Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TUNNELS

Did you know... Tunnels are an amazing feat of modern engineering. Since the invention of the tunnel boring machine in 1853, engineers have used advanced technology to drill, blast, and bore into the earth. From carving through mountains at 10,000 feet above sea level to creating underwater railways that connect continents, tunnels are built to make travel more seamless — whether you’re journeying from China to Tibet or hopping on a train from northern to southern Europe. Here’s a peek into the construction of five of the world’s longest tunnels for railways and cars.

 

1. China: New Guanjiao Tunnel (20.3 miles)

The New Guanjiao Tunnel sits at 10,800 feet above sea level and comprises part of the highest-altitude railway in the world, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. It’s also one of the longest tunnels in China, with Dongguan’s Songshan Lake Tunnel beating it by a mere 3.97 feet. As a part of the 1,125-mile railway system connecting China and Tibet, New Guanjiao is one of three high altitude tunnels on the track. Since the railway runs at such a high altitude, the train carries supplemental oxygen for any passengers suffering from altitude sickness. The New Guanjiao Tunnel, which replaced an older tunnel that was only 2.5 miles long, took seven years and a dual boring system to finish. It runs directly through a Tibetan plateau, reducing travel time within the tunnel from 2 hours to a mere 20 minutes.

 

2. England and France: Channel Tunnel (31.3 miles)

Also called the Chunnel or Eurotunnel, the Channel Tunnel connects Folkestone, England, and Sangatte, France, and actually consists of three parallel tunnels — two for railways and one for security cars and emergency services. Named for the body of water that the tunnel bisects, this underwater passageway is considered a feat of engineering and has been named one of the “Seven Wonders of The Modern World." Eleven tunnel boring machines were used to dig the tunnel on either side of the channel. On the British side, the debris was carried out of the tunnel using a railway conveyor belt system; on the French side, it was combined with water and transported through a pipeline.

 

3. South Korea: Yulhyeon Tunnel (31.3 miles)

Tied with the Channel Tunnel for the world’s third-longest railway tunnel, South Korea’s Yulhyeon Tunnel is a single-tube, double-track tunnel that is part of the Suseo High Speed Railway, connecting Seoul and Pyeongtaek. The tunnel was primarily built using the New Austrian Tunnel Method (NATM), a construction method that is best employed with variable rock and soil conditions. Although it is the same length as the Channel Tunnel, Yulhyeon took much less time to complete — three years and five months — since it is not underwater, and much of the blasting occurred in a landscape with low mountains and without aboveground urban development to impede progress.

 

4. Japan: Seikan Tunnel (33.5 miles)

Until recently, the Seikan Tunnel held the record for the world’s longest tunnel. The tunnel travels below the Tsugaru Strait, connecting Honshu Island and Hokkaido Island in Japan. Servicing both passenger bullet trains and freight trains, nearly 15 miles of the man-made tunnel are located underwater. To make this subaquatic section, engineers blasted 2,900 tons of explosives in an area prone to dangerous earthquakes. The land section was created by conventional boring methods. It took 17 years to complete the tunnel, during which time 34 lives were lost due to accidents on the job, including cave-ins and floodings. Still, the underwater train has proved a much safer form of travel than the former inter-island ferry system that was often subject to dangerous weather conditions.

 

5. Switzerland: Gotthard Base Tunnel (35.4 miles)

In 2016, the Gotthard Base Tunnel overtook Seikan for the longest tunnel in the world. To top that, it’s also the deepest tunnel in the world, extending to 8,000 feet underground. The tunnel, which took 17 years to complete, runs a high-speed rail beneath the Swiss Alps, connecting northern and southern Europe. To build the tunnel, engineers faced an immense challenge with the rock’s unpredictability. Some rock was too soft, making it difficult to excavate and slowing down the work. When the conditions were right, however, the workers used a 30-foot tunnel boring machine that was able to dig a record-breaking 131 feet in a single day.

 

 

Source: Longest Tunnels in the World — And How They Were Built

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MORK AND MINDY

Did you know... It wasn’t socially groundbreaking like All in the Family, nor a long-running audience favorite like M*A*S*H. Nevertheless, Mork & Mindy carved out its own place in the hearts of viewers with its endearing spin on the fish-out-of-water concept — and, of course, by introducing the world to the unparalleled talents of Robin Williams. Here are six fun facts about this standout sitcom from the late 1970s and early ’80s.

 

1. Mork Originated on "Happy Days"

Fans may remember that Mork from Ork initially appeared in Richie Cunningham's dream during a February 1978 episode of Happy Days, a premise apparently conceived of by the 8-year-old son of series creator Garry Marshall. Although this seemed like a terrible idea to the writers, they quickly realized the potential of the situation when the little-known actor Robin Williams wowed during his audition and rehearsals. Mork then proved a hit after going toe-to-toe with the Fonz on screen, prompting Marshall and his cohorts to devise a spinoff series about the character in time for the fall 1978 TV season. Meanwhile, the "My Favorite Orkan" Happy Days episode was reedited for syndication to show that the alien encounter was real.

 

2. Co-Star Pam Dawber Never Auditioned for the Role of Mindy

While executives seized the chance to build a show around the comedic abilities of Williams, Pam Dawber had no idea she'd been tapped for the role of Mindy McConnell. With a resume that mainly consisted of modeling and commercial work up to that point, she was chosen for her "honest, all-American girl" performance in a rejected pilot called Sister Terri. Dawber initially wasn't happy to learn she was starring in a "stupid" TV show about an alien, but she warmed to the idea after meeting with Marshall, and especially after watching Williams' footage from Happy Days. "I was laughing out loud watching that show, and I remember going, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I am so lucky,'" she later revealed. "It was just like, 'Where do I sign?'"

 

3. Mork's Spacesuit Was Recycled From an Episode of "Star Trek"

Since Mork was first meant to be a one-off character, there wasn't a whole lot of thought put into his appearance; someone simply grabbed a red spacesuit from the Paramount wardrobe collection, added a silver triangle, and the Ork uniform was born. It's unknown whether anyone at the time caught the uncanny resemblance between Mork's suit and the one worn by Colonel Green in the 1969 Star Trek episode "The Savage Curtain," but we do know that Mork & Mindy dipped into the Star Trek archives at least one more time: The spaceman costume worn by Mindy's father (Conrad Janis) in the "Mork Goes Public" episode of season 1 was comprised of a helmet and suit from two separate episodes of the sci-fi predecessor.

 

4. Numerous Guest Stars Appeared on the Series

As with Williams' early showing on Happy Days, several up-and-coming talents used Mork & Mindy as a springboard to greater fame. This included Morgan Fairchild, who enjoyed a recurring role as Mindy's old rival on season 1, and young comedians David Letterman and Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens, who appeared in seasons 1 and 4, respectively. On the flip side, Raquel Welch was already an international movie star by the time of her two-episode run as Captain Nirvana in season 2, while William Shatner provided another connection to Star Trek with his appearance late in season 4.

 

5. Williams Became Disenchanted With Playing Mork

Although it was the role that skyrocketed him to stardom, Williams soon grew tired of the constraints of playing a naive space alien. Series director Howard Storm later recalled the difficulty of convincing Williams to deliver the audience-pleasing catchphrase "nanu nanu," while one of the show's writers remembered the star derisively calling his character "Morko the Pin-Headed Boy." Fortunately, Williams received a jolt when his hero Jonathan Winters, who appeared as Mindy's uncle in season 3, joined the regular cast in season 4 as baby Mearth. "Having him on the show was one of the main reasons I stayed with it," noted Williams, per Dave Itzkoff's biography, Robin. "For me, it was like the chance to play alongside Babe Ruth."

 

6. The Ending Was Shuffled to Accommodate the Series Cancelation

With the novelty of the series long gone, Mork & Mindy was canceled near the end of its fourth season. This wound up catching producers off guard, as plans were already in place for a time-traveling fifth season that paired Mork and Mindy with historical characters like Abraham Lincoln. This would explain the somewhat confusing end to the show, which sees the leads transported to a prehistoric cave at the end of a three-episode arc. In an attempt to compensate, producers shifted "The Mork Report," a flashback-infused episode about the Mork-Mindy relationship, from an earlier scheduled broadcast date to the series finale.

 

 

Source: Out-of-This-World Facts About “Mork & Mindy”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MAGICIANS

Did you know.... Harry Houdini and David Blaine may be household names, but their success has been built on the shoulders of magicians who haven’t received much recognition. The “celebrity magician,” after all, is a recent phenomenon: For centuries, illusionists and escape artists were impugned as lowlifes (at best) and criminals (at worst). But none of that would stop these magic-makers, who helped pave the way for our modern superstars. From mythical sorcerers to skeptical writers, here are some of the most influential magicians in history.

 

1. Djedi: History’s Most Captivating Decapitator

An Egyptian magician who purportedly lived 4,700 years ago, Djedi may have been history’s first illusionist. According to the Westcar Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian text, Djedi could magically remove — and reattach! — the heads of living animals: Geese, waterfowl, and even bulls. (Centuries later, David Blaine would re-enact the stunt with a chicken.) Historians, however, caution that the magician’s greatest trick was fooling us to believe he existed: Dejdi might be a work of fiction.

 

2. Belshazzar’s Incompetent Magicians: The Reason There’s Writing on the Wall

The Bible contains dozens of references to sorcerers, necromancers, and conjurers. In the First Book of Samuel, the Witch of Endor summons the spirit of a prophet. In the apocrypha, Simon Magus is able to levitate and even fly. But one of the most famous references to magicians appears in the tale of King Belshazzar’s Feast. As the story goes, the King was enjoying an opulent meal when a hand mystically appeared and began to write a cryptic message on a nearby wall, spelling out his doom. A panicked Belshazzar asked his magicians to interpret the message — but the magicians failed, and Belshazzar soon died. The scene is now immortalized in the idiom: “To see the writing on the wall.”

 

3. Luca Pacioli: The Accountant Who Could Breathe Fire

An Italian mathematician and friar who lived in the 15th century, Luca Pacioli is widely considered the “Father of Accounting.” But his skills expanded beyond bookkeeping: He’s also one of the earliest writers on the art of magic. His unpublished 1508 book De Viribus Quantitatis discusses an array of magic tricks: how to make an “egg walk over a table,” how to make a “cooked chicken jump on the table,” and how to “make a snow torch that burns.” He’s also the first to discuss various card tricks, coin tricks, and fire-eating techniques.

 

4. Ching Ling Foo: America’s First Chinese Superstar

The first Chinese performer to hit it big in the U.S., Ching Ling Foo’s performances in 1899 routinely packed the house and made him a superstar. An expert in traditional Chinese illusions, Foo could throw a shawl into the air and — as it settled to the ground — conjure large objects out of thin air. Unfortunately, Foo would be the victim of a racist scam. An American magician named William Robinson stole Foo’s act, dressed in yellowface, called himself “Chung Ling Soo,” and billed himself as Foo’s competitor: “The Original Chinese Conjurer.” The two magicians would feud for the rest of their lives.

 

5. Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin: The Clockmaker With Magic Hands

A French clockmaker, Robert-Houdin developed fine-motor skills fixing cogs and gears in his family’s shop — and then began using them to learn sleight-of-hand tricks. He used this know-how to build androids and other mechanical wonders, which helped him build audiences in the mid-19th century. It wasn’t long before Robert-Houdin was performing conjuring acts for mass audiences. Today, Robert-Houdin is widely recognized as the father of modern magic, having transformed it from a low-class artform to something the theater-going wealthy could enjoy. He’d also inspire a young Ehrich Weiss, a Hungarian-American escapologist who you might know by a different name: Harry Houdini.

