WTF • Fun • Fact    ( /dʌb(ə)lˌju/  /ti/   /ef/ • /fʌn/ • /fækt/ )

     1. noun  A random, interesting, and overall fun fact that makes you scratch your head and think what the...

WTF Fun Fact 12674 – The Man Who (Maybe) Died Laughing

Whoever said laughter is the best medicine probably never read about the death of the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus of Soli.

At the age of 73, the master of Stoic ethics and logic and leader of the Stoic School attended the 143rd Olympiad, which took place from 208 to 204 BC. At some point, a donkey came along and ate some of the figs he had with him. He found this hilarious, saying “Now give the donkey a pure wine to wash down the figs!” (Ancient humor doesn’t really translate well to the present, in case you haven’t noticed.)

The story is that Chrysippus laughed so hard as his own joke that he eventually fell to the ground and started foaming at the mouth. The people around him tried to help, but he died.

(Note that another story of his death is that he became dizzy and died after drinking undiluted wine at a feast.)

But the real question is, could the first story really have happened?

Technically, yes. You can die laughing.

Uncontrollable laughter can cause a heart attack, asphyxiation (which leads to a lack of oxygen), and can lead to a loss of muscle control causing you to collapse and fatally injure yourself. But it’s extremely rare.

However, there have been other stories of people laughing themselves to death. King Martin of Aragon is said to have laughed to death upon hearing a joke by his favorite court jester in 1410 (though indigestion seems to have played a role). Pietro Aretino apparently died by suffocation while laughing in 1556. And reports say that in 1660 a Scottish aristocrat, Thomas Urquhart, laughed so hard at hearing that Charles II was king, that he died laughing. And there are more modern cases too.

Do we believe them all? No. But it’s not impossible. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “This Greek Philosopher Died Laughing at His Own Joke” — Culture Trip

WTF Fun Fact 12673 – What’s In A (Cat’s) Name?

In unsurprising news, there’s more evidence that cats don’t care about something.

Japanese researchers did a small study (which is really all you can do when cats get involved) and found that cats seem to recognize the names of their feline housemates. However, they still don’t give any indication of recognizing their own. Whether it’s because they just don’t care is something we’ve yet to figure out.

Why should we even care what words cats recognize? Well, IFL Science put it in context the best: “Birds with vocal cords that can imitate our own can learn a variety of human words, and it’s argued some know the meaning, rather than merely mimicking. Apes taught sign language also understand the meaning of words, and more recently dogs have been found to be able to learn up to 12 toys’ names in a week – but what about cats?”

In other words, we do all of this behavioral research on animals and find these fascinating signs that, in some sense, they can organize the world in ways similar to our own. So why not take a look at these abilities in some of the most common pets?

The research was conducted by Saho Takagi, a PhD student at Kyoto University who published the results in the journal Scientific Reports. The research team tried an experiment with domestic cats living in a 3+ cat home as well as residents of Japan’s famous cat cafes.

The study does rely on one important assumption (but if you know anything about science, you know that this is often the case since that’s where we start in order to help prove things). The assumption is that like other animals, cats stare longer than normal when they are surprised by something. In this case, hearing a name they recognize.

So the team spoke to the cats and said the names of their fellow resident cats to see if they would get a reaction. And they did, at least when the cats didn’t just run off in the middle of the experiment (and one did).

But what’s interesting is that this only happened in households, not in cat cafes. And in cat cafes there tends to be a lot of turnover from adoptions (and a lot more names to remember). So it may be that the cats in those cafes never hear a name enough time to have it ring a bell.

Apparently, the cats only reacted to the spoken names. Seeing their feline roomies’ photos on a laptop didn’t have any effect. Also, hearing their own names had no effect.

There were only 19 cats involved in the study, so it’s right to be skeptical. But that’s where we often start in science. The study still showed there was statistical significance to the results, and that’s typically a sign that further research can continue until there’s enough evidence to constitute some kind of “proof.”

In the meantime, just take it as a sign that your cat ignoring its name is not necessarily them blowing you off. They may just not be able to recognize that a name belongs to them. Or they just don’t care.

IFL Science explains this is not Takagi’s first cat study: “Last year she was first author on a paper exploring the feline capacity to map the spatial location of their person or a familiar cat. Takagi and co-authors reported the cats showed surprise when speakers broadcast the voice of the person who feeds them, despite that person’s absence. The same reaction did not apply to recordings of familiar cats’ vocalizations or unrelated sounds. Previously she studied cats’ understanding of the law of physics.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Cats Can Learn Each Other’s Names, Not Just Their Own, Study Claims” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12672 – Beware the “Sharkcano”

Your mother probably warned you not to swim around acidic shark-infested volcanoes, but in case she didn’t, we’re telling you now not to try it!

