Fun Fact of the Day

Day 30

Time traveling to the future is not only possible, but has already been done. Sergei Krikalev currently holds the Guinness record for most time traveled into the future.

Bonus Fact:
We do not yet know if it is actually possible to travel back in time yet.

Day 31

There is scientific reasoning on what could have caused all 10 of the ancient biblical plagues of Egypt that Moses was said to bring upon them.

Plague #1 Blood water
The Nile turning red could have been due to “Red Tide” (a form of red algae) which can also suck all the oxygen out of the water and/or produce noxious toxins to kill all the fish.

Plague #2 Frogs
Swarms of frogs have been documented in history, and this especially makes sense if the frogs had to flee from the red tide in the river and other bodies of water.

Plague #3 Fleas/Lice
An outburst of fleas really is not all that unheard of, especially now with the large quantities of dead frogs from the previous plague.

Plague #4 ???
This one is tricky because we have no effing idea what the Hebrew word “arov” means which is the official name for the 4th plague. It has been interpreted as snakes, scorpions, bears, lions, wolves and generic “wild beasts.” However it is thought the most likely interpretation is a swarm of flies, catalyzed by all the dead frogs, such as the stable fly whose bite can definitely cause boils.

Plague #5 Diseased livestock
The description of this plague in the bible could describe a few known viruses such as rinderpest, African horse sickness, or Bluetongue.

Plague #6 Boils
This easily could have been a direct result of plague #3 or plague #4

Plague #7 Fiery hail
There is a nearby volcano on an island north of Crete in the Aegean Sea, which if erupted could explain this plague

Plague #8 Locusts
The ash fallout from Plague #7 could have caused weather anomalies, which translates into higher precipitations, higher humidity, and that’s exactly what fosters the presence of the locusts.

Plague #9 Darkness
We know there was a solar eclipse in the region on March 5, 1223 B.C. which might explain this, but from the description of the plague is highly unlikely. More likely is the ash from the volanco eruption from Plague #7 caused the darkness.

Plague #10 Death of the Firsborn
There are numerous activites that were commonly perform by the oldest child in Egypt, all of which may have caused this. One of them being they were the first to eat, and if there were large-scale contamination of their food, they would be the most affected.

Bonus Fact:
Fuck you, you just got 10 facts in one! NO BONUS FACT FOR YOU!

Day 32

There is a phenomenon known as “wind setdown.” Wind setdown is the drop in water level caused by wind stress acting on the surface of a body of water for an extended period of time. As the wind blows, water recedes from the upwind shore and exposes terrain that was formerly underwater.

In Exodus 14 it says the following:
“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided”

Even though modern movies and stories suggest the parting of the red sea happened very magically and quickly, the actual words in the Bible say that the parting took all night and during strong wind.

It is entirely plausible this event actually could have happened as described in the bible and from real/natural causes.

Day 33

Magenta, the color that is a mixture of red and purple, isnt real. There is no such thing as a magenta color, and it is simply your brain making the color up out of thin air. All colors in reality have a wavelength that directly corresponds to the color, and there is no such wavelength for magenta.

And if you look at a rainbow, which does contain all colors, there is no magenta. If magenta were to exist, it would be either before red or after violet and it simply is not there.

Day 34

A majority of people have an above average number of toes. Who would have thought that is what the prevalence of shoes were hiding?

Day 35

Parthenogenesis is the ability to have a “virgin birth” where a female is still able to have offspring without sperm from a male. The resulting offspring are genetic clones of the mother.

Once thought impossible or improbable, we are finding more and more species that are capable of parthenogenesis. There have been documented cases of this in zoos from animals such as sharks, snakes, fish, and birds.

Day 36

Ignac Semmelweis was the first person to discover how incredibly important it is for doctors to wash their hands before interacting with a patient. After telling other doctors how dirty their hands were, and how these doctors have been unknowingly directly responsible for a vast swathe of illness and death, those doctors didnt much like Ignac Semmelweis. They were offended that he would accuse such high status people as themselves of having dirty hands. Not only did doctors continue to not wash their hands after his discovery, they committed Ignac to an insane asylum where he was then severely beaten and died from a blood infection in 1865.

It then took 20 years after his death for the world to start to admit that Ignac was right.

Day 37

The Monty Hall problem is a famous math scenario that fooled thousands of academics when it first came out. The scenario is the following:

You are a contestant on a game show and you are attempting to win the grand prize. There are three curtains, and the grand prize is behind one of them. We will call them curtain 1, 2, and 3. Lets say you pick curtain #2. The game show then will open a curtain, in this case we will say curtain #3 showing you that the grand prize is not behind curtain #3. They then ask you if you would like to switch to curtain #1 or keep curtain #2. What should you do?

