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 12801 – Men’s Dirty Sheets

Studies in both the US and the UK show that single men don’t get around to washing their sheets very often. In fact, nearly half only wash them four times a year! Those are some dirty sheets!

Why wash dirty sheets?

Sheets should really be washed once a week – every two weeks, tops. Anything less is just unhygienic, and that has consequences for your social life and health.

We all sweat into our sheets and they can become clogged up with that sweat, making them smell pretty awful and reducing the ability to cool us off because there’s no good airflow.

In addition, we shed dead skin cells everywhere we go, but probably shed the most in bed. Those also build up in sheets and, as a result, so do the mites that feed on them.

Yes, you are sleeping in sweat-clogged, mite-filled sheets if you don’t wash them often. And chances are people can probably tell, even if you shower in the morning. These mites can give you some gnarly skin conditions, or even just clogged pores that keep you from looking glowing and healthy.

Guys, wash your sheets!

Sure, not everyone has access to laundry in their home, but guys used some pretty lame excuses for not changing their dirty sheets.

Many believed that showering at night keeps your sheets clean. But clearly they forgot the clean skin still sweats and sheds, and bad breath can also affect sheet cleanliness.

If you have allergies, it’s even more important to wash your sheets often. Open windows, pets, pollen, and other allergens we carry on our bodies dirty our beds as well.

In the UK study, the most common reasons men gave for not washing sheets often enough were:
– Forgetting (67%)
– Not being bothered by dirty sheets (35%)
– Not having any other clean bedding (22%)

– WTF fun facts

Source: “How often should you change your bed sheets?” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12800 – Monkeys and Bananas Don’t Mix

Color us shocked by this one. We had no idea that monkeys don’t actually eat bananas in the wild OR that bananas are actually really bad for monkeys!

Monkeys love bananas, but…

Monkeys love bananas the same way we love junk food. And when people first started to keep monkeys as pets, they would give the creatures choices of things that grew locally. It turns out, that monkeys often chose bananas simply because they’re tasty.

If someone asked you what you’d like to eat and put down your favorite snack next to a bunch of vegetables, you’d probably reach for the sugary snack. Our brains love sugar. Unfortunately, for all of us primates, sugar isn’t good for us. It can affect our teeth, interfere with our digestion, make us gain weight, and lead to diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The same goes for monkeys.

Bananas are for humans

We think of bananas as healthy because they have a lot of potassium and our bodies are a lot bigger than a monkey’s. When we eat a banana, we taste the sugar, but it’s not really enough for it to be considered “junk food.”

The way bananas are grown, they simply don’t have enough protein or fiber for them to be of much nutritional use to monkeys.

According to Dr. Amy Plowman at Paignton Zoo in Devon (who made news when she banned bananas for monkeys) said: “People usually try to improve their diet by eating more fruit – but fruit that’s cultivated (grown) for humans is much higher in sugar and much lower in protein and fiber than most wild fruit because we like our fruit to be so sweet and juicy…Compared to the food they would eat in the wild, bananas are much more energy-dense – they have lots of calories – and contain much more sugar that’s bad for their teeth and can lead to diabetes and similar conditions.”

Of course, weaning monkeys off bananas is just as hard as telling humans to stop eating sugar. Monkeys should be eating leafy greens instead. Of course, a captive monkey can be stripped of the choice of what to eat, so improving their diet is a lot easier than improving our own. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Monkeys banned from eating bananas because they’re unhealthy” — BBC UK

WTF Fun Fact 12799 – The Migratory Monarch Butterfly Is Endangered

Migratory monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) are a subspecies of monarchs, and while you may have seen them in your backyard growing up if you’re over 40, chances are you’ve seen a lot less of them lately. Migratory monarchs are now endangered and could go extinct.

The iconic monarch butterfly

These iconic American butterflies are black and orange. Like other monarchs, their larvae feed on only one plant – milkweed. Climate change and fires have destroyed much of the milkweed in America and conservationists are encouraging people to plant more.

The butterflies are also threatened by pesticides, herbicides, deforestation, and urban development. In fact, they’re so threatened that a Switzerland-based conservation organization that monitors the status of wildlife – the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – has added them to the list of threatened species.

They join around 41,000 other species that could become extinct without intervention.

Migratory monarch populations

Migratory monarchs in the American West face the largest extinction risk, having lost 99.9% of their population over the last 40 years, according to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below).

