR copped to the prank after a few minutes of fun.

 

4. The Taco Liberty Bell

On April 1, 1996, the fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that they had acquired one of America’s most historic relics, the Liberty Bell. Taco Bell went all out by purchasing full-page advertisements in seven major local newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer. In those ads, the fast-food chain announced that they had not only bought the Liberty Bell but officially renamed it “The Taco Liberty Bell.” Furthermore, they claimed that they had cut a deal with the government through which the purchase of the landmark would help the country to pay off the national debt. The prank resulted in furious Americans calling the National Park Service to express their outrage. Despite public backlash, White House press secretary Mike McCurry joined in on the fun, jokingly announcing, “Ford Motor Company is joining today in an effort to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial. … It will be the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.” Joking aside, the gag was no small financial commitment for Taco Bell, as the advertisements cost $300,000 — though the whole prank ultimately generated around $25 million in ads, and sales spiked by $600,000 the next day.

 

5. Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak Switch Places

In 1997, game show viewers were understandably thrown off when Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy!, switched places with Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune. On that evening’s Jeopardy! broadcast, Sajak emerged from behind the curtain to host a traditional episode of the show. Despite the Jeopardy! broadcast’s relative normalcy, it was on Wheel of Fortune where things got particularly wacky. After Trebek showed up to the mild confusion of the Wheel of Fortune audience, he welcomed Lesly Sajak, Pat’s wife, to assist with flipping numbers. Furthermore, there were no normal contestants that night. Instead, Pat Sajak and his usual co-host Vanna White played for charity that evening. Sajak and White were tasked with solving humorous phrases such as “PAT I’D LIKE TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE” and really long words such as “SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS.” In 2022, two more television staples followed in their footsteps, as Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel switched up hosting duties for their respective late-night comedy shows on April Fools’ Day.

 

6. Google Gulp

Many of us have a thirst for knowledge, but Google once bottled that desire inside a seemingly tangible yet entirely fictitious product. On April Fools’ Day 2005, the tech giant unveiled the beta-version of Google Gulp, a soft drink jam-packed with Google’s “Auto-Drink” technology. Google claimed that the drinks were meant to increase each drinker’s cognitive ability, because the beverage had “a DNA scanner embedded in the lip of [the] bottle reading all 3 gigabytes of your base pair genetic data in a fraction of a second… to achieve maximum optimization of your soon-to-be-grateful cerebral cortex.” However, Google made the beverage hard to come by, stating that the only way to get a new bottle was to turn in an already used Gulp Cap — none of which existed, of course. Google Gulp was just one in a long line of memorable pranks from the company. In 2013, they “unveiled” Google Nose, allowing users to smell what they were searching for. In 2018, Google hid the character Waldo on Google Maps, and the following year they added the mobile game “Snake” to that very same service. Funnily enough, one of Google’s most beloved products, Gmail, was launched on April 1, 2004. The email service seemed too good to be true at first and led many people to believe it was a hoax, before users ultimately realized it was a very real product.

 

 

Source: Historical and Hysterical April Fools’ Day Pranks

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the day - BREAD

Did you know.... With the earliest known recipes dating back thousands of years, bread is an engine of history. Its discovery may have kick-started humanity’s transition into an agrarian society, its chemistry created new foods and beverages intimately tied to the cultures that made them, and its availability has often been directly proportional to the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. Learn more about everyone’s favorite starch-filled staple with these six amazing facts about bread, from the chemical reactions occurring in your oven to the world-changing events it inspired.

 

1. Bread Is Made From Fungi

The single-celled organism known as yeast is the engine behind the bread-making process. Once this microscopic fungi is fed simple sugars, the yeast essentially burps up carbon dioxide and ethanol, along with flavor molecules, in a process known as fermentation. This buildup of CO2 and alcohol is what causes bread to rise, and evidence of these gassy expulsions can be found in the holes that form in baked bread. Sourdough starters are made by mixing flour and water and allowing natural yeasts (which can be found in the very air we breathe) to start munching on the carbohydrates. These starters, which are essentially live organisms, can live indefinitely if fed and stored properly. More than 130 of them, from 23 countries, live at the Puratos Center for Bread Flavour in Belgium — the world’s only sourdough library.

 

2. The Earliest Evidence of Bread Is 14,000 Years Old

In 2018, archaeobotanists from the University of Copenhagen were working in an excavation site in Jordan, an area where a hunter-gatherer tribe known as Natufians lived some 14,000 years ago, when they stumbled upon bits of charred food remains. After closer examination in a laboratory, it became clear that these were bits of breadcrumbs from a time millennia before scientists had believed bread-making really took off. The news was particularly surprising because scientists usually see bread-making as a result of the rise of agriculture, the innovation largely responsible for forming modern society. However, this discovery suggests that it could be hunter-gatherers’ preexistent interest in bread-making that inspired the rise of agriculture — not the other way around.