 

6. Alexander and Adelaide Herrmann: Magicians with a Funny Bone

Few people have shaped our definition of a magician more than Alexander Herrmann. Called “Herrmann the Great,” the Victorian-era Frenchman was one of the first people to pull a live rabbit out of a hat. But Hermman’s most important contribution to modern magic was his performing style: He was one of the first magicians to make a comedy routine central to his performance. His wife, Adelaide, was no slouch, either. Called the “Queen of Magic,” she’s believed to be the first woman to ever perform the dreaded “bullet catch trick,” and she continued to tour internationally for another 25 years after Alexander’s death.  

 

7. Jasper Maskelyne: The Illusionist Who Deceived the Nazis

Every magician, at their core, is a master of deception. But when Jasper Maskelyne moved his act from the stage to the theater of war, his deception skills were used to save lives. During World War II, Maskelyne joined the British military and used his knowledge as an illusionist to trick the Nazis. His team took camouflage to a new level, creating deceptive decoys to trick enemy fighter pilots: fake harbors filled with phony boats and dazzling light-displays that, from above, looked like cities. The illusions reportedly caused the enemy to waste tons of ammunition.

 

 

Source: The Most Influential Magicians Who Ever Lived

Edited July 13, 2023 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WEST SIDE STORY

Did you know... When the film version of West Side Story was released on October 18, 1961, it quickly surpassed its theatrical predecessor to become a smash hit. Audiences were blown away by the love story of Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) and captivated by the dancing and singing of Anita (Rita Moreno) and Bernardo (George Chakiris). West Side Story swept the Academy Awards, winning 10 statuettes, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress and Actor for Moreno and Chakiris, respectively. Today, it's still one of the most-watched and beloved films of all time. Here are six surprising facts about the movie musical.

 

1. Wood Wasn’t Originally Tapped to Play Maria

Audrey Hepburn, one of the biggest actresses of her time, was originally asked to play the lead character of Maria. However, Hepburn was pregnant with her son Sean and previously suffered several miscarriages, so she turned down the role to not over-exert herself. Despite saying no to the blockbuster, Hepburn still made a splash on the big screen that same year in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

 

2. One Big Star — and a Few Stars-to-Be — Might Have Portrayed Tony

In one account of West Side Story's casting, Elvis Presley was in the running to play the lead role of Tony — until his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, reportedly rejected the part. And while Presley's name may only have been bandied about and never under serious consideration, several actors who hadn't yet had their big breaks did audition for the film. These include Warren Beatty (who was also considered for the stage version as Riff), Robert Redford, and Burt Reynolds (though the interview sheet listed him as "Bert"). Beymer eventually won the part of Tony. However, he ended up displeased with his performance. "It’s a thankless role," he admitted in 1990. "It could have been played more street-wise, with someone other than me."

 

3. Wood and Beymer Didn't Get Along

In West Side Story, Tony and Maria embody the instantaneous pull of young love at first sight. Away from the cameras, Wood, by far the movie's biggest star at the time, didn't connect with her leading man. One theory posited to explain Wood's distant attitude was that she would have preferred acting opposite her then-husband, Robert Wagner. According to West Side Story costar Russ Tamblyn (Riff), Wood's dressing room contained a "hit list" of people who'd gotten on her bad side, and Beymer was one of the names on that list. When Tamblyn asked Wood what Beymer had done, she reportedly answered, "I just don't like him."

 

4. Wood’s Singing Voice Was Dubbed — To the Surprise of the Actress

After accepting the lead role of Maria, Wood spent the entire production certain her vocals would be heard when the movie headed to theaters. She received intense coaching, and the music department assured Wood that her takes were wonderful. Though singer Marni Nixon also recorded Maria's songs, Wood believed Nixon's voice would solely be used for a few high notes. (Ironically, Nixon also was the singing voice for Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.”) It wasn't until the end of production that Wood discovered Nixon would be singing the entire role. Wood was an actress, not a trained singer, so it's not shocking filmmakers wanted a more skilled vocalist to perform Maria's challenging songs. But Wood would never forgive co-director Robert Wise for keeping her in the dark for so long.

 

5. Robbins Was Fired as the Movie’s Co-Director

Making West Side Story wouldn't have been possible without Robbins, who conceptualized the stage musical and did the choreography. So when Robbins wanted to direct the movie version, producers agreed, though they did install Robert Wise as co-director. As the film was shot, Robbins' choreography was, as always, impressive. But he demanded numerous takes, which held back production. When most of the big dance numbers were finished, the producers fired Robbins. His assistants handled the remaining dance scenes in the movie. Robbins considered removing his name from the finished project but ultimately decided not to, which turned out to be a wise decision, as he (along with Wise) ended up being awarded an Oscar for Best Director.

 

6. The Original Title Was “East Side Story”

When Robbins came up with the show in 1949, the original plot was about a Catholic boy and a Jewish girl living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, appropriately called “East Side Story.” The project was eventually shelved while Robbins, along with composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents, took on other projects. The show resurfaced in 1955 — but with a plot twist. Latin gang violence in Los Angeles was making headlines, inspiring Laurents to propose switching locations from the swanky Upper East Side to the then-rundown Upper West Side and centering the conflict around Puerto Rican and white gangs.

 

 

Source: Surprising Facts About “West Side Story”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THE KITCHEN

Did you know... If you’re anything like the average American, you spend plenty of time in the kitchen — over 400 hours a year, according to a 2022 poll. The kitchen is considered by many to be one of the most important rooms in the home, and if the facts that follow are any indication, it may also be one of the most interesting. Here are six delicious, surprising facts about the room in which you cook, socialize, and store your food.

 

1. The Modern Apartment Kitchen Was Invented by a Member of the Anti-Nazi Resistance

If you live in an apartment or condo, your kitchen is likely modeled off of a design pioneered by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in 1926. Her model kitchen, known as the Frankfurt Kitchen, was invented in response to rising urbanization and the emerging field of domestic science. Schütte-Lihotzky was inspired by the tight quarters of railroads and ships, and created the efficient, small galley kitchen we know today. Each Frankfurt kitchen had labeled storage bins, easy-to-clean surfaces, built-in accessories like ironing boards and a drawer for garbage, and a swiveling stool so housewives could achieve what Schütte-Lihotzky called “the rationalization of housework.” Designed with busy, independent women in mind, the model kitchen was adopted throughout Europe. Over 10,000 were produced between 1925 and 1930. Yet Schütte-Lihotzky wasn’t just a kitchen pioneer. She was also an ardent Communist who became a member of the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. She was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo, and barely escaped with her life after Vienna was liberated in 1945. As a Communist, she suffered a lack of commissions in Austria during the Cold War, but worked in China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and elsewhere.

 

2. Dogs Used to Cook Their Owners’ Food

Before there were modern kitchens, there were open-fire facilities where cooks roasted, braised, and boiled their food. But those cooks weren’t always human: In the 16th century, British breeders actually created a breed of dog designed to turn the wheels of spits in kitchens. Known as Canis vertigus (“dizzy dog” in Latin), the “turnspit dog” ran in a hamster-like contraption that kept meat-roasting spits turning … and turning … and turning. Short and sturdy, turnspit dogs were often given Sundays off so they could accompany their owners to church. But the hardy dogs couldn’t survive the drop-off in demand that accompanied more modern kitchens, and the breed has since gone extinct.

 

3. Microwaves Were Discovered By Accident

The development of radar helped the Allies win World War II — and oddly enough, the technological advances of the war would eventually change kitchens forever. In 1945, American inventor Percy Spencer was fooling around with a British cavity magnetron, a device built to make radar equipment more accurate and powerful, when he realized it could do something else: cook food. With the help of a bag of popcorn and, some say, a raw egg, Spencer proved that magnetrons could heat and even cook food. First marketed as the Radarange, the microwave oven launched for home use in the 1960s. Today, they’re as ubiquitous as the kitchen sink — all thanks to the Allied push to win the war.

 

4. There’s a Reason Your Bananas Don’t Taste Like Banana Flavoring

Have some bananas ripening on your kitchen counter? You may have wondered why they don’t taste anything like the “banana flavor” you find in candy and ice pops. That’s because banana flavor is thought to be based on the Gros Michel banana — not the banana variety most commonly sold today. Also known as Big Mikes, these small bananas were prized for their sweet flavor and reigned supreme on the world banana market. Then, a soil fungus called Panama disease decimated the variety in the 1950s, and farmers turned to Cavendish bananas to fill world demand instead.

 

5. This Cooking Icon’s Entire Kitchen Is in the Smithsonian

Culinary guru Julia Child hosted her TV shows, and her foodie friends, inside a roomy, efficient kitchen in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home. Complete with high countertops to accommodate her 6-foot-3 frame, pegboards for wall storage, and a restaurant stove the chef bought in the 1950s, the kitchen was packed with cookbooks, appliances, and Child’s iconic pots and pans. Though the chef died in 2004, her kitchen lives on at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Child donated it to the museum in the early 2000s, and museum workers painstakingly documented it down to the items in each cabinet, then moved the entire thing to the museum and reassembled it there. According to the Smithsonian, the kitchen — still on display on the museum’s ground floor — was arranged exactly as Child had it when she donated it. “Only the walls and floor were fabricated by the museum and the bananas and tomatoes are replicas,” the museum writes. “Everything else was Julia’s.”

 

 

6. This Could Be the Most Dangerous Item in Your Kitchen

If you’re like most home cooks, you’re cautious with home appliances and open flames. But there’s reason to fear an unexpected item in your kitchen: the avocado. The pitted fruit is a must-buy for anyone who loves guacamole or avocado toast, but it presents a clear and present danger for many home cooks. One 2020 study describes an “epidemic” of hand injuries due to attempts to cut the green guys, citing an estimated 50,413 avocado-related injuries between 1998 and 2017. Women between 23 and 39 years of age were most at risk, with the majority of avocado-related ER visits occurring on Sundays between April and July. So be forewarned — and treat the delicious delicacies with the respect they deserve.

 

 

Source: Facts About the Kitchen That Might Surprise You

Edited July 15, 2023 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DOLLY PARTON

Did you know.... 

When 21-year-old Dolly Parton released her debut album, Hello, I’m Dolly, back in 1967, she was eager to please. “There’s nothing like the first time for anything,” the country icon told Vanity Fair in 2020. “I’m a country girl and so I was excited, but I was nervous. I was hoping for the best — and I wanted to sing my best, to be my best to present myself to the musicians and the background singers. I wanted to impress them with my songs because I wrote a lot of the songs in the album and I just wanted to begin to be a professional.” And that she has. Over the course of her career, Parton has written more than 3,000 songs, 108 of which have landed on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart — including 54 Top 10 and 25 No. 1 hits — cementing her legacy in the business for more than five decades. “I really think of myself as a songteller because I write songs, but I tell stories in my songs,” she said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert of her November 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, which recounts the backstory of about 170 of her songs. Here, we look at how 10 of Dolly’s greatest songs came to be.

 

1. “Dumb Blonde” (1967)

 

Parton’s first Top 10 record off her first album was “Dumb Blonde” — a track written by Curly Putman, who also wrote Tom Jones’ hit “The Green, Green Grass of Home.” The chorus says, “Just because I’m blonde don’t think I’m dumb ‘cause this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool,” a message which she told Vanity Fair she tries “to carry with me all these years.” While on the surface it might have seemed like Parton could fit the bill of the song’s title, she was the polar opposite from the start — a smart, savvy business woman who wasn’t afraid to use her image to turn the tables. It seems particularly apropos that she launched her career with these tongue-in-cheek lyrics; after all, she’s also famously quipped, “I’m not offended by all of the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb … and I also know that I’m not blonde.” That said, the song was crucial in her career trajectory as it was the one that got the attention of  The Porter Wagoner Show — the top syndicated country show at the time. “I was very excited I was stirring up a little ruckus around town,” Parton told Vanity Fair, recalling that Wagoner offered her a regular singing job on his show after hearing “Dumb Blonde.” “It was really that show that got me over the moon as far as my career.” Though she and Wagoner didn’t part on the best of terms after her seven-year tenure, she said the time was well worth it and that despite “tender feelings,” in the end they realized “eventually we all won.”

