People

Fun facts about people in history and other weird celebrity facts!

WTF Fun Fact 12615 – The Invention of Roller Skates

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For most intents and purposes, the idea of the roller skate can be traced all the way back to the 1760s and a man named John Joseph Merlin. But it may also be the case that he was just the first to make a spectacle of himself wearing them.

Merlin was a Belgian inventor working in Paris and London in the 18th century. He made clocks, mathematical devices, and even musical instruments. But his creativity didn’t stop there. He built wheelchairs and robots and even created his own museum dedicated to his designs in 1800, Merlin’s Mechanical Museum.

But if you’ve heard of Joseph Merlin before, it’s likely from an anecdote that he debuted the rollerskate at a festive gathering at a rather grand salon. Not content to just roll in, he rolled in playing the violin…because, well, why not?

The problem wasn’t that he had a penchant for the dramatic, it was that he didn’t seem to have practiced his entrance beforehand. At least not enough to recognize that he’d need a way to stop rolling. There were no brakes on the skates.

As the story goes, Merlin rolled in, got everyone’s attention, and then immediately crashed into a mirror. Of course, it’s not like we have video proof, but you can find the story in Thomas Busby’s 1805Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes:

“One of his ingenious novelties was a pair ofskaitescontrived to run on wheels. Supplied with these and a violin, he mixed in the motley group of one ofMrs Cowleys’ masquerades at Carlisle House; when not having provided the means of retarding his velocity, or commanding its direction, he impelled himself against a mirror of more than five hundred pounds value, dashed it to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces and wounded himself most severely.”

Perhaps the best takeaway from this is that an inventor should always invent something to stop his invention from hurting people – especially him or herself.

Merlin’s skates appeared to have been in-line skates, however. Encyclopedia Britannica provides a fuller story of the invention of the roller skate:

“The invention of roller skates has been traditionally credited to a Belgian,Joseph Merlin, in the 1760s, although there are many reports of wheels attached to ice skates and shoes in the early years of that century. Early models were derived from the ice skate and typically had an “in-line” arrangement of wheels (the wheels formed a single straight line along the bottom of the skate). In 1819 M. Petibled of Paris received the first patent for a roller skate. Like previous models, Petibled’s skate had an in-line wheel arrangement, using three wooden or metal wheels. The wheels were connected to a wooden block that in turn could be strapped to a boot. These early roller skates enjoyed limited popularity. The ride was rough, and stopping and turning were nearly impossible. The first practical roller skate was designed in 1863 byJames Plimpton of Medford, Massachusetts, who broke from the in-line construction and used two parallel pairs of wheels, one set near the heel of the boot and the other near the front.” –WTF fun facts

Source: “The Characters of Kenwood: John Joseph Merlin” — The Museum of Fine Arts – Houston

WTF Fun Fact 12605 – The Voice of Bambi

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When Donnie Dunagan joined the Marines, he was eager to keep his past a secret. And he managed to do it for his entire 25-year military career.

That secret? As a child, he had a brief stint as an actor, and one of his roles was a voiceover for Disney’s Bambi! The film was released in 1942.

Drafted in 1952 during the Korean War, over the course of his career, Dunagan was promoted 13 times in 21 years (a Marine Corps record). He was also awarded two awards for Valor in Combat as well as the Purple Heart.

When interviewed by his wife, Donna Dunagan, for a Story Corps podcast, he described how closely he held the secret:

“I never said a word to anybody about Bambi, even to you. When we first met I never said a word about it. Most of the image in people’s minds of Bambi was a little frail deer, not doing very well, sliding around on the ice on his belly.”

As a boot camp commander, he was responsible for overseeing hundreds of recruits as well as the drill instructors. He recalled: “I just thought to myself, ‘I don’t think I want all these young Marines to start calling me Major Bambi.’ And I kept my mouth shut.”

The first military colleague to find out was a fellow Marine he had worked and fought for. The secret was uncovered after a personnel audit. Dunagan explained:

“He called me in at five-thirty in the morning, I will never forget it. I go in his office and he says, ‘Dunagan! I want you to audit the auditors.’ I never said a disrespectful word to this man in twenty years, I said, ‘General, when do you think I’m going to have time to do that?’ Then he looked at me, pulled his glasses down like some kind of college professor. And there’s a big, red, top-secret folder that he got out of some safe somewhere that had my name on it. He pats this folder, looks me in the eye, and says, ‘You will audit the auditors. Won’t you…Major Bambi?’”