 

3. Bread Is the Main Ingredient in the World’s Oldest-Surviving Beer Recipe

Bread has been central to our diet for several thousand years, and it’s also been central to our social life. Written in 1800 BCE, the “Hymn to Ninkasi” details a step-by-step recipe for Sumerian beer-brewing in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iran). The text describes the ingredients involved in the process, most crucially the beer bread known as bappir that introduced the required yeast for fermentation. In 1989, San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company recreated the Sumerian concoction, deeming the resulting beverage “drinkable.” Although the “Hymn to Ninkasi” is the oldest-known beer recipe, it’s likely that one of the world’s most popular alcoholic beverages has an even older origin story. Traces of beer in jar fragments have been dated to around 3500 BCE, and some archaeologists expect beer could be as old as — or even older than — bread itself.

 

4. Bread Helped Ignite the French Revolution

Bread can be a major player in world events — and events don’t get much bigger than the French Revolution. This transformative moment in the late 18th century was triggered by multiple forces, including changing philosophies, gross inequalities, and a bankrupt monarchy, but some experts argue that the spark that ignited the revolution might have been bread, or more specifically the lack thereof. France’s rising population, heavily grain-based diet, and inability to keep up with demand led to a crisis of bread scarcity that bled into popular outrage. An English agriculturalist traveling through France at the time even commented that “the want of bread is terrible; accounts arrive every moment from the provinces of riots and disturbances, and calling in the military, to preserve the peace of the markets.” In fact, one of the French Revolution’s most famous anecdotes belongs to France’s Queen Marie Antoinette, who upon hearing of the peasants’ struggle for bread, supposedly replied, “Let them eat cake.” Although historians believe the queen never actually uttered these words, the famous line exemplifies the suffering of the French people and the perceived indifference of its government.

 

5. Before the Invention of the Eraser, People Used Bread Crumbs

Although the very first mass-produced pencils arrived on the scene in the 1600s, English scientist Joseph Priestley (discoverer of oxygen) didn’t describe “caoutchouc,” or rubber, as an excellent material for “wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil” until 1770. (Priestley was the one who renamed it “rubber,” because it could be used to rub out marks.) Before the arrival of the rubber eraser, people often used small pieces of lightly moistened bread to erase pencil mistakes. However, these bread-based erasers succumbed to mold, and eventually, rot. Let’s just say the rubber substitute was a welcome innovation.

 

6. Sliced Bread Was Invented in 1928

“The best thing since sliced bread” is a phrase celebrating the most glorious of innovations — but it turns out, sliced bread itself isn’t even a century old. The first bread slicer was invented by Otto F. Rohwedder, who worked on his machine for 16 years before it was first used by a small bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1928. Rohwedder’s invention went against the common thinking among bakers who believed that sliced bread would go stale too quickly. However, customers proved this conventional wisdom wrong, and the bakery’s sales reportedly increased by 2,000% in just a couple of months.

 

 

Source: Fresh Facts About Bread

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID (DNA)

By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.
Updated on January 28, 2020

Did you know..... DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid codes for your genetic make-up. There are lots of facts about DNA, but here are 10 that are particularly interesting, important, or fun.

 

1. Building Blocks

Even though it codes for all the information that makes up an organism, DNA is built using only four building blocks, the nucleotides adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine.

 

2. DNA Shared

Every human being shares 99.9% of their DNA with every other human.

 

3. DNA Length

 

If you put all the DNA molecules in your body end to end, the DNA would reach from the Earth to the Sun and back over 600 times (100 trillion times six feet divided by 92 million miles).

 

4. The Fruit Fly

Humans share 60% of genes with fruit flies, and 2/3 of those genes are known to be involved in cancer.

 

5. Chimpanzees

You share 98.7% of your DNA in common with chimpanzees and bonobos.

 

6. Human Genome

If you could type 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, it would take approximately 50 years to type the human genome.

 

7. Mutations

 

DNA is a fragile molecule. About a thousand times a day, something happens to it to cause errors. This could include errors during transcription, damage from ultraviolet light, or any of a host of other activities. There are many repair mechanisms, but some damage isn't repaired. This means you carry mutations! Some of the mutations cause no harm, a few are helpful, while others can cause diseases, such as cancer. A new technology called CRISPR could allow us to edit genomes, which might lead us to the cure of such mutations as cancer, Alzheimer's and, theoretically, any disease with a genetic component.

 

8. Invertebrate Genetic Relative of Humans

The closest invertebrate genetic relative of humans is a small creature known as the star ascidian or golden star tunicate. In other words, you have more in common, genetically speaking, with this tiny chordate than you do with a spider or octopus or cockroach.

 

9. Bananas?

You also share 85% of your DNA with a mouse, 40% with a fruit fly, and 41% with a banana.