 

2. “Down from Dover” (1970)

 

When late night host Stephen Colbert asked Parton what some of her favorite songs were, she admitted it’s not always about the big hits. “I like songs that I’ve recorded in albums that a lot of people have never heard,” she said, calling out “Down from Dover,” about an unwed woman who had to leave home because she got pregnant and was holding out hope that the father of her child would come back for her. “At the time, when I put it out on the record, they wouldn’t play it on the radio,” she told Colbert of the controversial lyrics. “Lord, now you can have a baby right on television — it’s all different!” But for Dolly, she loves a solid narrative arc. “I really love some of my songs like that that tell stories,” she added. “Most of my songs that I like the best are songs that nobody’s ever heard.” As she wrote in Songteller, “When I was young, we didn’t go to the movies, so I just created my own stories. It’s kind of embedded in me to make up songs and stories.”

 

3. “Coat of Many Colors” (1971)

 

While Parton was on The Porter Wagoner Show, her songwriting never stopped. In fact, one hit was inspired by the seemingly tiniest of incidents on the road. “We were going on tour and Porter was getting on our tour bus and he had stopped at the cleaners to get his costumes that he’d had cleaned,” she explained to Vanity Fair. “There was a cleaning tag still on the tag on his suit that he had hanging on the wall — and the song just started coming to me.” But the emotion was something that was long brewing. “It had been a memory that always hurt me and I’d been holding that inside and didn’t know it because it was a true story about that little ragged coat,” she told the magazine. On stage, as recounted on her live 2004 album Live and Well, she described the pain. “My mom made me a little coat one time out of scraps,” she recalled, explaining how so many people relate to the song because of suppressed scars. “I think a lot of people carry around a lot of hurt. They don't even realize that it's in there and I think most people have been made fun of about something.” For Parton, the song has been “the little gift that keeps on giving,” since it has sparked a 1996 children’s book; 2015 TV movie starring Jennifer Nettles, Ricky Schroder, and Gerald McRaney; and a 2016 Christmas-themed sequel. “It’s just been a special little song,” she told Vanity Fair.

 

4. “Daddy’s Working Boots” (1972)

 

Several of Parton’s songs, including “In the Good Old Days” and “Daddy was an Old Time Preacher Man” (inspired by her Grandpa Jake), call out to hard-working fathers, but perhaps none is more direct than her 1972 song “Daddy’s Working Boots,” which starts off with a very personal, “My dear hard workin' daddy works his life away for us / That's the way that daddy shows to us his love.” Her father, Lee Parton, was illiterate. Dolly loved and respected him, and often credits her sense of business to him. “Our sweet Daddy worked so hard for all of us,” she has said (Dolly was the fourth of 12 children, and Lee worked farming and construction jobs to feed the family). “At night we used to take turns rubbing Daddy’s cracked, hard-working hands with corn silk lotion and we soaked and washed his tired old feet.” This ode to her father went far beyond just the song. “Daddy was a very smart man … but he was ashamed that he couldn't read or write — that bothered him,” Parton told Oprah Winfrey in 2020. “He felt like he couldn't learn after he was grown. I remember thinking, ‘I need to do something.’” That spark led her to found the Imagination Library in 1995, a nonprofit that provides free books to kids each month from birth until they start school. By 2018, the highly successful program reached a milestone by mailing its 100-millionth book. "My dad got to live long enough to see the Imagination Library doing well and the little kids calling me 'The Book Lady,’” she told Oprah. “He got such a kick out of that."

 

5. “Jolene” (1973)

 

While the 1973 Grammy Hall of Fame song is clearly a plea to another woman to not steal her partner, the namesake for the song was a child. “One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl — she was probably 8 years old at the time," Parton told NPR. “And she had this beautiful red hair, this beautiful skin, these beautiful green eyes, and she was looking up at me for an autograph.” When the girl told her her name, Parton was immediately taken. “I said, ‘Jolene. Jolene. Jolene. Jolene.’ I said, 'That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I'm going to write a song about that.’” But the story itself was inspired by a bank teller — also a redhead — who clearly had her eyes on Parton’s husband, Carl Thomas Dean. “He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us,” she admitted. But that was enough for her to write the 200 words of the lyrics that became one of her best-known hits. “She had everything I didn't, like legs. She was about 6 feet tall and had all that stuff that some little short, sawed-off honky like me don't have,” Parton continued of the relatability of the song, which has since been covered by artists ranging from The White Stripes and Pentatonix to her own goddaughter, Miley Cyrus. “So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you're always threatened by other women, period.” (Dolly and Dean have been married for over 50 years.)

 

Bonus: You Can Have Him Jolene - Chapel Hart

 

 

Click below  to know more about Dolly Parton.

 

 

Source: The Stories Behind 10 of Dolly Parton's Most Important Songs

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - AUSTRALIA

Did you know.... Nestled between the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, Australia is the largest country in Oceania and the sixth-largest country in the world by land area. But that’s just the beginning when it comes to the many amazing things about this ancient land. From its one-of-a-kind wildlife species to the planet’s oldest civilization, here are seven fascinating facts that you might not know about the Land Down Under.

 

1. Australia Is Home to the World’s Oldest Civilization

When Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed in Australia in 1606, the first known European to do so, the continent had already been inhabited for tens of thousands of years by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In 2016, an extensive DNA study by Cambridge University deduced that Aboriginal Australians are the world’s oldest civilization. Indigenous Australian and Papuan ancestral groups migrated to Sahul (a prehistoric subcontinent made up of present-day Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania) about 50,000 years ago. Eventually, rising sea levels caused the separation of the islands, and forced the Aboriginal peoples into genetic isolation that developed unique communities.

 

2. Around 80% of Australia’s Fauna and Flora Is Unique to the Country

Australia has some of the cutest, most interesting, and most venomous animals on the planet. In fact, thanks to its isolated island geography, over 80% of the country’s plants and animals can only be found here. That includes the cuddly koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats that often feature high on tourists’ bucket lists. Many tourists also hope to spot the notoriously feisty Tasmanian devil, the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, and the rainforest-dwelling, sound-mimicking lyrebird. Meanwhile, other national animals strike fear into tourists — Australia has approximately 100 venomous snakes, 12 of which can cause fatalities.  

 

3. Uluru, the World’s Largest Monolith, Extends for Over 1.5 Miles Underground

The most sacred site in Aboriginal culture is the huge red sandstone monolith known as Uluru (or Ayers Rock). This landmark — the largest monolith in the world — is emblematic of the Australian Outback and rises 1,142 feet above its desolate desert surroundings. But what’s perhaps more impressive is that it’s estimated to extend for more than 1.5 miles beneath the Earth’s surface, almost like an iceberg on land. The Anangu people are the traditional owners of this 500-billion-year-old rock, and consider it to be a resting place of ancient spirits.

 

4. Australia Has 19 UNESCO World Heritage Sites

From natural wonders to architectural masterpieces, Australia has an impressive 19 properties on UNESCO’s World Heritage List — more than either Greece or Turkey. You may already be familiar with some of them, as several rank among the country’s most popular tourist attractions, including the Sydney Opera House. Visitors can also get a taste of Australia’s natural beauty at places such as the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, and Fraser Island. They can also catch a glimpse into the nation’s past as a penal colony at the Australia Convict Sites.

 

5. Highway 1 Is One of the Longest Highways on the Planet

With wide open roads running along meandering coastlines, cutting through vast deserts, and crossing mountainous terrain, Australia is a dream destination for a road trip. Highway 1 (nicknamed the Big Lap) is a 9,010-mile-long road that follows the coastline in one enormous loop. It connects almost all of Australia’s major cities, including Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, and Brisbane. It’s also the second-longest highway in the world, after the Pan-American Highway. One of the many fascinating sections of the highway is the “90 Mile Straight.” This perfectly straight stretch passes through the flat, tree-less landscapes of the Nullarbor Plain between Balladonia and Caiguna, in Western Australia.

 

6. The First Australian Police Force Was Assembled of Convicts

When the colonization of Australia began in the late 1700s, there was no recognized formal police force. As a penal colony of Great Britain, there were more convicts than people with non-criminal backgrounds. Upon arrival in New South Wales in 1788, the Royal Navy Marines were given the task of policing, although it wasn’t a role that they wanted. Soon after, Governor Arthur Phillip selected 12 of the most upstanding convicts and created a civilian law enforcement department called the Night Watch. They continued as the Sydney Police until 1862, when they merged with other New South Wales colonial forces.

 

7. Australia Boasts the World’s Longest Golf Course

Golfers with time to spare can play an 18-hole, par-72 course that spans two Australian states. Starting in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, the Nullarbor Links feature one hole at each participating town or roadhouse along the Eyre Highway, before finishing 848 miles away in Ceduna, South Australia. The course incorporates the rugged outback terrain of the Nullarbor Plain, and play can often be interrupted by kangaroos and wombats. Golfers should set aside four days to complete the entire course, and clubs are available for rent at each course (for those who don’t wish to carry them for the multi-day journey).

 

 

Source: Mind-Blowing Facts About Australia

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WHY ARE.....?

Did you know.... Our lives are full of little mysteries. Why is the week seven days long? Why aren't you supposed to put your elbows on the table? Why does toothpaste make orange juice taste terrible? And then there’s every kid’s favorite: Why is the sky blue? We’ve rounded up the answers to some of these quotidian questions, as well as a few weirder head-scratchers, from around the website. Reading the results should arm you with some answers as you go about your day — and help you prepare for the next time you encounter a curious kid.

 

1. Why Are Movie Previews Called “Trailers”?

Movie previews are called “trailers” because they were originally shown after the movie. In the early days of moviegoing, you didn’t just buy a ticket for one feature-length film and leave once the credits started rolling. You were instead treated to a mix of shorts, newsreels, cartoons, and, eventually, trailers — which, per their name, played after the movie rather than before — with people coming and going throughout the day. The idea for trailers came from Nils Granlund, who in addition to being a business manager for movie theaters worked as a producer on Broadway, which explains why the first trailer was actually for a play: 1913’s The Pleasure Seekers. Today there are production houses that exclusively make trailers and are handsomely rewarded for their efforts, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars.

 

2. Why Does Catnip Make Cats High?

About 70% of cats are susceptible to the intoxicating effects of nepetalactone, the active compound in catnip. One whiff and these kitties are temporarily reduced to drooling, meowing messes, often rolling around in or rubbing their faces on the catnip source. That’s because nepetalactone is a volatile organic molecule that binds to receptors in a cat’s nose, stimulating neurons that activate the olfactory bulb, amygdala, hypothalamus, and other areas of the brain, causing a euphoric effect. The buzz seems to wear off after 10 to 15 minutes, leaving cats extremely chill thereafter.

 

3. Why Do We Say “the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread”?

In 1928, when inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, first released his bread loaf-slicing invention, the advertisement claimed it was “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Riffing on the theme, customers began to compare all later inventions to his, and the modern idiom evolved from there.  

 

4. Why Do Brides Wear White?

Walk through any bridal shop and it’s obvious that white wedding dresses are the norm, but that wasn’t always the case. Historically, brides often repurposed their best dress as their wedding gown, and most were not white — specifically because white was exceptionally difficult to keep clean prior to modern washing machines and stain removers. Queen Victoria, who wore a lacy white gown at her 1840 wedding in place of the then-popular red, is often credited for popularizing bridal white (though Mary, Queen of Scots wore white during her 1558 Notre Dame wedding, and many lesser-known royals did before Victoria’s reign). Within a decade of Victoria’s wedding, dressmakers and etiquette books had run with the idea that white was virginal and pure, with the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book writing that a white dress was “an emblem of the innocence and purity of girlhood, and the unsullied heart which she now yields to the keeping of the chosen one.”