Only once have scientists been able to explore the Kavachi volcano in the Solomon Islands. It’s a submarine (aka underwater) volcano and it actually erupts almost constantly. But in 2015, it took a break, giving researchers the chance to check it out.

And boy did they find some stuff! It’s no surprise that they found high levels of sulfur (because it is a volcano, after all), but they were surprised to see that despite extremely acidic conditions, some creatures have managed to thrive in the craters.

There are microbial species that are common in sulfuric environments. There are also “gelatinous animals and small fish.” Oh, and a whole bunch of angry sharks.

According to IFL Science, oceanographic researchers said this is “raising new questions about the ecology of active submarine volcanoes and the extreme environments in which large marine animals can exist.”

And while that’s really cool, we’re more interested in the phenomenon they dubbed “sharkcano.” The researchers wrote: “Two species of shark, the scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini and the silky shark Carcharhinus falciformis, approached the baited camera multiple times in an aggressive pattern; in some cases, sharks appeared to be swimming from greater depths inside the crater.”

Now, before you picture thousands of sharks spewing out from the depths of the ocean floor (which is the first thing we pictured), it’s definitely not going to be that wild if this volcano has a major eruption. It will, however, be a really bad time to go swimming in that area.

NASA images showed a plume developing in late May, so we may be in for a sharkcano eruption sometime soon and we’ll be able to see precisely what that entails. –  WTF fun fact

If you want to learn more:

Source: “NASA Warns Acidic “Sharkcano” Is Starting To Erupt” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12671 – Appliance-Related Injuries

They don’t make ’em like they used to! While our appliances tend to be lighter as technology advances, they’re also sleeker and more likely to tip over. Unless you have another explanation as to how we end up under our appliances so often.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) collected ER reports from around the U.S. and found that 22,500 of our annual visits are related to furniture and appliance tip-over injuries.

Of course, when it comes to furniture, we’re thinking some of those are moving-related as well as due to our penchant for buying cheaper products that require us to construct them with a tiny wrench that comes in the box.

And then there are the obvious injuries that happen when our furniture is not secure and children are around. (How often do you use those little wall secure devices that come with bookshelves and console tables?)

The report was released right before the Superbowl, and it’s obvious that flat-screened TVs are a big culprit here, whether they’re on tables or wall-mounted.

According to Newsweek:

“The agency’s report assessed data on what it refers to as “tip-over incidents,” in which a heavy piece of furniture, a television or another appliance falls onto an individual and causes injury or death. The average number of injuries resulting from tip-over incidents reported annually between 2018 and 2020 was 22,500, the report said. About 17,900 of those injuries involved a combination of a piece of furniture and a television, while about 3,700 injuries were attributed to a television that tipped over without the involvement of a piece of furniture. An additional 900 injuries were attributed to appliances.

All of the 22,500 annual injuries required treatment in a hospital emergency department, the CPSC said.”

–  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thousands Injured by Falling TVs Every Year, Report Warns Before Super Bowl” — Newsweek

WTF Fun Fact 12670 – Thieves Return Plundered Temple Artifacts

In May 2022, thieves unwisely stole 16 statues of Lord Balaji (an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu). And if you know anything about Vishnu, you’d know that was a particularly bad idea. Vishnu is known as the preserver and protector of the universe, and it is said that he will return to earth in troubled times to restore the balance of good and evil.

However, the belief is that Vishnu has been incarnated 9 times already and his 10th reincarnation will signal the end of the world. So, seriously, do not make him come down here!

Lucky for the rest of us, the thieves got some personal punishment rather than triggering the apocalypse.

Most of the statues were returned a week later to the temple in the Chitrakoot district in Uttar Pradesh, India along with a confession, apology, and plea for forgiveness. It turns out the thieves had been plagued with such terrible nightmares and bad luck during the time they held the statues that they felt they had no choice but to return them and come clean.

“We have been suffering from nightmares since we committed the theft and have not been able to sleep, eat and live peacefully,” the thieves said in the accompanying letter, the Times of India reported (in translation). “We are fed up with the scary dreams and are returning your ‘amaanat’ (valuables).”

Returning stolen temple items is actually somewhat common because of feelings of guilt and misfortune – but, somehow, they still justified keeping two of the stolen items!

Sweet dreams! –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thieves Return Stolen Treasure To Temple After Being Haunted By Nightmares” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12669 – The World’s Oldest Rose Bush

The world’s oldest rose bush is a bit more untamed than what we’re used to seeing – but it’s earned the right to grow as it pleases. After all, it survived being bombed during WWII.

The Rose of Hildesheim, aka the Thousand-Year Rose, is believed to be the oldest living rose specimen on the planet (though, of course, we can’t know for sure if some other rose bush lurks out there hidden away from human eyes).

You can find it growing up the column Hildesheim Cathedral, in Germany, where it has been since the early 800s when it was planted. The 9th-century plant still blooms each year, around May. Its flowers are a delicate pink.

