WTF Fun Fact 12647 – The Voynich Manuscript

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The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious book written in the early 15th century written in a language no one knows or can trace. Yet it’s 250-pages long.

The document resides in Yale University library’s special collections. It contains a mix of Latin and Arabic letters, and no one has ever been able to decipher it, though many have tried.

Recently, a German Egyptologist claims to have deciphered it, though it’s not the first time someone has made the claim.

According to The Art Newspaper:

“The actual translation of the Voynich-book will need a couple of years of work, even if specialists in the Hebrew language, who are well versed in medieval Hebrew and the terminology of botanical and medical texts, take over the analysis,” Hannig writes. “The character of the script, the pronunciation which one needs to get used to, the peculiarity and the vocabulary of the period will cause a lot of trouble even to a native speaker of [Hebrew]. But it will take a few years to translate, and there are few ways to know if the method he’s using is correct”, the German scholar said.

What we do know about the book is that it contains 240 pages of “bear illustrations of plants, floating heads, signs of the zodiac, fantastic creatures (including dragons), castles, women bathing, and astronomical symbols. Scholars have used these illustrations to organize the manuscript’s content into six major sections: botanical, astronomical and astrological, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical, and recipes. However, without the ability to read the text, its true content has remained elusive. Even the name of the manuscript’s author remains a mystery.”

The Voynich Manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, who discovered the mysterious book in 1912. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Has Yale’s mysterious Voynich Manuscript finally been deciphered?” — The Art Newspaper

WTF Fun Fact 12646 – The Power of the Musical Birthday Card

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Ok, to be fair, there wasn’t much computing power available to the Allied forces during WWII. But it’s really more about something called Moore’s Law.

According to Michio Kaku’s book Physics of the Future:

“Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, this simple law has helped to revolutionize the world economy, generated fabulous new wealth, and irreversibly altered our way of life. When you plot the plunging price of computer chips and their rapid advancements in speed, processing power, and memory, you find a remarkably straight line going back fifty years. (This is plotted on a logarithmic curve. In fact, if you extend the graph, so that it includes vacuum tube technology and even mechanical hand-crank adding machines, the line can be extended over 100 years into the past.)

Exponential growth is often hard to grasp, since our minds think linearly. It often starts deceptively slowly. It is so gradual that you sometimes cannot experience the change at all. But over decades, it can completely alter everything around us.

According to Moore’s Law, every Christmas your computer games are almost twice as powerful (in terms of memory and processing speed) as they were the previous year. Furthermore, as the years pass, this incremental gain becomes truly monumental. For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip which sings “Happy Birthday” to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied Forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip. But what do we do with it?  After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away.  Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it sent two astronauts to the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3D situations, use more computer power than main frame computers of the previous decade. The Sony Playstation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.“

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Your cell phone has more computing power than NASA circa 1969” — Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

WTF Fun Facts 12645 – The Legacy of Hanns Scharff

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We don’t think of any interrogators as being friendly, much less those used by the Nazis during WWII. But Prussian-bornHanns Scharff became a master interrogator by using an overwhelmingly successful technique that involved using kindness to win the trust of the soldiers he was asked to get information from.

Scharff was due to be sent to the front lines, but shortly before it happened, the Nazis decided that he would be an asset in interrogation because he knew English. He interrogated over 500 prisoners during his service and only failed a couple of dozen times.

Scharff became known internationally, and because he wasn’t considered a war criminal, he wasn’t tried at Nuremberg. In fact, he was able to come to the US in 1948 instead if he agreed to interrogate and testify at the trial of the Air Force pilot Martin J. Monti, who defected to Germany in 1944 and became a Nazi propagandist.

Once in the US, Scharff even met up with some of the men he interrogated in German prisons!

Eventually, Scharff was able to return to his original career as an artist, and more specifically, a mosaic artist and furniture maker. His mosaics can be found in countless government buildings, hotels, colleges, and even Disney World. He created the mosaic at Cinderella’s castle as well as ramps into Epcot Center.

He died in 1992, but his “Scharff Technique” is still taught in the US military. –WTF fun facts

Source: “Hanns Scharff; Creator of L.A., State Capitol Mosaics” — LA Times

WTF Fun Fact 12644 – The Parrot Who Saved a Dead Language

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German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt embarked on a 5-year exploration of North and South America in 1799. His trip was successful, and when he returned home in 1804, he had an extensive collection of plant and animal specimens

Humboldt also took voluminous notes, including some interesting jottings from a trip through Venezuela in 1800 where he spent some time chatting with a local parrot.