 

5. Why Is a Week Seven Days?

The seven-day week is a timekeeping oddity. Unlike days, months, and years, the week doesn’t align with any celestial reality, and it doesn’t divide elegantly into existing periods of time. For example, there aren’t 52 weeks in an average year — there are 52.1428571429. So how did this happen? Babylonians, the ancient superpower of Mesopotamia, put a lot of stock in the number seven thanks to the seven observable celestial bodies in the night sky — the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This formed the seven-day week, which was adopted by the Jewish people, who were captives of the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE. Eventually, it spread to ancient Greece and elsewhere thanks to the battle-happy Macedonian Alexander the Great. Efforts have been made throughout history to reform the seven-day week, but this oddball unit of time has become ingrained in many religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, rendering any sort of tweak pretty unlikely.

 

6. Why Is the Sky Blue?

Think about the atmosphere as a prism. In a prism, white light refracts through its polished surfaces and separates into the colors of the rainbow. The sun produces white light, so when its light travels through the atmosphere, it refracts a rainbow of colors. Each color comes from an electromagnetic wave. While red has the longest, slowest wavelength, blue and violet move in quick, short waves. As these colors pass through the atmosphere, they oscillate charged particles in air molecules like oxygen and nitrogen. Blue and violet are scattered in all directions at around 10 times the efficiency of red light, so they get the highest coverage area in our sky. Our eyes are more sensitive to blue than violet, which is why we see the sky as blue.

 

Click below  to learn about other mysteries that were solved.

 

 

Source: Everyday Mysteries, Solved

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LAUGHTER

Did you know.... The world is wide and wonderful — and pretty weird. Take a break from your day and prepare to smile over this assortment of random facts, from the pseudo-medical roots of tomato ketchup to Antarctic matchmaking. What was Uranus called before Uranus? Why do giant pandas do handstands? These eight facts may just give you a chuckle.

 

1. A Butt Is a Unit of Measurement

If we’re talking imperial measurements, a “butt” is a cask of liquid. And while this form of “butt” is obsolete for most people, it’s still used in wine and brewing contexts. In the wine world, a butt is around 108 imperial gallons (just under 500 liters, or around 126 U.S. gallons), so it turns out that a buttload is… a buttload.

 

2. Uranus Used to Be Called “George’s Star”

Despite the fact that Uranus is four times the size of Earth, it took astronomers a while to realize it was a planet rather than a star, even after telescopes came along. English astronomer William Herschel made the first recorded discovery of Uranus as a planet in 1781, during the reign of King George III. He named the planet Georgium Sidus, or George’s Star, in honor of the king. The international astronomy community was less than thrilled about a planet being named after an unpopular British monarch rather than a deity, and in 1850 settled on naming the planet Uranus, after the Greek god of the sky.

 

3. Ketchup Used to Be Sold as Medicine

A lot of dangerous things were sold as “patent medicine” in unregulated 1800s America, including mercury, lead, and arsenic. Meanwhile, tomatoes, which are in the same family as deadly nightshade, were considered unsafe by much of the population until they were sold as a cure-all. Dr. John Cook Bennett was one of the tomato’s biggest boosters, and claimed the fruit would protect migrants heading west “from the danger attendant upon those violent bilious attacks to which all unacclimated citizens are liable.” He provided several tomato recipes to be taken as medicine, including catsup, which, at the time, typically contained mushrooms and/or walnuts. Eventually, Americans figured out that tomato ketchup worked much better as a tasty condiment than medicine — but to be fair to Dr. Bennett, he did suggest using it as a replacement for mercury, so he may have helped some folks out.

 

4. The Dating App Tinder Works in Antarctica

Antarctica is the most sparsely populated continent on the Earth, with only about 1,000 people over the winter (none of them permanent residents) in more than 5 million square miles. So when an American scientist opened the Tinder app at a research station in 2014, it was mostly out of curiosity. To his surprise, he matched with another researcher camping a 45-minute helicopter ride away. They didn’t meet until a few weeks after swiping right, just as his match was leaving town, but considering the population only grows to about 5,000 people in the summer, the chances that their paths crossed again seems high.

 

5. A Jiffy Is a Real Unit of Time

For a term that seems so cutesy, the literal use of “jiffy” is extremely scientific. Physicists use the term to describe how long it takes for light to travel a millionth of a millionth of a millimeter, which is less than a billion-billionth of a second. A jiffy is a little longer in electrical contexts; it’s the length of a single cycle of alternating current, or about one-fiftieth of a second. So next time you say you’ll be “back in a jiffy,” consider what you’re promising!

 

6. Giant Pandas Sometimes Do Headstands to Pee

No, it’s not a human-taught trick: Wild giant pandas have been known to do handstands while relieving themselves, especially during mating season. Because, unfortunately, there aren’t too many giant pandas around — and they don’t have a ton of energy to spare — they want to broadcast their scent as widely and efficiently as possible to potential mates. This means finding trees with rough bark for greater absorption, choosing wide trees to increase the target area, and aiming as high as possible. The handstand gives male pandas a much-needed leg up (literally).

 

7. The Blob in Toothpaste Ads Is Called a “Nurdle”

 

A toothbrush with a picturesque swirl of toothpaste, called a “nurdle” in the industry, is a mainstay of advertisements, and became especially popular as brands started releasing more colorful products in the 1970s. It’s a goofy factoid for most of us, but toothpaste manufacturers take nurdles very, very seriously. In 2010, GlaxoSmithCline, the maker of Aquafresh, applied to trademark the nurdle design in any color. Colgate-Palmolive, which also used a nurdle to advertise its products, took it as a legal threat — the company’s lawyer called it “a blatant shot across Colgate’s bow” — and sued to protect their imagery and get the trademark petition canceled. GlaxoSmithCline countersued, alleging that Colgate’s nurdle caused “irreparable harm.” The two companies eventually came to a confidential settlement, but still: Who knew the toothpaste industry was so wacky… and so litigious?

 

8. Humans Could Frame Koalas for a Crime (or Vice Versa)

Strangely enough, koala fingerprints strongly resemble those of humans — the pattern of ridges and whorls looks even more similar to our own than chimpanzee fingerprints. Though distant on the evolutionary tree from us primates, koalas likely developed fingerprints to help them grasp eucalyptus trees while climbing them and munching on their leaves. In the ’90s, a forensic scientist at the University of Adelaide in Australia warned that koala prints are so similar to human prints, it’s possible police in Australia could mistake one for another. “Although it is extremely unlikely that koala prints would be found at the scene of a crime, police should at least be aware of the possibility,” Maciej Henneberg noted.

 

Source: Facts That Will Make You Laugh

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MARY TODD LINCOLN

Did you know.... The wife of the 16th and perhaps most consequential President in U.S. history, Mary Todd Lincoln left behind an intriguing legacy in her own right. Often remembered as a troubled foil to her saintly husband, she was of course a far more complex person than the shrewish caricature she was often reduced to, especially when considering the enormous losses she suffered in her lifetime. Read on to learn seven facts about this outspoken and misunderstood First Lady.

 

1. Mary Todd Was Well Educated for a Woman of Her Time

Mary was one of 16 children born to Kentucky businessman and politician Robert Smith Todd, who possessed the financial means and progressive mindset to make sure his daughters were academically engaged. She subsequently studied a wide range of subjects over five years at Shelby Female Academy, before spending another four years perfecting her French at the Mentelle’s for Young Ladies boarding academy. Her schooling, combined with exposure to influential family friends such as Senator Henry Clay, ensured that Mary was well versed in both classical subjects and contemporary issues.

 

2. Stephen Douglas Asked for Mary’s Hand in Marriage

While Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas famously sparred in a series of debates for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858, they also competed for the affections of the same fiery Kentucky woman some 20 years earlier. After moving to Springfield, Illinois, in the late 1830s, Mary drew the attention of promising suitors like Douglas, then a rising lawyer and politician. However, the ambition and charisma of the "Little Giant" wasn't enough to win her over; when Douglas asked for her hand in marriage, she reportedly replied, "I can't consent to be your wife. I shall become Mrs. President, or I am the victim of false prophets, but it will not be as Mrs. Douglas."

 

3. Mary Formed a Strong Political Partnership With Her Husband …

Historians have often mused over what drew Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln to matrimony in November 1842 — she was short, tempestuous, and sophisticated; he was towering, shy, and dirt-poor — but their seemingly contradicting attributes masked a strong partnership. Politically, they saw eye-to-eye with their roots in the Whig Party, and he valued her intelligence and judgment of character. Furthermore, Mary's refinement proved an asset on the 1860 presidential campaign trail, helping to convince journalists that the little-known Republican was a serious candidate. Her invaluable contributions to the campaign prompted Lincoln, upon learning of his victory, to exclaim to his wife: "Mary, Mary, we are elected!"

 

4. … But She Was an Unpopular First Lady

Any public benefits Mary provided for Lincoln during his candidacy quickly evaporated by the time she settled into her role as First Lady. She was criticized for burning through the allocated congressional funding for White House renovation during one extended shopping trip, and again for hosting parties during a solemn time of war. Mary also butted heads with White House staffers — Lincoln's secretary John Hay called her a "hellcat" — and did herself no favors with the occasional public tantrum. Although she also visited wounded soldiers and contributed to a fund for runaway enslaved people, such deeds were usually eclipsed by the waves of negative publicity.

 

5. Mary Todd Lincoln Was Close Friends With a Formerly Enslaved Woman Turned Dressmaker

Born into slavery in Virginia, Elizabeth Keckley (also spelled Keckly) used her sewing talents to become a dressmaker to some of the most powerful women in the nation’s capital, including the incoming First Lady in 1861. Their relationship quickly progressed from professional to personal, with one observer describing the seamstress as "the only person in Washington who could get along with Mrs. Lincoln." The widow pleaded with Keckley to move with her to Chicago after leaving the White House, and she later enlisted her confidant's help in an ill-fated attempt to sell off personal possessions. However, their relationship came to an end after Keckley revealed too many private details in her 1868 memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.

 

6. Mary Todd Lincoln Was Committed to a Mental Institution by Her Surviving Son

As a mother who'd lost three sons to various diseases — and her husband to an assassin — Mary was understandably troubled after she had a premonition of misfortune befalling her lone surviving son, Robert, fueling a confrontation between the two in 1875. Agitated by years of Mary’s increasingly erratic behavior, Robert took her to court for insanity proceedings, and personally testified to her "unsound mind" to get her committed to Bellevue Place Sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois. Whatever distress she was enduring at the time, Mary was shrewd enough to behave under close watch while smuggling letters to influential allies, who managed to secure her release to her eldest sister's care after a few months.

 

7. Mary Todd Lincoln May Have Suffered From a Vitamin B12 Deficiency

Mary's list of physical and mental issues has long been a source of fascination for armchair psychologists and real-life physicians. Some have posthumously diagnosed her with illnesses ranging from Lyme disease to diabetes, but in 2016, one doctor put forth an intriguing theory that she may have suffered from a condition called pernicious anemia. Often brought about by the body's inability to absorb vitamin B12, pernicious anemia can lead to such symptoms as headaches, fever, swelling, mouth soreness, and shortness of breath — all of which were experienced by the First Lady. Had she enjoyed access to the B12 shots that became available after WWII, she may have had a somewhat easier time in her later years and been remembered differently by history.

 

 

Source: Facts About First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MYTHS ABOUT HISTORY

Did you know... Ideally, history is the true story of humanity’s past. But sometimes fictions slip in, either big or small, and stay fixed in the narrative with a stubborn persistence. Some of these fictions are relatively harmless, while others have become the engine of major movements or seriously distorted people’s lives. These are the stories of six of the most prominent myths in history, and why it’s time to debunk them once and for all.