The math says to ALWAYS switch your choice in this scenario. You will have a ²⁄₃ chance of getting the grand prize if you switch, and only ¹⁄₃ chance of the grand prize if you keep your first choice.

Day 38

Blindsight is a phenomenon where a person believes they are blind, or have significant blind areas in their vision, however their sight is still working and still sending signals to their brain. The person’s consciousness though cannot remember or perceive any of the vision in the blind region. When asked to “guess” what is in their blind region, they are able to guess correctly a significant amount of the time, despite being adamant they cannot see what it is they are guessing.

Day 39

The largest known living organism is called Pando and is an entire aspen grove. Pando is a group of genetically identical quaking aspens in Utah with an interconnected root system. The plant is an estimated 80,000 years old and takes up more than 100 acres estimated to weigh over 6,000 tons.

Day 40

Every color of Froot Loop ceral tastes exactly the same.

Day 41

Humans are the only known animals capable of blushing due to embarrassment.

Day 42

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (aka cordyceps), commonly known as zombie-ant fungus is found predominantly in tropical forest ecosystems. In the final stages of infection, the fungus causes the ant to find either a twig or leaf that is EXACTLY 25 centimeters high from the ground and then from the underside to bite the twig or leaf with a death grip. The ants heart will stop beating shortly after, and then after a few days the fungus sprouts a long stalk from the base of it’s head to spread it’s spores to the floor below.

Bonus fact:
This fungus inspired The Last of US

Day 43

Polar bear liver is incredibly deadly for humans to consume, and a single polar bear liver could kill upwards of 52 people. Oddly the cause of death for everyone would be acute hypervitaminosis A, or an overdose of vitamin A.

Bonus fact:
The above seems to be an exaggeration/possibly entirely untrue, but it is EVERYWHERE on the internet. If you actually look for people who have survived eating polar bear liver, you will find most people survive. Even though you survive you are very likely to be somewhere between ill to severely ill, and some do die from it. There are also some pretty gruesome potential side effects such as your skin falling off. There have been rare cases where people have had no side effects from eating polar bear liver.

Day 44

Hairworms are the only known organisms that can not grow thin silica structures. Even single celled organisms all either have these structures or could have them if they wanted to. Only the hairworm can not grow them.

Bonus Fact:
Thin silica structures are also known as hair.

Day 45

When taking a long flight, the shortest distance to travel and fastest flight path is never a “straight” line as you would see on a map. Since the earth is in fact a globe, it is faster to travel in a geodesic (a circular-like curve) to take advantage of the fact that there is less circumference the higher up or lower down on the earth you go.

A great example of this is the flight path taken from New York City to Tokyo Japan. This flight path nearly goes above Alaksa entirely in it’s geodesic/shortest path!

Day 46

The US government discovered that there were some bad meat packing practices going on and in an effort to keep americans safe and to ensure our meat was good, starting in 1906 we implemented the poke n sniff method of meat approval. A licensed professional would take a long metal rod, insert it into the meat, pull it out, and sniff the rod. If it passed or failed the smell check, he would then go onto the next peice of meat and perform the quality assurance with the same metal rod. This practice lasted until 1996.

Day 47

Whoopi Goldberg’s real name is Caryn Johnson. Whoopi Goldberg is her stage name. She said she chose the name Whoopi because early in her career she was often gaseous and her peers said she sounded like a whoopee cushion.

Her chosen last name, Goldberg, is a very common jewish last name, and she thought her career chances in Hollywood would be better with a jewish last name.

Day 48

The Milgram Experiment

This experiment tasked a person with punishing a person with electrical shocks when, what they believed was another real person, would make a mistake. The person being shocked was actually an actor pretending to be shocked. What was found is that humans will mostly obey orders given by authority figures. Every single participant was willing to shock the other person up to 350 volts, and 65% of the participants continued the shocks to the full 450 volts and would, if real, have killed the other person. Some of the participants still continued to shock the actor even after the actor pretended to be unconscious.

Day #49

Electricity doesnt actually travel through wires. Most people believe that it is the electrons moving through the wire that is electricity, but this actually isn’t the case. While electrons do move through the wire, it is not this motion itself that isthe power of electricity. The true power of electricity travels outside of the wire in the electric and magnetic fields created by the motion of the elections.

Also there is no single continuous wire from power plants to your house. All electricity will go through a transformer at some point, and part of a teansformer breaks the continuous wire. Since the electricity doesnt travel through the wire itself, the electricity is able to bridge the gaps.

Sowing
Circles
Sidereal Time
100 prisioners problem
Falling ladder - V
Wind power - V
Banded Armadillo babies
Tallest mountains (center from earth)
Antarctic clear blood fish
The pyramids have 8 sides, not 4