The number of Western migratory monarchs went from ten million in the 1980s to 1,914 by 2021. That may not be enough butterflies to keep the population alive.

But according to Smithsonian Magazine, there’s still hope:

“To help boost monarch numbers, scientists and conservationists recommend planting more milkweed and nectar flowers, maintaining forests and limiting the use of pesticides and herbicides in the butterflies’ range, report CNN’s Madeline Holcombe and Jalen Beckford.

​​“People recognize the monarch,” Anna Walker, an entomologist at the New Mexico BioPark Society who led the assessment, tells the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni. “People love the monarch. So that gives us an opportunity to do the outreach and get people on board.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Migratory Monarch Butterflies Are Listed as an Endangered Species” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12798 – Top Phobias

What are you afraid of? A surprising number of people admit to having phobias in the U.S. In fact, a recent YouGov survey found that 83% said they had these genuine fears. And the top phobias were snakes and heights.

America’s top fears

Despite the pandemic, disease ranked fifth – after public speaking.

YouGov even broke the phobias down by gender, age, income, and political party! There wasn’t much difference between these categories other than women being more likely to fear snakes, spiders, and crowded spaces.

Men were more likely to say they had no fears. But those who had phobias named heights and public speaking as the things that freak them out most.

Fears vs phobias

Now, the YouGov poll doesn’t use the word “phobia” in the proper psychological way. Phobias can truly affect the way you live your life, and they’re more than just fears.

According to VeryWell Mind:

“The National Institute of Mental Health suggests that phobias affect approximately 10% of U.S. adults each year. These phobias typically emerge during childhood or adolescence and continue into adulthood. They also impact twice as many women as they do men. There are a number of explanations for why phobias develop, including evolutionary and behavioral theories. Whatever the cause, phobias are treatable conditions that can be minimized and even eliminated with cognitive and behavioral therapy techniques and medication.”

In addition, “phobias can lead to marked fear and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, and breathlessness. In some cases, these symptoms escalate into a full-blown panic attack.”

Phobias may not always be logical (most snakes and spiders don’t want to hurt you), but that doesn’t make the fear less real.

Interestingly, exposure therapy is one common treatment for phobias. During exposure therapy, you’re around the thing you fear the most in order to desensitize you to it and prove that it’s not as scary as you might think. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Phobias – 1000 U.S. Adult Citizens” — YouGov

WTF Fun Fact 12797 – Fathers With Daughters Tend to Live Longer

You may find it interesting to know that a few different studies conducted around the world have found that parents tend to have a longer life expectancy than non-parents. If you’re currently raising a small child, that may seem unlikely, but the statistics are in your favor! And if you’re a father with daughters, you’re double lucky.

Studying parental longevity

None of these studies can prove causation. That is, there is no way to prove that daughters directly cause their fathers to have longer lives. These are studies of correlation. And we all know that phrase correlation is not causation. So if you have ten sons or no children at all, have no fear.

Ok, so what do the studies say? Here’s a taste:

One of the most oft-cited studies is this one, which looked at rural families in Poland. The researchers stated that despite reproduction being such a physical and energic drain on people, dads with daughters tended to live longer (but moms don’t).

Fathers with daughters tend to live longer

They say:

“We show for the first time that number of daughters was positively related to a longer life span of their fathers, increasing their longevity on average by 74 weeks per daughter born, while number of sons did not have a significant effect on paternal longevity.”

In a separate study, the researchers posit that “Having a daughter has been shown to be associated with increased chances of regular social contact and with receiving help if needed, something that we hypothesize becomes more important later in life.”

Not all studies agree

However, the same researchers also point out that not all studies have found a correlation between child genre and parental longevity:

“The role of daughters versus sons for parental mortality has been the topic of a few previous studies, but the results are inconsistent. Some studies found no association with the gender of the child while other found that daughters are more favourable, sometimes for fathers only. In a study on Swedish data, the protective effect of having a daughter was detected only among one-child parents, but not for parents with several children, which is in line with a Norwegian study.”

In the end, it appears that longevity may have a lot to do with social ties and having a community around you, which parents are more likely to have in order to socialize their children. One of the reasons fathers with daughters may live longer is that “older childless individuals, particularly men, appear to have less social interactions than older parents and there is evidence that having a daughter is associated with increased chances of regular social contacts and with receiving help if needed.”