According to Mental Floss:

“According to legend, during his exploration of the Orinoco River, Humboldt met and stayed with a local indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures. The tribe, so the story goes, had a number of tame parrots kept in cages around the village, many of which had been taught to speak—although one, Humboldt noted, sounded noticeably different from the rest. When he asked the locals why this parrot sounded so unusual, he was told that it had belonged to a neighboring tribe, who had been the Caribs’ enemies.”

In other words, the parrot was speaking a different language than the rest. And sadly, the parrot was the only speaker left. The rest of the tribe had been wiped out, and not a single native speaker remained. Just the parrot. It was the last vestige of their linguistic culture.

Being the keen observer and recorder, Humboldt wrote down what the parrot sounded like, transcribing the sounds phonetically and coming out with about 40 words from the parrot’s (and the lost tribe’s) vocabulary.

We’ll never know how accurate the language is, but the notebook holds the last of what we have.

Interestingly, in 1997, an artist taught two more parrots to speak the language based on Humboldt’s notebook.

Some think the parrot’s story is mere legend, but Humboldt recounted his trip down the Orinoco river in his Equinoctial Regions of America in great detail and accurately described the Atures tribe that the parrot spoke the language of. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Parrot That Kept A Language Alive” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 12643 – The First Sad Clown

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Joseph Grimaldi is often hailed as the first modern “clown.” And while people tend to break down into two camps – those who find them funny and those who find them terrifying – Grimaldi’s story is proof that they’ve always been both.

Joseph Grimaldi had a long and illustrious career marked by extreme emotional outbursts. And one of the reasons we know so much about him is because of his well-written biography – by none other than a young newspaper writer named Charles Dickens.

Dickens gave readers some insight into the brutality of Grimaldi’s upbringing, and in particular, his treatment by his father, Guiseppe, a dentist and performer who moved from Italy to England for a career change.

Abusive to all of his children, he capped off his life by demanding that his daughter cut off his head before he was buried in order to receive her inheritance, all because he was terrified of being buried alive.

He wasn’t any more pleasant to his other nine children either, but only Joseph grew up and created the character of the modern clown. While he gave his all on stage, he would often burst into hysterics between acts and pull himself together just in time to entertain during the second act.

When trying to treat his intractable melancholy, he visited a doctor who had an even more depressing prescription: “relaxation and amusement… perhaps sometimes at the theater;—go and see Grimaldi.”

“Alas!” he shouted, ‘”hat is of no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.” –WTF fun facts

Source: “Here We Are Again!—How Joseph Grimaldi Invented the Creepy Clown” — JSTOR Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12642 – The Cereal Made for Orange Juice

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May the 4 may be a day that lives in infamy. That’s the day fruit company Tropicana announced it will release a new cereal that you’re supposed to pour orange juice on top of instead of milk. It seems they do not realize that we could have done that all along and have just chosen not to for the most part.

Some people seem excited, while others are disgusted – so in that sense, it’s just like any other piece of random news.

According to the fruit company’s website for the cereal, you can buy your first box of Tropicana Crunch on May 4, 2022. The “Cereal Made for OJ.” (Not Simpson, we assume.)

We’re not sure how you “engineer a cereal” for citrus other than just suggesting it (which is really all it takes for most people), but the company seems oddly confident that the “unforgettable breakfast experience” is going to change breakfast forever.

And why May 4th, you ask? That’s National Orange Juice Day.

We’ll admit that the crunchy honey almond-flavored cereal doesn’t sound bad in itself, but we’ll just let you find out for yourselves how it tastes. – WTF fun facts

Source: “SNAP, CRACKLE… JUICE? NEW CEREAL MADE TO BE EATEN WITH ORANGE JUICE, NOT MILK” — Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

WTF Fun Fact 12641 – A Great Ball of Fire

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The world didn’t end on April 27, 2022, though we’re confident that a few people thought it might after seeing a giant fireball in the sky headed straight for earth at 8 am.

Around 60 people in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana saw what turned out to be a meteor, but hundreds of people heard the loud boom. That’s because it exploded 34 miles above a swampy area in Louisiana with the power of 3 tons of TNT. Frankly, we would have just gone back to bed after all that.

NASA confirmed the meteor and verified that pieces of it had been recovered on the ground in Mississippi. At first, they estimated its speed at 55,000mph but later amended it to a more modest 35,000mph.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said the event caused no physical injuries or property damage. However, we’re pretty sure there was at least a little bit of existential damage done to anyone who thought they were about to meet the same end as the dinosaurs.