 

1. Napoleon Wasn’t That Short

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Napoleon complex,” which refers to the idea that small creatures — whether people or Pomeranians — often act as if they’re much bigger than they really are, supposedly in an attempt to overcompensate for their lack of stature. Of course, it’s also a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte, the early 19th-century French emperor who wreaked havoc on the European continent for nearly two decades. Yet French sources say Napoleon probably stood at about 5 feet, 5 inches. While that might seem somewhat short by today’s standards, it was only an inch shorter than the average height of a Frenchman at the time. It’s possible he even stood an inch or two taller than this estimate. So why does history remember Napoleon as such a tiny tyrant? Turns out, it’s actually an enduring piece of British propaganda. In 1803, British political cartoonist James Gillray — arguably the most influential caricaturist of his time — introduced the character “Little Boney,” which portrayed Bonaparte as both diminutive and juvenile. In his cartoons, Napoleon was often seen throwing tantrums while stomping around in oversized boots, military garb, and bicorne hats. The image stuck, and the sight of a raging, pint-sized Napoleon echoed through history. Before his death in 1821, the twice-exiled Napoleon even admitted that Gillray “did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down.”

 

2. People Have Known the World Was Round for 2,500 Years

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” in an effort to prove to European naysayers that the world was round, right? Not at all. In fact, Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (his real name), his European contemporaries, and basically all educated humans dating back to the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere. Famous mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (of a2 + b2 = c2 fame) figured out as much around 500 BCE, and 260 years later, another Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes accurately measured the Earth’s circumference. But defying the status quo and risking a deathly plunge into the vacuum of space certainly adds some dramatic tension, which is probably why Washington Irving invented this fictional flourish for his 1828 biography The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Although he was known for his inventive works of fiction, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving’s creative history of Colombo became one of the most persistent myths of the Age of Exploration.

 

3. Marie Antoinette Never Said “Let Them Eat Cake”

During the French Revolution in the late 18th century, royals and nobles didn’t fare very well — perhaps least of all Queen Marie Antoinette. Married to the last ruler of the ancien régime, King Louis XVI, at the age of 14, Antoinette was seen as an Austrian outsider (her dad was Holy Roman Emperor Francis I) and was often the recipient of France’s ill will. Although the aristocracy was certainly divorced from the harsh realities of the French peasantry, Antoinette was both intelligent and giving, often donating to charitable causes. This didn’t save her from being frequently implicated in various scandals (including a famous one involving a pricey diamond necklace), despite being generally innocent of the charges. But the most damaging accusation when it comes to Antoinette’s historical reputation is her alleged cold reaction to the plight of the starving French peasantry when she supposedly uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake.” Yet Antoinette didn’t do it. For one thing, the actual French quote — “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — doesn’t mention cake at all, but instead brioche, a type of sweet bread. Semantics aside, folklore scholars for nearly two centuries have traced the famous phrase to other sources and regions from long before Antoinette was even born. A 16th-century German tale, for example, features a noble woman wondering why peasants didn’t instead eat krosem, also a kind of sweet bread. In 1843, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr found the same sentence in a book dated 1760 (when the Austrian princess would have been only 5 years old). Even the 2006 film Marie Antoinette (starring Kirsten Dunst in the eponymous role) mentions that the French queen never said the words. Yet despite nearly two centuries of debunking, the myth remains.

 

4. The “Wild West” Wasn’t That Wild

The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881, pitting the lawmen Virgil and Wyatt Earp against outlaws known as the “Cowboys,” is often seen as an emblem of the Wild West. Although depicted in many Hollywood films as evidence of the rampant lawlessness of the West, the real gunfight lasted only 30 seconds, killed three people, and didn’t happen at the O.K. Corral but in a vacant lot down the street. Overall, the episode was a relatively minor one in the history of western North America, but it’s a moment that has become almost legendary in the romanticization of the Wild West, a period of American history stretching from about 1850 until 1900. Although areas where people struck gold saw a relatively significant uptick in crime, most of the supposedly “wild” West was tamer than you may imagine. Economists, historians, and authors argue that for the most part settlers understood the importance of solving matters civilly, and some towns even passed gun control measures. Although Native Americans suffered egregious injustices during this period, the idea that they massacred white settlers in large numbers has also been exaggerated, and many were actually tolerant of wagon trains headed west. Another of the most famous tropes associated with the Wild West is also a fabrication, or at least an exaggeration. Many cowboys preferred bowler hats or other lower-crowned hats; what we think of as a cowboy hat didn’t become popular until around the end of the 19th century. (The name “10-gallon hat” didn’t arrive until the 1920s.) Even the ubiquitous saloon-style doors were mostly a myth, as nearly all watering holes in the West had normal doors to keep out chilly winds.

 

5. There Were Actually 12 U.S. Colonies (Until 1776)

Thirteen stripes on the U.S. flag mean 13 colonies originally rebelled against British rule in 1775, right? Strangely, this too is also a myth of sorts. While it’s true that the former British colonies did begin the American Revolution in earnest in 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, there were technically only 12 colonies at the time. Although it had its own legislative assembly since 1704, the little stretch of coast known today as Delaware was then a part of the Pennsylvania Colony. Delaware didn’t declare its independence until June 15, 1776 — just in time to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote on the Declaration of Independence less than a month later. Although Delaware was the last colony to fully form in America’s colonial period, it certainly wasted no time ushering in the new era, as the state was the very first to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 7, 1787, technically making it the first U.S. state in the union.

 

6. Thomas Edison Didn’t Invent the Lightbulb

Thomas Edison has plenty of world-changing inventions to his name, such as the phonograph and the kinetograph, but history largely remembers his genius in the shape of the lightbulb. Edison can certainly be thanked for perfecting the lightbulb and making electric light economically feasible, but he’s far from the technology's inventor. Although many could claim credit for the lightbulb’s invention, one of the earliest examples of a lightbulb comes from an English scientist named Ebenezer Kinnersley, who in 1761 — some 86 years before Edison was born — described getting a wire so “red hot” that it gave off light. Kinnersley was describing a process known as incandescence, where electrical resistance actually causes a material to glow. This idea forms the scientific foundation of the incandescent bulb, and many inventors before Edison, including Frederick de Moleyns and Joseph Swan, successfully created incandescent bulbs and lamps. However, in the end it was Edison who by 1880 devised a bulb that lasted some 1,200 hours thanks to its carbonized bamboo filament. Suddenly, lightbulbs transformed from an expensive oddity to the way of the future.

 

 

Source: Debunked Myths About History

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - USELESS BODY PARTS!!!!

Did you know.... The human body contains around 600 muscles, more than 200 bones, and all sorts of tendons, fascia, and organs — but some of them are pretty much obsolete, even if they make for decent party tricks. A few body parts have even started to disappear already, and are only present in certain segments of the population. In extreme cases, as people who have had appendectomies or wisdom tooth extractions can attest, it seems like some of these body parts exist only to hurt us. Are you missing a mostly useless arm muscle? What muscles are key for dogs, but not particularly handy for us? These seven body parts are pretty much just along for the ride.

 

1. Appendix

The appendix, a small pouch attached to the large intestine, is perhaps the best-known useless organ, doing little except occasionally getting infected. However, it turns out that it might not be entirely useless. Scientific theories have been floating around since 2007 that the appendix might actually serve as a “safe house” for beneficial gut bacteria, storing it to replenish it in the rest of the gut if it gets wiped out by illness (or, in modern times, antibiotics). If this turns out to be accurate, it’s still not a particularly important organ, and if it gets severely infected, you still need to get it removed. Don’t worry: Hundreds of thousands of people get them taken out every year and are doing just fine.

 

2. Tailbone (Coccyx)

Humans don’t need tails, but our ancestors sure did — and tailbones, also known as coccyxes, are the last remaining part of them, consisting of three to five vertebrae that aren’t connected to the spine. The coccyx is not a functional tail, but it is woven in with the ligaments, tendons, and muscles in the area. Occasionally, it gets rid of itself by fusing with the sacrum, another lower back bone. In cases of extreme pain that don’t resolve with any other treatment, people can get their coccyx surgically removed, but it’s unnecessary in the vast majority of cases. Occasionally a baby will be born with an actual tail — and human embryos generally form with a tail that later disappears as it grows into the tailbone — but it’s extremely rare.

 

3. Wisdom Teeth

Wisdom teeth, a third set of molars, have made dental surgery a rite of passage. For those who get them — many people don’t — they usually start emerging between the ages of 17 and 21. Often, there’s no room in the jaw, and the teeth end up trapped. When that happens, they need to be surgically extracted. Occasionally they grow in without incident and just become extra teeth. It’s a lot of trouble for a set of teeth that we don’t even need. One theory is that our ancestors, who ate harder-to-chew things and didn’t have dentists, needed them as backup teeth. Modern science has gotten pretty good at just replacing teeth as they fall out, but wisdom teeth could still replace damaged molars in a pinch.

 

4. External Ear-Orienting System

If you have a pet dog or cat, you’ve probably noticed their ears snapping to attention at an interesting or startling noise. Humans still have those muscles and, likely, the brain circuits associated with them. In one study, researchers observed tiny, involuntary movements in the directions of interesting sounds. For one part of the study, they had participants read a boring text while they played attention-grabbing sounds like crying babies and footsteps. Next, they had participants try to listen to a podcast while a second podcast played in the background. Those ear muscles fired up in both cases — they’re just obsolete for modern human beings. Some humans can still wiggle their ears, which does serve one purpose: It’s a cool party trick.

 

5. Goosebump Muscles

Human ancestors were much furrier than us, and sometimes needed to fluff up their hair for warmth or to look bigger and more fearsome. They had tiny muscles attached to their hair follicles, called arrector pili muscles, that would shift each hair up into a vertical position. Today, in our much more hairless state, those muscles give us goosebumps, also known as goose pimples, when we get chilly, scared, or excited. Some emerging research suggests these muscles may have a role in combating hair loss — and without them, we wouldn’t have a name for the iconic children’s horror series Goosebumps — but as far as basic survival goes, the arrectores pilorum are pretty much useless.

 

6. Third Eyelid

Most animals have a third eyelid, also called the nictitating membrane, which serves as a kind of windshield wiper that distributes tears and clears debris from the eye. This trait evolved out of human beings and some apes, but we still have a tiny vestigial remnant in the inner corners of our eyes. It’s a bit of eye tissue just inside that fleshy pink eye bump. In exceedingly rare cases — only two have ever been reported — humans can have a more developed nictitating membrane that covers a larger portion of the eye. So why did we lose ours? One theory is that, unlike animals that still have them, we’re not typically sticking our faces directly into bushes or other animals to forage for food, so we have less debris to push out of our eyes.

 

7. Palmaris Longus Muscle

The palmaris longus is a muscle stretching the length of our forearm that’s evolving away before our very eyes, literally — because it’s visible when you hold your hand and wrist a certain way, you can actually tell whether you still have yours on sight. It’s already missing in a significant portion of the population, and different studies around the world have observed its disappearance in anywhere between 1.5% and 63.9% of participants. The muscle helps with wrist flexion in those who still have it, but it’s getting progressively weaker as other muscles take over its duties. If you don’t have one, you can still do all the same things as someone who does have it. While it’s unnecessary as is, the palmaris longus is pretty useful as a donor tendon for plastic surgery.

 

Source: Body Parts That Are More or Less Useless

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - A NEW SKELETON?

Did you know... The human skeleton is sometimes called the scaffolding of the body, and the name is apt because, like scaffolding, our bones are less permanent than you might think. Human bones grow in a process known as modeling, and once a person reaches adulthood, the skeleton system refreshes itself in a process known as remodeling. During remodeling, certain cells in the body break down bone and funnel its minerals into the bloodstream, while other cells build healthy bone back up. Every year, the body replaces around 10% of bone via remodeling, which means we get an entirely new skeleton about every 10 years.