It turns out Dunagan was right – that’s exactly what he would have been called had he let it slip during his fighting career! – WTF fun facts

Source: “Donnie “Major Bambi” Dunagan and Dana Dunagan” — Story Corps

WTF Fun Fact 12604 – Ergophobia

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We know what you’re thinking:

https://giphy.com/gifs/YourHappyWorkplace-your-happy-workplace-wendy-conrad-thats-me-Q2xqlEpCSbwC4GHdxo

But ergophobia is more than a case of the so-called “Sunday scaries” – those are more about dreading work, and it’s not a clinical diagnosis.

Ergophobia is still not well understood but tends to be classified as an anxiety disorder – typically social anxiety or performance anxiety. It’s an irrational fear of work that causes noticeable signs of anxiety when a person thinks about working. It can even cause the kind of panic attacks that can lead to hospitalization. A sufferer may even know there’s nothing to fear, but their brain reacts anyway (hence the clinical diagnosis).

The condition includes an array of fears about work, including the ability to perform tasks or even look for a job. And the inability to do work without suffering mentally and physically can leave people in poverty or dependent on others to care for them. And as you might imagine, that can lead to even more anxiety about life that makes everything worse.

Psych Times lists the common symptoms of ergophobia as:

  • Intense anxiety when working
  • Anxiety when thinking of work
  • Unwillingness to hold a regular job
  • Inability to cope with strong emotions
  • Becoming dependent on others due to the inability to work
  • Experiencing panic attacks as a result of work or fear of work

The condition doesn’t always have to lead to hospitalization to be considered severe. As we know, stress can lead to all kinds of physiological effects, such as heart disease, that can lead to a shorter and less happy life.

The condition can be genetic (though someone may inherit a predisposition to an anxiety disorder that manifests in this unique way in them and no one else in their family) or because of a trauma or environmental pressure.

There’s no specific “cure,” but desensitization techniques are common treatments for phobias in general, and it’s possible someone can be eased into work. Anti-anxiety medications and therapy may help ergophobics maintain a job as well. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Ergophobia (Fear of Work)” — Psych Times

WTF Fun Fact 12599 – Philadelphia’s “Eagles Jail”

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Philadelphia fans have a reputation for being…well, let’s say rowdy. For example, they’re the fans who booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs. In fact, in 1986, the Eagles stadium stopped selling beer at halftime in the hopes of improving fan behavior. But it clearly didn’t do the job because, in 1997, the Eagles installed a courtroom and jail at Veterans Stadium.

During a Monday Night Football game that year, the Eagles played the 49ers in a matchup that somehow sparked around 60 fistfights in the stands, along with some yahoo setting off a flare gun. Enough was enough. Families claimed to be afraid to take their children to games. So, the next time fans returned to the stadium, Eagles Court was in order.

On opening day, 20 fans were brought in front of Justice Seamus P. McCaffery.

But here’s another fun fact: It turns out Philly fans weren’t really the problem.

McCaffery said :

“Eagles Court was a lot of fun and it served a purpose. One of the interesting facts that came out of Eagles Court was that 95 percent of the people arrested were not from Philadelphia. But Philadelphia was getting broad-brushed as the city with horrible, horrible fans.”

So, apparently, Philly isn’t necessarily home to rowdy fans, but it encouraged rowdiness in people somehow.

For the most part, the court existed to bounce and/or fine people who got out of hand. Anyone who had committed a legit crime was handed over to the local police.

Eagles security and Philadelphia police had cited or arrested fans in the past, but most of them never showed up to their court dates weeks or months later, and their crimes weren’t serious enough for the police to track them down again. Eagles court made sure they were fined on the spot (or assigned community service).

But one of the problems with Eagles court is that it virtually forced people to plead guilty on the spot to avoid being arrested for real. It’s unlikely that everyone was sober enough to understand what was happening.

Some media outlets report that the court was only housed in the stadium in 1997 and was transferred out and into an actual court by 1998, while others say it was in the stadium for its whole (short) life, from 1997 to 2003. When the Vet was replaced by Lincoln Financial Field, there was also a 4-cell jail inside, but that only lasted two years. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Eagles’ history features a stadium jail, bounties and vomit, but lacks titles” — CBS Sports

WTF Fun Fact 12597 – The Man Who Married A Pillow

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In 2010, a 28-year-old Korean man named Lee Jin-Gyu fell in love with his body pillow. The Japanese dakimakura is a cushy life-sized that also just so happens to have an anime character printed on it.