Because the law states that meteorites belong to whoever owns the property they land on, NASA will not disclose the locations of any of the fragments. (We’re pretty sure someone on Facebook will take care of that.)

NASA also reminded people: “We are not meteorite people, as our main focus is protecting spacecraft and astronauts from meteoroids.” So they won’t be identifying or authenticating any other rocks people claim are meteorites. They also confirmed that Mississippi is particularly meteorite-prone, with incidents occurring in 1854, 1910, 1922, and 2012. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Pieces of ‘fireball’ that exploded while zooming over 3 Southern states are being found on ground, NASA says” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 12640 – A Presidential Wild Child

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Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest child of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was apparently quite a hoot.

Her mother died just days after she was born, and she was initially raised by her aunt, Anna Roosevelt. But when her father remarried in 1886, she was sent to live with the family and her five half-siblings.

She was intelligent and bold and happy to be in the spotlight as a celebrity first daughter. She made news for such antics as smoking on the White House roof and carrying a pet snake named Emily Spinach in her handbag, sometimes taking her out and wearing the snake around her arm. She also publicly bet on sports races, something ladies of the stature didn’t do at the time.

It appears that her parent wanted to do something about her behavior but felt unable to do so since she was such a darling of the press.

Later in life, she became a political power of her own, marrying a Republican representative from Ohio, but they argued over her support of her father’s Progressive Party politics. However, Alice also wrote a newspaper column condemning some of those, including Rosevelt’s response to The Great Depression. Alice was also vocal in protesting the U.S.’s participation in the League of Nations and had isolationist tendencies – at least up until Pearl Harbor drew the country into WWII.

She was at the center of Washington society for decades after that, hosting the Kennedys, Nixons, and Johnsons.

After having a double mastectomy later in life, she insisted on referring to herself as “Washington’s only topless octogenarian.”

Those who joined her for tea would catch a glimpse of a pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

Alice Roosevelt died at age 96 in 1980. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Alice Roosevelt Longworth” — Theodore Roosevelt Center

WTF Fun Fact 12639 – Prosecuting Space Crime

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Pretty soon, it may be illegal for Canadian astronauts to go on crime sprees in space.

Now, we’re pretty sure that’s not why Canadians become astronauts in the first place, but apparently, you can never be too careful.

So, what’s this all about? Well, Canada just proposed an amendment to the country’s Criminal Code in their no-doubt riveting 443-page Budget Implementation Act in the House of Commons. It basically states that any crime committed in space by Canadians will be considered to have been committed on Canadian territory and punished accordingly. In other words, if you commit moon murder as a Canadian, you better not come back.

Interestingly, Canada has been preparing for space crime for a while now. Their Criminal Code already lays out prohibitions on crimes Canadian astronauts may commit during space flight to the International Space Station. accounts for astronauts who may commit crimes during space flights to the International Space Station.

Canada is part of the Lunar Gateway Project, a NASA-backed orbiting space platform. Part of that plan includes a trip to the moon, and apparently, the government wants to make sure Canadians maintain their reputation for being polite even among extraterrestrials.

The proposed code change reads:

“A Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offense is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada.”

There are two interesting questions at play here – 1) who controls space justice, and 2) what gives a country the right to say space in their territory for prosecutorial purposes?

If you think space crime is absurd, there have already been accusations that have raised questions (however, no crime actually occurred). In 2019, astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged spouse, Summer Worden, of improperly accessing bank records from the International Space Station. But McClain was later cleared after her spouse admitted to lying.

Still, it made people wonder how we might prosecute crimes in space, where no one technically owns territory (yet) and no one has jurisdiction.

Now, we already have some guidelines for international space law, believe it or not. According to CBC News:

“‘There are five international treaties governing activities in space but the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by Canada and more than 100 other countries, is the most relevant when it comes to dealing with alleged crimes in space, wrote Danielle Ireland-Piper, an associate professor of constitutional and international law at Australia’s Bond University. ‘As for the question of who prosecutes space crimes, the short answer is that a spacefaring criminal would generally be subject to the law of the country of which they are a citizen, or the country aboard whose registered spacecraft the crime was committed.'”

But things might be different if the astronaut-on-astronaut crime occurs between two different nations. In that case, there might be some disagreement about which country is able to prosecute the space offender. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Crimes on the moon could soon be added to Canada’s Criminal Code” — CBC News