 

Bone remodeling is just one of the ways in which our bodies are in a constant process of regeneration. Human hair is replaced every two to seven years (and around 100 hairs fall out of our heads every day), fingernails take about six months to replace, and our intestinal lining — constantly under assault from digestive acids — regenerates every week (or less). One of the most dramatic examples of regeneration is the production of red blood cells; the body creates upwards of 3 million of them every second, and totally refreshes these cells every four months. 

Does all this rejuvenation mean that humans are essentially a walking, talking Theseus’ paradox? This philosophical question, first proposed by Greek philosopher Plutarch, ponders whether something that slowly replaces itself is still the original object or something new. However, there are a few things in the human body that remain the same. Parts of our heart stick with us forever, and we’re born with most of our brain’s neurons. Also, our teeth can’t regenerate once grown, and the core that makes up the lens of our eye forms during prenatal development and never changes. So while many things in our body do change, some stay the same — meaning that humans are always a mix of both the new and the old.

 

Scientists once thought dinosaur fossils belonged to giant humans.
Around 1677, English naturalist Robert Plot discovered a dinosaur fossil nearly a century and a half before science knew what a “dinosaur” was. Analyzing a femur that belonged to what we know today to be a megalosaurus, Plot suspected that it might be an elephant bone, before ultimately theorizing that it had belonged to a giant human. For more than a century, naturalists like Plot attempted to describe dinosaur fossils as belonging to giant versions of animals that existed on Earth, including humans. In 1763, British physician Richard Brookes even labeled certain dinosaur bones Scrotum humanum, believing the bones resembled the genitals of a male human. It wasn’t until 1824 that scientists identified Plot’s bones as belonging to a giant lizard they named megalosaurus. As a result, the first dinosaur was named before scientists even knew these creatures existed. Finally, in 1842, the word “dinosauria,” meaning “terrible lizard” in Greek, officially entered the lexicon, and humanity’s perception of Earth history changed with it. 

 

 

Source: Humans get a new skeleton about every 10 years.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CLINT EASTWOOD

Did you know... He became one of the biggest names in Hollywood by way of the tough-as-nails persona displayed in films such as Hang ’Em High (1968) and Dirty Harry (1971), and then garnered even more prestige as the director of Academy Award-winning films such as Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). But Clint Eastwood didn’t simply roll out of bed one day and become a movie star, nor has he focused exclusively on filmmaking over the course of a rich life that began during the Great Depression. Read on to learn more about this American icon… if you feel lucky, punk.

 

1. An Army Stint Ignited His Interest in Acting

Like many young adults, Eastwood bounced around a bit before finding his true calling. His early resume included time spent as a hay baler, truck driver, gas pumper, and lumberjack. However, it was his turn as an Army swim instructor that ultimately pointed the tall, athletic Californian toward Hollywood. While he took the cushy job to avoid deployment to the Korean War, the gig also brought him into contact with drafted actors such as Richard Long, Martin Milner, and David Janssen. Noting the post-Army screen successes of these friends, Eastwood ultimately elected to take acting classes at Los Angeles City College following his discharge.

 

2. A Low Asking Price Led to Eastwood’s First Big-Screen Starring Role

In hindsight, it seems logical that Eastwood made the winning leap from cattle driver Rowdy Yates on Rawhide to the (mostly) nameless gunslinger of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), but success was no sure thing at the time. For starters, Eastwood received the opportunity largely because he was cheaper than other prominent American actors — not always a great sign for the overall viability of a project. There was also the matter of communication issues, as Italian director Sergio Leone spoke little English. And then there was the lawsuit filed by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, who accused Leone of copying his samurai movie Yojimbo (1961). Despite the production troubles, Fistful and its sequels For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) became overseas hits before finally reaching American shores in 1967, paving the way for Eastwood’s big-screen career to take off.

 

3. Eastwood Became Dirty Harry After Other Stars Passed on the Part

Other than his Man with No Name antihero from the Dollars Trilogy, Eastwood is perhaps best known for portraying "Dirty Harry" Callahan across five films. But that famous role also nearly went to someone else, as Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen were reportedly among the big-name stars who rejected the offer. According to Eastwood, it was Paul Newman who first tipped off a studio executive that the erstwhile spaghetti Western star would be a good fit for the part. After Frank Sinatra pulled out of the movie, Dirty Harry finally moved ahead with the man who would become its iconic, magnum-toting lead.

 

4. He Served One Term as Mayor of a California Town

Following in the footsteps of actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan, Eastwood in 1986 launched a bid for the mayorship of Carmel-by-the-Sea, the tiny mid-California coastal town he'd called home for several years. After winning in a landslide, Mayor Eastwood overturned some of the town's archaic ordinances, including one that made it illegal to eat ice cream on the street. He also expanded the local library. It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course, as residents grumbled about the influx of tourists who showed up to get a glimpse of the movie star running the show. Rather than leverage what had been a mostly successful tenure into a heftier political profile, Eastwood announced he was stepping down after one term to spend more time with his children.

 

5. Eastwood Recorded a Chart-Topping Country Music Hit

A music enthusiast, Eastwood has delivered several simple but resonant scores for his movies, though his track record as a singer is decidedly more mixed. His album Rawhide's Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites (1963) failed to make an impact on the charts, and the sight of his stoic frontiersman crooning "I Talk to the Trees" in Paint Your Wagon (1969) remains somewhat jarring. To his credit, Eastwood shrugged off the critics and continued recording songs when inspired, even scoring a No. 1 country hit alongside Merle Haggard in 1980 with the catchy sing-along "Bar Room Buddies."

 

6. The Big-Screen Tough Guy Has a Soft Spot for Animals

It may not come as a surprise to anyone who watched Eastwood pal around with Clyde the Orangutan in Every Which Way but Loose (1978), but the man behind Dirty Harry and other Tinseltown tough guys is a big softie when it comes to animals. In a 2009 interview with GQ, the actor described a homestead filled with pigs, chickens, birds, and a "crazy rabbit," and disclosed that the last time he'd cried was when a pet cockatoo died. Similarly, his daughter Alison recalled a houseful of pets while growing up, including the baby deer taken in after its mother was hit by a car. However, Alison also revealed that her father isn't so welcoming to all animals — he's apparently allergic to cats and some dogs.

 

 

Source: Clint Eastwood Facts to Make Your Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - NEW SPECIES

Did you know... Humans have explored the deepest points of the oceans and the highest peaks on Earth, not to mention the surface of the moon. But our planet remains a source of surprising discoveries. In the first half of 2023, researchers identified dozens of species previously unknown to science, from tiny insects to amphibians, fish, and mammals. Here are just a handful of the amazing new fauna we’ve recently met.

 

1. DiCaprio’s Snail-Eating Snake (Sibon irmelindicaprioae)

This red-eyed, strikingly patterned species of snail-eating snake makes its home in the treetops of rainforests in Colombia and Panama — but it also has a connection to Hollywood. Noted environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio named the rare reptile after his mom, Irmelin, in an effort to highlight the risks it faces. (The actor partnered with the Nature and Culture International nonprofit to draw awareness to the new species.) DiCaprio’s snail-eating snake and four other new snake species, described in February 2023 in the journal ZooKeys, are threatened by rampant gold mining in the rainforest, which destroys the leafy cover the snakes need to survive.

 

2. Eastern Mindanao Gymnure (Podogymnura intermedia)

A group of zoologists from Chicago’s Field Museum, the Philippines, and elsewhere found a new species of gymnure, a hedgehog-like mammal with soft fur and a long probing nose, that lives only on two mountains on the Philippines’ second-largest island. P. intermedia’s habitat encompasses high-elevation forests on Mount Hamiguitan and Mount Kampalili, two peaks in the little-explored Eastern Mindanao Biodiversity Corridor, which supports numerous endemic plant and animal species. The researchers described the new gymnure — also known as a moonrat — in the journal Zootaxa in January 2023.

 

3. A New Spiny-Throated Reed Frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis)

According to a February 2023 report in the journal PLOS ONE, DNA analysis confirmed this diminutive amphibian, native to Tanzania’s Ukaguru Mountains, is a new species of spiny-throated reed frog. Unlike most of the world’s frogs, H. ukaguruensis doesn’t croak — and scientists are not sure how the creatures communicate with one another. Described as “golden greenish-brown” and found in dense swamps, the frog may already be at risk from human exploitation of its forested home.

 

4. A “Gummy Squirrel” (Psychropotes longicauda)

In a huge swath of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, scientists surveyed areas of the deep ocean and discovered more than 5,000 species of sponges, arthropods, worms, sea urchins, and other invertebrates new to science. One of them was Psychropotes longicauda, a sea cucumber nicknamed a “gummy squirrel” due to its long curved tail, which lives at a depth of 16,000 feet. The findings, reported in the journal Current Biology in May 2023, shed light on a little-known part of the seabed that’s also being eyed for deep-sea mining.

 

5. A New Demon Catshark (Apristurus ovicorrugatus)

A new type of shark from a genus with a dramatic name was identified in May 2023. Demon catsharks (Apristurus) scuttle along the seabed, gobbling up benthic prey; the new species also has spooky, catlike eyes with glowing white irises. Fortunately, the scientists who discovered the fish didn’t meet it in a dark alley — they happened upon an egg case with unusual ridges in a museum collection. They believed it was a novel catshark species, but couldn’t test the theory without a DNA sample from a live specimen. By chance, a research vessel picked up a catshark carrying the exact egg case, allowing the scientists to confirm their hunch. The evidence was reported in the Journal of Fish Biology.

 

6. Stony Fork Crayfish (Cambarus lapidosus) and Falls Crayfish (Cambarus burchfielae)

Not all newly discovered species are as charismatic as a catshark. Two new species of crayfish — freshwater crustaceans resembling tiny brown lobsters, nicknamed “mudbugs” — were unearthed in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina in April 2023. Each is found in only one small stream system, according to the study in Zootaxa. The Stony Fork crayfish is named after its home waterway, while the Falls crayfish is endemic to the Lewis Fork; both streams represent the entire ranges of the two species. They bring the total number of crayfish species in the state to 51, yet there may be many more lurking under rocks.

 

7. Río Negro Stream Frog (Hyloscirtus tolkieni)

 

This novel amphibian’s colors caught the eyes of researchers as they bushwhacked through the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park in the Andes of central Ecuador. Larger than other members of the genus Hyloscirtus, the new species has a mottled grayish-green back, a yellow belly covered in black splotches, long speckled yellow toes, and rosy pink eyes. The discoverers named the multihued frog, which depends on fresh, clear-flowing mountain streams for its survival, after The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. “The amazing colors of the new species evoke the magnificent creatures that seem to only exist in fantasy worlds,” the authors wrote in ZooKeys.

 

8. Nelson’s Pouncer Grasshopper (Melanoplus nelsoni)

The Edwards Plateau of central Texas was once a vast grassland with hills formed by eroding limestone. When settlers established permanent farms and towns, the grassland changed into a scrubby landscape punctuated by groves of small trees. Though humans and their livestock have altered the land, scientists are still discovering new species in this biodiverse region. In June 2023, scientists announced they’d found seven new flightless grasshopper species, one of which they named for Texas icon Willie Nelson. The insect, dubbed “Nelson’s Pouncer,” measures less than an inch long and makes its home among the ashe juniper forests of Texas Hill Country. The findings appeared in ZooKeys.

 

 

Source: Amazing Species Discovered in 2023

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SHOES

Did you know.... From the comfiest of sneakers to the highest of stilettos, shoes are a key component of any wardrobe. But while loafers and clogs may seem like just another accessory to some, footwear has a rich and fascinating history dating back millennia. So lace up your boots and take a stroll through this list of six incredible facts about shoes.