 

10. DNA Discovered

Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869, although scientists did not understand DNA was the genetic material in cells until 1943. Prior to that time, it was widely believed that proteins stored genetic information.

 

 

Source: Interesting DNA Facts

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TAXES

Did you know.... Taxes fund our schools, libraries, and road repairs, among countless other social services — things Americans rely on or use on a regular basis. But that doesn’t mean most people enjoy paying them. If you’re scowling at the calendar as Tax Day approaches, take a break from digging up receipts and totaling your return with these six facts.

 

1. Founding Father Samuel Adams Once Racked Up a Hefty Tax Bill

Many of America’s Founding Fathers had day jobs, and in Samuel Adams’ case, his was working as a tax collector. Taxes in Revolutionary America looked much different than today; while there was no income tax, colonists paid fees on imported goods such as tobacco, alcohol, and tea. In 1756, Adams was elected tax collector for the city of Boston, though his approach to the job was somewhat unorthodox: He was often lenient with townspeople who couldn’t pay their bills, delaying collection or failing to get payment altogether, and by some accounts didn’t maintain accurate financial records. After nine years of holding the job, Adams had amassed a large sum of uncollected tax bills totaling 8,000 British pounds, for which he became legally responsible. Despite pursuing payment for some of the debts in court, the substantial bill was eventually settled with help from Adams’ friends. Adams’ role as a tax collector helped pave the way for his eventual political ambitions, allowing him to connect with his fellow colonists, especially as he began to voice opposition against additional taxes levied by Great Britain, such as the Sugar Act of 1764.

 

2. President Abraham Lincoln Created the First U.S. Income Tax

The Civil War put a major financial strain on the U.S. budget, saddling Congress with the need to raise money for the Union Army’s wartime expenses. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act, the first federal income tax, as a way to generate the necessary funds. The law taxed workers who made more than $500 a year at 3% of their income, while workers who took home more than $10,000 were taxed at a rate of 5% (for comparison, the average pay for the lowest-ranking Union soldier was $13 per month). Even Lincoln himself paid a tax bill, though it was discovered in 1873 that the President had overpaid his 1864 taxes by $1,250.

 

3. Income Taxes Became Permanent in 1913

Lincoln’s income tax was seen as a wartime necessity and repealed in 1872, seven years after the Civil War ended. However, it wouldn’t be long before legislators pushed to implement another version. By the 1890s, Congress aimed to lower tariffs (aka taxes paid on imported products) that affected the cost of goods for all Americans, but looked to make up the lost revenue by reestablishing the income tax. An unsuccessful attempt to revive the tax cropped up in 1894, only to be rejected by the Supreme Court. The idea was continuously brought before Congress, and by 1913 the 16th Amendment — officially allowing Congress to collect income taxes — was formally ratified.

 

4. IRS Agents Once Investigated Prohibition Law Breakers

The 18th Amendment banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol — aka Prohibition — and when the law went into effect in 1920, an unlikely government agency was responsible for its enforcement: the Internal Revenue Service. The financial department established its own Prohibition Unit, employing agents tasked with investigating and busting underground speakeasies, bootleggers, and anyone who was illegally brewing or selling booze. Despite making some major arrests — like that of mob boss Al Capone — the program was ill-fated from the start; the federal government initially only had the funds for 1,500 agents, many of whom were undertrained, overworked, and susceptible to bribery or political pressure. In 1927, Prohibition enforcement shifted from the IRS to the Department of Justice, which carried out investigations until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

 

5. Tax Day Hasn’t Always Been in April

While the deadline for filing a tax return can shift by a day or two each year, the dreaded deadline usually now falls on or around April 15. But it wasn’t always that way; originally, income taxes were due in March. After enacting the 16th Amendment, allowing for the collection of taxes, Congress set March 1 as the cutoff for filing a tax return, though it’s not clear why that date was selected. In 1919, the deadline was moved to March 15 to give taxpayers extra time, and the long-standing date of April 15 emerged in 1955. That year, Congress believed an additional month would help taxpayers who were facing increasingly complicated tax laws, though the biggest perk may have been for IRS employees, who gained an extra month to process a large number of tax returns.

 

6. The IRS Experimented With E-Filing for Four Years

Electronically filing your taxes can save you a few stamps and even help your refund process faster. That wouldn’t be possible without four years of IRS experimentation in the 1980s, when citizens in select cities were allowed to try out the first electronic filing system. Hoping to reduce operating costs, the IRS launched its prototype e-filing program in 1986, available to select tax preparers in Cincinnati; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Phoenix, Arizona. However, there was one major limitation to the earliest system: It could only process returns that were due refunds. The federal e-filing system expanded over the next four years, with electronic filing rolled out nationwide in 1990. It’s been so successful that nearly 203.6 million tax returns were filed electronically in 2021, accounting for almost 78% of all submitted taxes.

 

 

Source: Facts You Might Not Know About Taxes