According to Atlas Obscura, it’s survival has been beyond unlikely:

“While the rose bush looks as though it’s big enough to have been growing for a thousand years, the plant has been nearly destroyed a number of times throughout its history. Most notably the bush was nearly completely razed during the Second World War when Allied bombs annihilated the cathedral. Every bit of the plant above ground was destroyed, but from the rubble, new branches grew from the root that survived.

Today the base of the Thousand-Year Rose is protected by a squat iron fence and each of the central roots is named and catalogued to protect one of the oldest pieces of natural beauty one is lucky to find.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The Thousand-Year Rose” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12668 – The Gates of Hell

There are a couple of places on earth that are referred to as the Gates of Hell, or something similar. But we’d never heard of the one in Turkmenistan (then again, there’s not a lot of news coming out of Turkmenistan). Apparently, this particular version of the Gates of Hell really needs to be put out – if that’s even possible.

The fire put has been burning for over 50 years and no one is quite sure why. However, in January of 2022, the amazingly-named leader of Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, announced that he was asking officials to find a way to extinguish it. It’s not only using up natural resources (it’s burning gas deposits) but a giant burning greater isn’t great for air quality either.

According to an interview with Atlas Obscura, an explorer named George Kourounis has actually descended into the firery pit and gathered soil samples But he also found a big problem: “As I was digging into the ground [at the bottom of the crater] to gather these soil samples, fire would start coming out of the hole I just freshly dug because it was creating new paths for the gas to come out of the crater. So even if you were to extinguish the fire and cover it up, there’s a chance that the gas could still find its way out to the surface and all it would take is one spark to light it up again.”

Oh, and did we mention that the origins of the fire are unclear? Locals tell stories of a Soviet gas accident in 1971 and someone trying to light a collapsed rig on fire, but geologists have traced the crater back to the 1960s and the fire to the 1980s.

We may never know exactly what happens because of Turkmenistan’s isolation from the rest of the world. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The Quest to Extinguish the Flames of Turkmenistan’s Terrifying ‘Gates of Hell’ Firepit” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12667 – America’s Oldest Park Ranger

Betty Reid Soskin retired from a full-time job with the National Park Service just months after celebrating her 100th birthday.

Joining the Park Service at age 85, she started working for them full time in 2011, at age 89 at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. There, she shared her own experiences working on the WWII homefront.

“To be a part of helping to mark the place where that dramatic trajectory of my own life, combined with others of my generation, will influence the future by the footprints we’ve left behind has been incredible,” Soskin said in the NPS’s statement.

According to CNN: “As a park ranger, Soskin led public programs with visitors and shared her own personal experiences of World War II. And she worked to highlight the untold stories of African Americans and other people of color during the war. “Being a primary source in the sharing of  that history — my history — and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” said Soskin. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”

Soskin founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, Reid’s Records, with her husband, which was in business for 75 years, before joining the NPS. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “America’s oldest national park ranger retires at age 100” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12666 – Unearthing An Ancient Underground City

In the Midyat district of Mardin, Turkey, there is an archaeological site tunneling beneath the residents. The older residents have long been told of the city underneath, but archaeologists still had no idea what they were in for when they discovered a hidden entrance to a cave a few years ago.

The cave led to a series of corridors and rooms. But further excavation found that there was an entire subterranean city down there. And it wasn’t a city lost to time as sand and dirt piled on top of it – this city had ALWAYS been underground!

In fact, the site is so big that they will never be able to uncover all of it (partly so as not to disturb the residents living above). (You can see more of this in the video at the bottom of the page.)

Historians have found evidence in archival material that the modern city of Midyat got its name from the word Matiate, meaning “City of Caves.” Matiate’s name is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions from the 9th century BCE.

But this underground city isn’t just some dusty old tunnels. There are places of worship, water wells, and other community necessities within them, indicating that people lived in this underground city much like that would have above land.

While other underground cities have been found throughout the Anatolian region, Midyat’s is different. There is evidence that it was used to house people for nearly 1,900 years straight.

Gani Tarkan, the head of excavation for the site, explained:

“Matiate has been used uninterruptedly for 1,900 years. It was first built as a hiding place or escape area. As it is known, Christianity was not an official religion in the second century. Families and groups who accepted Christianity generally took shelter in underground cities to escape the persecution of Rome or formed an underground city. Possibly, the underground city of Midyat was one of the living spaces built for this purpose. It is an area where we estimate that at least 60-70,000 people lived underground.”

He continued:

“There was no a life above the underground cities in Nevşehir and Kayseri. But he stated that all the structures above the Midyat underground city were registered.”

“Underneath is a different history, a different period, and above it is a different date. While the houses on the top are dated to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there is a completely different city underneath. That city is 1900 years old.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “The excavation, which started in a cave in Turkey’s Mardin, turned into a huge underground city” — Arkeonews