According to a widely-cited story in Metro UK:

“In Lee’s case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the ‘magical girl’ anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between ‘obsessive’ and ‘nerd’) has wed the pillow in a special ceremony, after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. Their nuptials were eagerly chronicled by the local media.‘He is completely obsessed with this pillow and takes it everywhere,’ said one friend.‘They go out to the park or the funfair where it will go on all the rides with him. Then when he goes out to eat he takes it with him and it gets its own seat and its own meal,’ they added.”

A priest presided over the special ceremony. The groom kissed the “bride,” and locals reported to the Korean media that the pair went everywhere together, including out to dinner and on theme park rides.

The wedding isn’t legal, of course, but it came on the of a Japanese man “marrying” his Nene Anegasaki, a character who only exists in the Nintendo DS game “Love Plus” in November 2009. –WTF fun facts

Source: “Man marries pillow” — Metro UK

WTF Fun Fact 12593 – Vienna Makes For Strange Neighbors

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In 1913, Vienna had over two million inhabitants and was home to many people who would go on to be both famous and infamous. And while we might look at a borough in Manhattan and marvel over the notable people who live within just a few miles of one another, that doesn’t make it seem any less weird that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand were all part of the same neighborhood at the same time over 100 years ago.

Vienna’s coffeehouses were notorious cauldrons of intellectual activity at the time, and it’s not unlikely that these men all got coffee at the same place.

A Reddit moderator who goes by the handle u/commiespaceinvader explained it all more succinctly:

“In 1913, Hitler lived in a Men’s Dormitory in Meldemannstraße 27 in Vienna’s twentieth district. Being rejected from the art academy, he lived off the sale of his paintings and was unable to afford another residence, so he lived in a men’s dormitory, an institution set up for people without a fixed residence, where for a weekly rent of 2,5 Kronen, you could rent a bed.

In the same year, Trotsky lived at Rodlergasse 25 in Vienna’s 19th district. He worked as a journalist from Vienna reporting on the Balkan wars and publishing the Vienna edition of Pravda. Trotsky had lived in Vienna before after being exiled for political agitation in 1902. After the attempted Revolution of 1905 had been crushed, Trotsky again fled Russia and moved to Vienna where he had good contacts with the local Social Democratic Party and through them found employment as a journalist. Trotsky’s favorite hang-out was Vienna’s Cafe Central where he was relatively well known. There is an unsubstantiated anecdote that in 1917 when the Russian Revolution broke out, a fellow patron of the Central and an officer of the Austrian Army is to have said “And who is supposed to lead this revolution? Mr. Trotsky from Cafe Central?”

In 1913 Stalin visited Trotsky in Vienna and lived there for one month in Vienna’s 12th district in Schönbrunner Schloßstraße 30. He was sent there by Lenin to do research for an article called “Marxism and the National Question” in effect researching how Marxism in the multiethnic empire of the Habsburg’s could be applied. The house still bears a commemorative plaque, financed by the Austrian Communist Party in 1949 and put there with permission of the Soviet occupational government of Austria. As part of the state contract of Austria, signed in 1955, the Austrian government is obligated to take care of the plaque…Freud’s famous address was Berggasse 19 where today, Vienna’s Freud Museum is. And Archduke Franz Ferdinand worked in the Hofburg and had quarters in Schönbrunn palace.

…both Hitler and Trotsky are attested to have visited Cafe Central frequently for it was one of Vienna’s prime coffee houses. When Stalin was there in January 1913, he too went there together with Trotsky. It would be speculation to say anything definitively but who knows, maybe at some point in January 1913, they all were there at the same time.“

That’s some neighborhood! – WTF fun facts

Source: “1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud, and Stalin all lived in the same place” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12572 – Einstein Never Failed Math

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It’s incredible how pervasive myths about Albert Einstein are. In fact, very few of the quotes attributed to him are even accurate. It turns out if you just say something about the man and it gains traction, it becomes fact in some people’s minds.

And we’ve always loved the story that even though he was a genius, Einstein failed math as a schoolboy. Algebra, to be specific.

Apologies to anyone who has used their own math grades to portend their future genius, but Einstein failing any class is just flat-out wrong. He was a genius as a child, too, especially in math.

His school records were retrieved from his Swiss school by the New York Times, showing excellent grades in every subject. They state:

“The records, contained in a collection of the great theorist’s papers now being prepared for publication at Princeton, confirm that Einstein was a child prodigy, conversant in college physics before he was 11 years old, a ”brilliant” violin player who got high marks in Latin and Greek. But his inability to master French was the bane of his school days, and may have been chiefly responsible for his failing college entrance examinations.”