 

1. Chuck Taylor All Stars Were the First Signature Athletic Shoes

Long before Jordans and Kobes hit the market, the first athlete to lend his name to a signature shoe was Chuck Taylor, a semiprofessional basketball player from Indiana. Converse created its All Star sneaker in 1917 with the sport of basketball in mind, and by 1921, Taylor had signed on to help sell the shoes out of the company’s office in Chicago. Taylor wasn’t a celebrity in the same way that today’s NBA players are, but as part of his job, he organized promotional basketball clinics for Converse and worked with coaches and athletes all over the country. He became so closely associated with the brand that people started referring to All Stars as “Chuck Taylor’s shoes,” even before his name was physically affixed to the sneakers in the early 1930s. Within a few decades, other signature shoes followed. In 1958, Celtics star Bob Cousy worked with a company called PF Flyers to design a shoe that sold 14 million pairs in its first year. And in 1973, Puma released the Puma Clyde, named for New York Knicks star Clyde Frazier. Of course, the biggest names in the signature shoe game are Nike and Michael Jordan, who teamed up on the Air Jordan I (the first of many releases) in 1985. Jordan is undoubtedly Nike’s most successful signature athlete, but he wasn’t the company’s first. That title belongs to Wayne Wells, a freestyle wrestler who won gold at the 1972 Olympics. Wells signed a contract with Nike that same year and helped design a wrestling shoe to which he lent his name, paving the way for future athletes to sign on with the brand.

 

2. Neil Armstrong Left His Shoes on the Moon

After Neil Armstrong took one of the most consequential steps in human history, the boots he used to do so were discarded on the moon. In fact, both of the Apollo 11 astronauts who walked on the lunar surface — Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — left behind their overshoes, along with their portable life-support systems. Leaving the gear wasn’t a symbolic gesture; it helped to offset the added weight of collected moon rocks that the shuttle would be taking back. And the astronauts didn’t return to Earth barefoot, either. The treaded overshoes they abandoned were worn atop flat-soled pressure boots (which they kept) for added traction while traversing the moon’s rocky terrain.

 

3. The First Slip-On Elastic Boots Were Made for Queen Victoria

In the early 1800s, boots were a popular style among both men and women, though tying them with rudimentary laces and buttons made putting them on difficult. English inventor Joseph Sparkes Hall realized there had to be a better way, and in 1837, he designed the first pair of elastic-sided boots, which he presented to Queen Victoria that same year (the year she ascended to the throne). This new slip-on boot provided the comfort of slippers with the stability of laced shoes, and became well known thanks to Victoria’s blessing. As Sparkes explained in The Book of the Feet, written in 1846, “Her Majesty has been pleased to honor the invention with the most marked and continued patronage; it has been my privilege for some years to make boots of this kind for Her Majesty, and no one who reads the court circular, or is acquainted with Her Majesty’s habits of walking and exercise in the open air, can doubt the superior claims of the elastic over every other kind of boot.” Hall’s patented design would go on to inspire the modern-day Chelsea boot, which has been worn by everyone from the Beatles to the Stormtrooper characters in Star Wars.

 

4. High Heels Were Originally Worn by Horseback Riders

Though they’ve since become a symbol of high fashion, high-heeled shoes originally had more of a practical use. They were commonly worn throughout horseback-riding cultures around the 10th century, and were particularly popular in Persia, where the cavalry found that 1-inch heels added extra stability in stirrups when they stood up to fire their bows. Persia later sent a delegation of soldiers to Europe in the 17th century, which in turn inspired European aristocrats to add high heels to their personal wardrobes. Heeled boots became all the rage among members of the upper class throughout Europe, and in 1670, France’s Louis XIV passed a law mandating that only members of the nobility could wear heels. In the 18th century, the style became increasingly gendered as heels grew in popularity among women. By the start of the French Revolution in 1789, men of the French nobility had largely given up on the trend in favor of broader, sturdier shoes.

 

5. One Brand Is Particularly Popular Among U.S. Presidents

Though there’s no exclusive contract, Johnston & Murphy serves as the unofficial footwear provider of U.S. Presidents, having designed shoes for America’s commanders in chief since the company was established in 1850 by William J. Dudley, who offered to make shoes for President Millard Fillmore. (Dudley called his business the William J. Dudley Shoe Company, but his partner James Johnston renamed it after Dudley died and he brought on William Murphy as a new partner.) In the decades since, Johnston & Murphy has been tasked with crafting a wide variety of presidential kicks, with the smallest being a size 7 for Rutherford B. Hayes and the largest a size 14 for Abraham Lincoln. Some of the more famous styles have included black lace-up boots for Lincoln, black wingtips for President Kennedy, black cap-toe shoes beloved by Ronald Reagan, and black oxfords for Barack Obama, which came in a handcrafted box of Hawaiian-sourced wood.

 

6. Ancient Greek Actors Wore Different Footwear for Dramatic and Comedic Roles

In addition to their narratives, ancient Greek tragedies and comedies could often be distinguished by the type of footwear the actors wore. Dramatic actors wore a style known as a buskin, a boot with a thick sole believed to be anywhere between 4 and 10 inches high. This set them apart from comedic actors, who wore just thin socks on their feet. It was thought that buskins gave serious performers a more prominent stage presence compared to their humorous counterparts.

 

 

Source: 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - COULDN'T NOT SHARE

Did you know.... You can never have too many conversation-starters, and there are plenty of fascinating, wild, or just plain strange factoids to go around. Sure, you could store some in the back of your mind for your next big dinner party or family holiday, but others refuse to be contained. They’re just too silly, weird, or absolutely confounding. For example, did you know that one of the world’s most recognizable (and fully inanimate) landmarks grows in the summer, or that the dot on a lowercase “i” has a name? Have you been told the epic tale of the seafaring bath toys? Is it possible that dogs evolved specifically to look cute to people? Get all the answers you need — plus context — with these seven facts that are too good to keep to yourself.

 

1. The Scientific Name for the Western Lowland Gorilla Is “Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla”

Living things are categorized by a taxonomy system you may have learned about in school, starting with kingdom (e.g., animals, plants) and ending with species (e.g., Homo sapiens). Scientific names are usually expressed using their last two or three categories: genus, species, and, if there is one, subspecies. The western lowland gorilla is in the genus Gorilla, which contains the largest apes. It’s also the species gorilla, which refers to western gorillas (the eastern gorillas are G. beringei). (Western gorillas aren’t the only creatures to have an identical genus and species name; a red fox is Vulpes vulpes.) Gorilla gorilla also contains two subspecies: G. gorilla diehli, the Cross River gorilla, and G. gorilla gorilla, the western lowland gorilla. You might say the western lowland gorilla is the most gorilla: It’s in the genus gorilla, the species gorilla, and the subspecies gorilla, making its scientific name Gorilla gorilla gorilla.

 

2. The Eiffel Tower Grows a Little Each Summer

When the Eiffel Tower was first built in 1889, it was the tallest building in the world at 312 meters tall, or a little more than 1,023 feet. Today, it’s around 60 feet taller because of the radio and TV antennas at its peak, and while nothing’s going to make it the tallest building in the world again, its exact height varies by a few inches depending on the time of year. That’s thanks to a scientific phenomenon called thermal expansion. In general, when a substance heats up, its atoms become more active and move farther apart, making its volume larger. Some substances are more sensitive to thermal expansion than others, including metals like iron. Because the Eiffel Tower is made up of almost pure iron — and there’s a lot of it — hot weather leads to some different measurements. In the summer, the tower not only grows (by as much as 6 inches), but also gets a little lopsided; because the sun only hits one side, it tilts ever-so-slightly away from the sun.

 

3. It’s Illegal to Own Just One Guinea Pig in Switzerland

The “dignity of living beings,” including animals, is enshrined in the Swiss Constitution, so Switzerland has some incredibly detailed animal protection laws, including a provision that social creatures cannot be kept alone. This includes not only guinea pigs, but many other animals, including mice, chinchillas, parrots, and lovebirds. Other animal no-gos in Switzerland include extreme breeding, cropping dog ears, and, with very few exceptions, animal testing. So what happens if you have two guinea pigs and one dies? You could get another guinea pig, which would require buying a ton of subsequent guinea pigs as each one dies, or just hope nobody rats you out. Alternatively, one Swiss animal lover actually started a service that lets you rent a friend to keep your remaining guinea pig company for the rest of its life.

 

4. The Dot Over the Small Letter “I” Is Called a “Tittle”

Remember to cross your t’s and tittle your i’s! Those little dots over letters such as the lowercase “j” are called “tittles,” a term that dates back to the 12th century. It can also refer to any other modifying marks on a letter, known as diacritic marks — that includes things like the two dots of an umlaut, the accent over the “e” in fiancé, the squiggly line (also known as a cedilla) under the “c” in façade, or the tilde over the “n” in piñata or jalapeño. In its earliest use, it referred specifically to the character ÷, which was once used as an abbreviation for the Latin word est, but is now often used as a division sign.

 

5. Sad Puppy Face Evolved Separately in Dog

You know that look dogs get when they’re requesting attention, some of your dinner, or just a little eye contact — the one that pulls at your heartstrings? That look requires two muscles that connect the brow to either edge of the eye. Most domesticated dogs have these muscles, but their closest wolf relatives don’t. Older breeds that are a little closer to wolves may just have one. Humans respond much more positively when animals have features, such as widening eyes, that remind us of human infants, and dogs use those muscles far more often when a human is paying attention. Dogs branched away from wolves 33,000 years ago when they started their relationship with humans, so it’s likely that those muscles evolved specifically because they gave dogs an advantage when interacting with human beings.

 

6. Thousands of Plastic Yellow Duckies Were Lost at Sea — and Found All Over the World

One day in January 1992, a crate slipped off a cargo ship into the Pacific Ocean while en route to Tacoma, Washington, from Hong Kong. This isn’t particularly unusual — thousands of shipping containers fall into the ocean each year — except that it was full of roughly 29,000 floating bath toys in four shapes and colors. Blue turtles, red beavers, green frogs, and yellow ducks, each around 3 inches long, emerged from their disintegrating cardboard packages and started drifting. Ten months later, hundreds of them started washing up in Alaska, but many of them continued their oceanic journey. In the early 2000s, they hit the shores of New England. Some took a southern turn early on and ended up in Hawaii, while others traveled as far as Europe. Researchers ended up using them to study current patterns, and according to calculations by oceanic scientists, some of them may have circumnavigated the globe, while others likely became part of a Texas-sized convergence of lost plastic known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

 

7. “OMG” Predates the Internet

After decades of text messaging and home internet use, acronyms like “LOL" (“laughing out loud”), “IMO” (“in my opinion”), and “FTW” (“for the win”) have made their way into “IRL” (“in real life”) speech — but it may surprise you to know that one of the most common ones, “OMG,” predates even the earliest forms of the Internet. It even had the same meaning: “Oh my God.” Its first recorded use dates back to 1917 in a letter to Winston Churchill from British admiral and former sea lord John Fisher, who was expressing some annoyance around naval tactics. “I hear a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis,” he wrote. “OMG (Oh! My! God!) — Shower it on the Admiralty!!” It’s worth noting that, while “OMG” usage tends to be associated with younger people, Fisher was in his mid-70s when he authored the letter.

 

 

Source: Interesting Facts That Are Impossible Not to Share

 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CODE NAME

Did you know... Though many details of the United States Secret Service are, well, secret, some things have been made public information. The most enjoyable of these is probably the code names assigned to the Secret Service’s protection detail, which extends beyond the President and their family to include Vice Presidents, cabinet members, presidential candidates, and high-profile visitors such as the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II (Halo and Kittyhawk, respectively). Though these code names don’t date as far back as the Secret Service itself, which was founded in 1863 as part of the Department of the Treasury’s attempt to combat counterfeiting, the last half-century has produced no shortage of compelling call signals. Here are eight of the most memorable.