However, this same study “found some support for the difference between mothers and fathers, but no support for the hypothesis regarding a beneficial effect of a daughter.”

So the jury’s still out! – WTF fun facts

Source: “Daughters increase longevity of fathers, but daughters and sons equally reduce longevity of mothers” — American Journal of Human Biology

WTF Fun Fact 12796 – Russian Beer Only Recently Considered Alcohol

Until 2011, any drink with less than 10% alcohol was not really considered alcohol. Instead, it was a “foodstuff.” That made beer more of a soft drink, of sorts. It wasn’t until 2011 that Russian then-President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill that officially classified beer as alcohol in 2011.

Russian beer becomes alcohol

Now, that doesn’t mean Russian kids were drinking beer and calling it a Coke. It was all about who and how regulated beer could be in Russia. And we know Russians like their vodka, so they’re used to some thing a little bit stronger.

Once the law was signed, it allowed ministers to control the sale of beer in the same way they did spirits.

Overconsumption of alcohol is a problem in many places in the world, but Russian alcohol consumption at the time the bill was signed was twice the critical level set by the World Health Organization.

Beer becomes alcohol

The 2011 bill likely came in response to a soaring interest in beer in Russia. And it didn’t seem to be for the same reasons we saw a beer Renaissance in the states. In Russia, it was seen a healthier alternative to spirits. So perhaps people just needed reminding that it was, in fact, still booze.

According to a BBC News story at the time (cited below): “Over the past decade, beer sales in Russia have risen more than 40% while vodka sales have fallen by nearly 30%. Correspondents say it is common to see people swigging beer in the street and in parks as if they are drinking soft drinks. It is not restricted to certain stores and is sold around the clock.”

To bring the consumption of beer under control, the Russian beer industry saw a 200% tax hike by ministers. That would probably discourage our drinking habits too!

While the new law was signed in 2011, it did not go into effect until 2013 and was set to “stop alcohol being sold in unlicensed kiosks, ban its sale from stores between certain hours and restrict its advertising.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Russia classifies beer as alcoholic” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12795 – NYC Buildings With Their Own Zip Codes

At least 41 buildings in NYC have their own zip codes.

This is most common with skyscrapers, although a unique zip code isn’t about how tall a building is. In fact, it’s more about how many businesses it contains. But there are other reasons a building could have its own ZIP code.

Why do some buildings get a special zip code?

According to AMNY, cited below: “Unique ZIP codes are sometimes assigned based on the volume of mail at a particular address – and only when a ZIP+4 will not satisfy delivery, distribution, and customer requirements,” said U.S.Postal Service spokesman Xavier Hernandez, referring to the add-on code that further segments a geographic area.”

Again, size isn’t everything. The tallest building in the country, 1 World Trade Center, doesn’t have its own zip code. However, entities such as government agencies and universities do.

There are the 41 buildings that had their own zip codes in Manhattan in 2019, according to UPS:

  • 55 Water St. (10041)
  • Park Avenue Plaza, 55 E. 52nd St. (10055)
  • 666 Fifth Ave. (10103)
  • 1290 Avenue of the Americas (10104)
  • Alliance Bernstein Building, 1345 Avenue of the Americas (10105)
  • 888 Seventh Ave. (10106)
  • 250 W. 57th St. (10107)
  • 500 Fifth Ave. (10110)
  • 45 Rockefeller Center (10111)
  • 30 Rockefeller Center (10112)
  • 475 Riverside Dr. (10115)
  • Empire State Building, 350 Fifth Ave. (10118)
  • 1 Penn Plaza (10119)
  • 112 W. 34th St. (10120)
  • 2 Penn Plaza (10121)
  • 225 W. 34th St. (10122)
  • 745 Fifth Ave. (10151)
  • Seagram Building, 375 Park Ave. (10152)
  • General Motors Building, 767 Fifth Ave. (10153)
  • 345 Park Ave. (10154)
  • 964 Third Ave. (10155)
  • 605 Third Ave. (10158)
  • 500 E. 77th St. (10162) 
  • One Grand Central Place, 60 E. 42nd St. (10165)
  • Metlife Building, 200 Park Ave. (10166)
  • 245 Park Ave. (10167)
  • Chanin Building, 122 E. 42nd St. (10168)
  • Helmsley Building 230 Park Ave. (10169)
  • 420 Lexington Ave. (10170) 
  • 299 Park Ave. (10171) 
  • 277 Park Ave. (10172)
  • 355 Madison Ave. (10173) 
  • Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Ave. (10174)
  • 521 Fifth Ave. (10175)
  • Fred F. French Building, 551 Fifth Ave. (10176)
  • 250 Park Ave. (10177)
  • 101 Park Ave. (10178)
  • Equitable Life Building, 120 Broadway (10271)
  • 26 Federal Plaza (10278)
  • Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway (10279)