So, where did we get this idea? Well, it wasn’t invented out of thin air. Instead, it was the result of a misunderstanding.

The first biographers who saw Einstein’s records were likely confused by the grading system used by his school in Switzerland. At age 16, he received a 1 out of 6 in arithmetic and algebra. But what the scholars didn’t realize is that 1 was the highest, and 6 was the lowest.

Now, there’s a further explanation that makes us realize it was an honest mistake. The following year, Einstein’s grades in math were 6 on a scale of 1 to 6. However, the school reversed the grading system that year, making 6 the highest grade. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “Einstein Revealed as Brilliant in Youth” — The New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 12571 – The Myth of Early Alien Panic

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The story goes that when H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds was turned into a radio play and broadcast by Orson Welles in 1938, millions of people around the country heard the altered opening line “Martians have invaded New Jersey!” and freaked out. In fact, we’ve long been told that it started “a panic” that night because many people had never heard a radio play and believed it was the news and that the alien invasion was true. It has even been reported that people ran from their homes in fear, caused stampedes, and even committed suicide!

Say what you want about New Jersey, but there was no great panic over it being invaded by extraterrestrials nearly 85 years ago.

We’ll grant you that it’s a believable story. In the radio era, with no way to see what was happening, some people were very likely freaked out. But did they panic, run from their homes, and cause a national hysteria?

Well, there’s no evidence of it if they did.

Numbers are thrown around with abandon when it comes to listeners, and there are some estimates that around 12 million people were listening to Welles’ broadcast that night. And even if 1 in every 12 people believed it, 1 million people freaking out would be a big deal, right? The newspapers reported it, but it’s quite likely that it belongs in that (increasingly overused) category of “fake news.”

Yet even Smithsonian Magazine, which can often be trusted to research the accuracy of historical events, propagated the myth of the panic, saying of Welles:

“He’d heard reports of mass stampedes, of suicides, and of angered listeners threatening to shoot him on sight. ‘If I’d planned to wreck my career,’ he told several people at the time, ‘I couldn’t have gone about it better.’ With his livelihood (and possibly even his freedom) on the line, Welles went before dozens of reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameramen at a hastily arranged press conference in the CBS building. Each journalist asked him some variation of the same basic question: Had he intended, or did he at all anticipate, that War of the Worlds would throw its audience into panic?”

The only proof offered up is some old script drafts from the days when Welles and his colleagues were trying to turn the novel into a play. There are links to newspapers, but no interrogation of the reporting and whether it could be trusted or backed up. And while the magazine does have a fascinating story on how the play came to be, Slate has poked holes in the rest of the story.

Most important is the lack of a large enough audience to cause anything but a slight kerfuffle. Slate says:

“There’s only one problem: The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Despite repeated assertions to the contrary in the PBS and NPR programs, almost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast.“

It turns out that a poll taken that night showed that 98% of 5000 surveyed households were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. “Welles’ program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time—ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show,” Slate notes. And to top it off “several important CBS affiliates (including Boston’s WEEI) pre-empted Welles’ broadcast in favor of local commercial programming.”

Even if people were turning the dial during musical interludes, as some have claimed, we have no way of reliably extrapolating that to 12 million people. No death has even been attributed to listening to the play and reports of people being treated for panic remain unsubstantiated.

So what’s the deal? It’s likely that newspapers weren’t so happy about radio cutting into their readership base. Slate put one final nail in the coffin, noting “Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.”

Over time, the myth grew and grew and old fake news was turned into historical evidence. But that still can’t make it true. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “75 Years Ago, “War Of The Worlds’ Started A Panic. Or Did It?” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12566 – Michelangelo’s Poetic Lament

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Michelangelo didn’t have a great time painting the Sistine Chapel. The work conditions were less than stellar and his boss (Pope Julius II) enjoyed carrying around a stick to smack people with when he was upset.

While the outcome is a masterpiece, most of us can imagine the pain of spending hours looking up (he did not paint lying down) and painting with such detail – and it took him 4 years!