 

1. Lancer (John F. Kennedy)

Following her husband's assassination, First Lady Jackie Kennedy quoted his favorite musical to memorialize him: “Don’t let it be forgot, that for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot.” JFK’s code name was in line with this King Arthur fixation, not least because it can be thought of as a play on Lancelot — the famous Knight of the Round Table who was also known for his dalliances.

 

2. Passkey (Gerald Ford)

The 38th President of the United States was known to be highly appreciative of the Secret Service even before one of his agents, Larry Buendord, saved him from an assassination attempt in Sacramento on September 5, 1975. Just 17 days later, another attempt on Gerald Ford’s life was foiled when a retired Marine named Oliver Sipple grabbed the gun of would-be assassin Sara Jane Moore as she fired a second round at Ford after her first bullet missed. Passkey was uninjured in both cases.

 

3. Sunburn (Ted Kennedy)

During his unsuccessful White House run in 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy spent a lot of time in the sun. This didn’t exactly bode well for the Irish American’s fair complexion, and so he received the less-than-flattering code name Sunburn.

 

4. Timberwolf (George H.W. Bush)

Though few would mistake the elder George Bush for a basketball player, his call signal was the same as the NBA team from Minnesota. Bush had a close relationship with his security detail in his later years, even shaving his head in support of an agent’s 2-year-old child who was diagnosed with leukemia. Following his death in 2018, the Secret Service released a touching message: “Timberwolf's Detail concluded at 0600 hours on December 7, 2018 with no incidents to report at the George Bush Presidential Library — College Station, Texas. God speed Former President George H.W. Bush — you will be missed by all of us.”

 

5. Renegade (Barack Obama)

After being presented with a list of names that began with the letter R, Barack Obama went with Renegade. Given how historic his candidacy and then presidency were, it’s easy to make the connection. He would later go on to name the podcast he started with Bruce Springsteen Renegades: Born in the USA.

 

6. Javelin (Mitt Romney)

The meaning behind Mitt Romney's call signal is twofold: Javelin is both a car formerly manufactured by American Motors, which was led by Romney's father in the 1950s, as well as an Olympic event. Romney was president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics prior to his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts, receiving widespread praise for his shepherding of the event.

 

7. Pioneer (Kamala Harris)

Shortly after being chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate last summer, Vice President Kamala Harris opted for a call signal that alluded to the historic nature of her candidacy: Pioneer. After being elected, Harris became the first female Vice President, first Black Vice President, and first Vice President of Asian descent — as well as the highest-ranking female official in American history.

 

8. Celtic (Joe Biden)

Anyone familiar with President Biden’s affinity for Irish poetry will be unsurprised that his code name alludes to his heritage (note that it’s pronounced with a hard C, basketball fans). When news of this first broke across the pond, many publications wrote about it. He first chose Celtic as Vice President and maintains it now that he’s in the Oval Office.

 

 

Source: Notable Secret Service Code Names From History
 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - IF NOT THERE, THEN WHERE?

Did you know.... Plenty of dishes have names that have nothing to do with their ingredients: No frogs are harmed in the making of toad in the hole, sweetbreads are neither sweet nor baked, and puppies are definitely not included in hot dogs. Boston cream pie is delicious, but not pie — and Welsh rabbit (aka “rarebit”) is vegetarian. The culinary misdirections continue when it comes to dishes containing place names. Here are five foods with names that are miles from the places where they actually originated.

 

1. Hawaiian Pizza

While the war over pineapple as a pizza topping divides the world, the controversy originated nowhere near the Aloha State. Hawaiian pizza, the savory pie combining the salty umami of ham (or Canadian bacon) with the sweetness of pineapple, was the product of a Greek immigrant operating a restaurant in Ontario, Canada. Sam Panopoulos added Hawaiian-brand canned pineapple as a novelty topping in 1962, and the combination (along with the ’60s fascination with all things “tiki”) slowly gained popularity. In 1999, Hawaiian even became the most popular pizza style in Australia, accounting for 15% of sales.

 

2. Swedish Meatballs

Springy and savory, these meatballs are practically synonymous with Sweden — but everyone’s favorite IKEA offering is likely based on a dish from the Ottoman Empire. King Charles XII of Sweden was impressed by the entree while in exile in what is now Moldova during the early part of the 18th century. The meatballs, called kötbullar in Sweden, may be derived from the spiced lamb and beef recipe for köfte, a signature dish in Turkish cuisine. The Swedes substituted pork for lamb, and the dish is traditionally served with a silky sour cream-based gravy atop a bed of mashed potatoes or egg noodles and accompanied with tangy lingonberry jelly.

 

3. Baked Alaska

In 1867, the U.S. bought 375 million acres from Russia, land that would become Alaska. The purchase also inspired Delmonico’s chef Charles Ranhofer in New York to create a confection he dubbed “Alaska, Florida.” Spice cake was topped with a dome of banana ice cream — an expensive and exotic luxury at the time — then crowned with a layer of meringue toasted to a golden brown. A simplified version called “Alaska Bake” showed up in a Philadelphia recipe book in 1886, and within a few years “baked Alaska” was being offered on several menus around New York. Since then, baked Alaska has become a celebratory sweet, and the fancy dessert is a favorite for birthdays and other special occasions.

 

4. Scotch Eggs

The pub food and picnic staple known as a Scotch egg is a popular snack across the U.K., but its origins may lie far from the British Isles. Along with curries and chutney, British soldiers returning from the occupation of India may have imported nargisi kofta — a dish of shelled hard-boiled eggs wrapped in spiced ground lamb, deep-fried, and served with an aromatic tomato sauce. Iconic department store Fortnum & Mason claims to have invented the British version in 1738, but the northern England county of Yorkshire maintains that the “Scotch” in the name came from eatery William J Scott & Sons, where the original version was wrapped in fish paste and the treats were nicknamed “Scotties.” Modern versions are usually coated in sausage and rolled in breadcrumbs before being deep-fried.

 

5. California Roll

Many Americans’ first introduction to sushi comes in the form of a California roll, but the approachable offering probably doesn’t come from Japan via the Golden State (although a couple of Los Angeles chefs do claim credit, and the origin is somewhat uncertain). Chef Hidekazu Tojo studied in Osaka before emigrating to Vancouver, B.C., in 1971. Noting that his new customers were intimidated by raw fish and seaweed, Tojo reversed the traditional roll process, encasing the unfamiliar ingredients inside a layer of rice. The “inside-out” rolls were popular with guests from California and also included avocado — popular in dishes from the state — which led to the name. At Tojo’s own restaurant, they’re simply known as “Tojo rolls.”
 

 

Source: Foods That Didn't Originate Where You Think They Did

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HARRY HOUDINI

Did you know.... Jaw-dropping. Death-defying. Head-scratching. Few entertainers reach the heights achieved by early 20th-century illusionist Harry Houdini, who earned renown for his ability to free himself from seemingly impenetrable modes of confinement. The escape artist’s legend endures not only because he constantly introduced new mesmerizing challenges to his repertoire, but also because he was a skilled promoter who used embellishment and misdirection to his advantage. For decades, biographers have had to contend with Houdini's changing accounts of formative events in his life, along with the myths that built up around his celebrated performances. Nevertheless, several truths have emerged, like Houdini himself rising to the surface after one of his patented underwater escapes. Here are seven facts about the life of a man who pushed the boundaries of reality to great effect and everlasting fame.

 

1. Houdini Was Inspired by the “Father of Modern Magic”

According to the researcher John Cox, Houdini's beginnings as a serious stage artist can be traced to his discovery of Frenchman Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the "father of modern magic." After reading Robert-Houdin's memoir in 1891, the New York City teen — then known as Ehrich Weiss — quit his job as a tie-cutter, changed his name to Harry Houdini, and set his legendary career in motion. However, his eventual mastery of stagecraft seemingly soured Houdini on the tricks of his predecessor, and in 1908, he bluntly denounced the methods of his erstwhile hero with the publication of The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

 

2. Houdini's Performances Were a Family Affair

Although Houdini is largely remembered as a one-man show, a couple of loved ones were prominently involved in his performances. He shared the stage with his younger brother Theo in the early 1890s and later helped establish Theo as a rival illusionist and escape artist named Hardeen, with their manufactured “bad blood” providing extra publicity for their dueling performances. Houdini spent even more time working with his wife, Bess, who faithfully served at his side after taking over for Theo in 1894. Although she reportedly retired in 1908, Bess occasionally rejoined her husband on stage, and once again became a trusted partner by the time he launched his late-career 3 Shows in One act.

 

3. Houdini’s “Mirror” Handcuffs Challenge Cemented His Fame

The performance that solidified Houdini's iconic status took place in March 1904, when the "Handcuff King" agreed to a challenge from the London Daily Mirror which placed him in a pair of special cuffs that allegedly took five years to construct and “could not be picked.” Working his magic from behind a curtain, an exasperated Houdini appeared at one point to stretch, get a glass of water from Bess, and accept a cushion. He later dramatically slashed off his coat with a penknife and emerged triumphant after more than an hour's struggle. As with many of Houdini's tricks, the secret to this famous escape went to the grave with its master, although some have speculated that he simply used a key that was passed along in the cushion or glass of water.

 

4. Houdini Once Dazzled Teddy Roosevelt

While Houdini could command crowds of 10,000 spectators for his outdoor shows, he likely got one of his biggest kicks from a semi-private performance for Theodore Roosevelt aboard the SS Imperator in June 1914. The illusionist employed a slate trick, a common practice among mediums at the time, where the participant writes down a question and then a “spirit” answers it. Houdini had Roosevelt write down a question, "Where was I last Christmas?" and then placed it between the pages of a book. The book was then reopened to reveal a map of South America and details of the former President's then-unknown trip to a tributary of the Amazon River. Houdini reassured his stunned audience that he wasn’t really communicating with spirits, though he declined to admit that he’d learned of Roosevelt's expedition from editorial friends at the U.K.'s Telegraph, and then used his sleight-of-hand skills to slip the map into the book.

 

5. Houdini's Screen Career Flopped

After years of filming his performances, Houdini went all-in on the burgeoning motion-picture industry as he entered his 40s. He starred in the 15-part serial The Master Mystery (1918) and a pair of feature films, and by 1921, he had also launched an interrelated web of companies to produce, develop, and distribute movies. But while audiences loved his live shows, Houdini failed to find the magic formula with his big-screen offerings, which typically showcased him escaping hairy situations set up by the action-romance script. After The Man From Beyond (1922) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923) bombed, Houdini abandoned his Hollywood hopes and returned to his tried-and-true methods of entertainment.

 

6. Houdini Almost Died While Being Buried Alive

Houdini's death-defying stunts occasionally veered off their carefully planned paths, and while the story that he got trapped beneath a frozen river may have ultimately been a fabrication, an attempt at a "buried alive" trick nearly took his life. According to Cox, the incident likely happened when Houdini, preparing for a show in the Los Angeles area in spring 1919, did a test run of being handcuffed and buried beneath six feet of soil. The earth proved weightier than expected, however, and after his cries for help went unnoticed, the almost-suffocated showman managed to dig his way to the surface. Houdini later referred to it in an article for Collier's as "the narrowest squeak of my life."

 

7. Houdini Was Anti-Spiritualist But Also Believed in Communicating With the Dead

Few public figures were more vocal than Houdini when it came to opposing the Spiritualist movement that gained steam in Western culture after World War I. He feuded with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the topic, undertook a lecture tour to expose the methods employed by mediums, and even testified in congressional hearings about a proposed bill to regulate the fortune-telling business. Yet for all his skepticism, Houdini remained intrigued by reincarnation and the possibilities of communicating with the dead. He and his wife agreed to try to contact one another should death pull them apart, a pact faithfully followed by Bess for a full decade following Houdini's passing on Halloween 1926. As far as we know, there was no evidence of contact.

 

 

Source: Magical Facts About Harry Houdini