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Why do some buildings have their own ZIP codes?” — AMNY

WTF Fun Fact 12794 – Pineapples As Luxury Items

Pineapples were once luxury items in Europe and America. In fact, the fact that they were so exotic-looking and hard to grow made them worth hundreds or thousands of dollars (in today’s currency). Pineapple luxury seems absurd, but they were only grown in South America and the Caribbean in the 1800s. Even hothouses throughout Europe had a hard time producing proper pineapples.

Pineapple luxury centerpieces

According to Mental Floss, When the fruity fad made its way to America, “one pineapple could cost as much as $8000 (in today’s dollars). This high cost was due to the perishability, novelty, exoticism, and scarcity of the fruit. Affluent colonists would throw dinner parties and display a pineapple as the centerpiece, a symbol of their wealth, hospitality, and status, instantly recognizable by a party’s guests. Pineapples, however, were mainly used for decoration at this time, and only eaten once they started going rotten.

To underscore just how lavish and extravagant pineapples were, consider the pineapple rental market. The fruit evoked such jealousy among the poor, pineapple-less plebs that people could, if they wished, pay to rent a pineapple for the night. Before selling them for consumption, pineapple merchants rented pineapples to people who couldn’t afford to purchase them. Those who rented would take the pineapple to parties, not to give as a gift to the host, but to carry around and show off their apparent ability to afford such an expensive fruit!”

Pineapple pictures

In the 18th and 19th centuries, artists often depicted pineapples in paintings of elites, and you could also find them emblazoned on napkins, china, and more. Pineapples graced finials, bed posts, fountains, teapots, and other high-class decor.

Pineapples go from luxury to mass production

In 1900, James Dole started a pineapple plantation called the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in Hawaii, which later become the Dole Food Company. Eventually, he produced 75% of the world’s pineapples, and they went from being luxury items to food for the masses.

In the UK, importing pineapples from the colonies became common enough that nearly anyone could get their hands on one, ending their time as a status symbol.

According to the BBC (cited below): “Steamships started to import pineapples to Britain regularly from the colonies and the prices consequently dropped. And it wasn’t just the middle classes who could afford a pineapple, but – horror of horrors – the working classes could too.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “The rise, fall, and rise of the status pineapple” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12793 – Angry People Overestimate Their Intelligence

Just because things like swearing are common among intelligent people doesn’t mean that extends to actual anger. In fact, angry people tend to overestimate their intelligence.

Anger and intelligence

Some negative emotions are more common among intelligent people, but anger seems to make folks a bit overconfident. A study showed that those who are quick to anger tend to think they’re smart (and the rest of the world needs to catch up).

The study

According to LiveScience (cited below): “To test this, the researchers surveyed more than 520 undergraduate students attending schools in Warsaw. The students answered survey questions to gauge how easily and how often they get angry. Then, the students took a survey to assess their own intelligence before taking an objective intelligence test.”

People in the study who were quick to anger had a higher opinion of their own cognitive abilities. Those who were more neurotic, on the other hand (who reacted to events with anxiety and distress), tended to see themselves as less intelligent.

In the end, it seems to come down to narcissism. Ill-tempered people tended to be more narcissistic and therefore think they’re smart. Of course, there’s no real, true test of intelligence, so we don’t know if that’s true or not; we just know that they seem to think they’re the real deal when it comes to brains.

Perceived intelligence

The study looked at anger as an overall personality trait, asking people to judge their own general tendencies towards anger. It didn’t try to test how angry they got in the moment.

It’s also important to note that “although the researchers found an association between the two traits, it’s unclear if there’s a cause and effect relationship between anger and overestimating intelligence. More research is needed to explore that link.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Angry People Think They’re Smarter Than They Are” — Live Science