It was an uncomfortable job, to say the least. So uncomfortable, in fact, that Michelangelo wrote a little poem to a friend to let off some steam in 1509. He sent it to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia, and it went a little something like this:

I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison).
My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s
pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine’s
all knotted from folding over itself.
I’m bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I’m stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

So, next time you feel like work is torture, just remember it could be worse! – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “‘My Poor Ass’: Michelangelo Wrote a Poem About How Much He Hated Painting the Sistine Chapel” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 12562 – Dunce Caps for Intelligence

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The 13th-century Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus was a highly educated man. But that didn’t stop him from believing that a pointy hat could make him smarter.

What we now see as a mark of stupidity today, the dunce cap originated with the philosopher-priest and his followers, the Dunsemen.

While some say John Duns Scotus was inspired by the image of wizards, others claim it was the other way around – the dunce caps inspired people to depict wizards in pointy hats.

In any case, the idea is that the cap acts as a reverse funnel, drawing in knowledge and letting it melt down into the brain.

The highly analytical writings of the medieval scholar fell out of favor in the more humanistic Renaissance, so it is perhaps the case that his followers were seen as…well, remedial, as time went on. As the Dunsemen came to be seen as foolish, their hats became a marker of that, signifying someone who is a lot less intelligent than Scotus once was.

However, the word “dunce” as we use it today originated in a play in the 17th century, which referred to a “dunce table” where children and dull guests were made to sit. In 1840, Charles Dickens mentioned the dunce cap in The Old Curiosity Shop, in which he described it as a leftover relic in a classroom made of newspaper. However, his mention and lack of further explanation mean it was probably something people would have already known about.

After that, the dunce cap served as a warning to children that when they misbehaved in class, they would be forced to sit in the corner wearing it. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Dunce Cap Wasn’t Always So Stupid” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12561 – Maureen O’Conner’s Big Bets

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Maureen O’Connor was the first female mayor of San Diego, California, from 1986 to 1992. When her husband, Robert O. Paterson, founder of the fast-food chain Jack in the Box, passed away in 1994, she inherited his entire $50 million fortune since the couple had no children.

But O’Conner still ended up in debt. Specifically, it was gambling debt, but her addiction wasn’t something she could control.

Doctors determined that the grief brought on by her husband’s death and a brain tumor had changed her personality, allowing her to get hooked on video poker.

It turns out you can win and lose quite a bit of money by playing poker online. O’Conner’s “grief gambling” did bring her over $1 billion (yes, with a B) worth of good luck and winnings over the course of a decade. However, she lost so much that she wiped out her winnings AND her inherited fortune.

In the end, she was worth negative $13 million.

It was more than she could pay off, so O’Conner turned to money laundering and was convicted of the crime in 2013 after taking money from her late husband’s non-profit to cover the gambling debts.

She was given a deferred sentence and served no jail time under the health circumstances, but she was completely broke after paying court costs and restitution.

If you do the math, she would have needed to wager roughly $300,000 a day, seven days a week, to lose as much money as she did in such as short period of time. And yet she’s far from the biggest loser when it comes to gambling.

According to the New York Times in 2013, “Terry Watanabe, a businessman, lost more than $205 million in Las Vegas, including more than $120 million in 2007 alone. The British media mogul Robert Maxwell once lost £1.5 million, about $2.3 million, in less than three minutes at a London casino.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “San Diego Ex-Mayor Confronts $1 Billion Gambling Problem” — The New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 12558 – The Horseback Doctor

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Irakli Khvedaguridze sees some interesting injuries and ailments on his rounds: a local shepherd with crippling back pain, a hiker who took a tumble into a gorge, someone mauled by an animal. He doesn’t have the modern tools that city doctors have, and even if he did, he probably couldn’t bring them along since he travels on horseback to see his patients.

According to National Geographic, “Khvedaguridze, the only licensed doctor across nearly 386 square miles of mountainous land in this historic region in northeast Georgia, serves as a lifeline for the dwindling community of Tush people who remain in this remote area throughout the eight months of winter.”

His white horse, Bichola, can’t always walk through the snow in winter. And that’s when he makes the trek on foot, turning his shoes into skis using birchwood planks.

The small number of medical supplies the 80-year-old can carry is always accompanied by a hunting knife, matches, and two days’ worth of food. After all, you never know what might happen in the Caucasus mountains – it’s wild territory with very few people to help a doctor in need.

After graduating from the Medical Institute of Georgia (now called the Tbilisi State Medical University) in 1970, Khvedaguridze worked at an urban hospital. But after finding out the Tusheti mountain doctor left the area in 1979, Khvedaguridze decided someone needed to take his place. He’s from that area, so he felt the responsibility to return. After all, who else would take such a job? For decades he would do one-month rotations in the mountains a few times a year, but in 2009 he made the permanent move. His other option was to retire.

He described doctoring as a “mediation between God and the sick” to National Geographic.

“For me, there’s no night or day,” he said. “If they call me to help someone, no matter the circumstances, no matter the rain, snow, day or night, I have to go. Even if I’m as old as 90, should there be people who need me, I will go to help them. It’s my duty.” –WTF fun fact

Source: “This doctor braves mountains by horseback and on foot to make house calls” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12445 – The Sprinkle Police

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In what can only be described as an absurd abuse of the country’s emergency police services number, a woman called 999 (the English version of 911) to report her ice cream man.

He didn’t steal anything from her or harm her in any way. She was just really upset that he hadn’t given her enough sprinkles. Yes, she was a grown woman at the time.

The police declined to give her name but did release the audio from the absurd 999 call.

During her full minute of complaining, she told the operator: “It doesn’t seem like much of an emergency, but it is a little bit.” In fact, it is not.

In light of the call, police warned citizens of the dangers of abusing the emergency system.

There’s no word on whether the woman got justice following the grave insult of getting a mere sprinkle of sprinkles. –WTF fun facts

You can listen to the call here:

Source: “Woman Calls Police Because There Aren’t Enough Sprinkles on Her Ice Cream” — Time Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12435 – Our Messy Garages

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A 2015 survey from Gladiator® GarageWorks found that a significant number of Americans were using their garages for things other than storing their cars.

A press release announcing their results states:

“For approximately one out of four Americans, the garage is so unorganized it can’t even fit one car, according to an April 2015 homeowner survey from Gladiator® GarageWorks…And with an average cost of a new car just above $30,000, the inability to house and protect this investment in your own garage can be an issue.”

Even those of us with tidy homes are likely to have at least a mildly embarrassing situation going on in the garage. Gladiator®  goes on to state that “While 92 percent of homeowners surveyed described their home as somewhat or very organized, one-fourth of them admitted embarrassment with the garage and nearly one third said they keep their garage door shut so others won’t see the mess.”

The survey also found that 1 in 5 homeowners have argued with their spouse over the state of their garage. That’s not surprising, especially if you live in an area where there’s snow, and you have to clean your car off each morning due to clutter in the garage.

Here are some other “fun facts” the survey revealed:
– 27% of people use the garage for hobbies
– 23% use it to work on cars
– 19% of Americans use their garage to do projects such as woodworking or carpentry
– 13% use it as an area for exercise or sports

If you do work up the motivation to clean out your garage, keep in mind that it’s crucial to dispose of items properly – especially things like old paint and household chemicals. Check with your county about ways to dispose of these items. And if you don’t think you need to worry about that, consider that that survey also found that one-third of homeowners don’t even know what’s stored in their garage at the moment! – WTF fun facts 

Source: “Almost 1 in 4 Americans Say Their Garage is Too Cluttered to Fit Their Car” — PR Newswire

WTF Fun Fact 12422 – Robin Williams’ Good Deed

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It’s no secret that the late comedian Robin Williams’ had a good heart. But fewer people know the stories that gave him that reputation – stories like Lisa Jakub’s.

In 1993, she was a young actress playing Williams’ daughter in the comedy Mrs. Doubtfire. As most of us know, child actors often get tutored on set since they miss a lot of school days. But Jakub was still enrolled in her Toronto-area school at the time. That is until she hit the absence threshold.

“I was upset and Robin asked me about it,” Jakub told TODAY.com months after Williams’ untimely death in 2014. “The next day he showed up at my trailer with a letter he’d written to the principal asking him to reconsider and let me come back to high school. In an industry where people are only in it for themselves, Robin was not like that. Robin had my back and that will always be precious to me.”

The letter read, in part:

“I have spent the past three months working on ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ with Lisa Jakub. I found Lisa to be a bright, inquisitive and an eager to learn young lady. She is charming and a delight. … I respectfully request that you reconsider your policy and allow Lisa the opportunity to work and attend school. She is an asset to any classroom.”

Unfortunately, the letter impressed the school but did not change their decision. In fact, they framed the letter and hung it on the wall in their main office but did not allow Jakub back in.

The letter went viral on Reddit in 2015 and Jakub herself updated fans. Her message read:

“Hi there – just wanted to say thanks for sharing this, and maybe answer a few questions I’m seeing. I was being tutored on set for the required three hours a day and mailing back work to my school. However, my absence required that my teachers put together special work for me and my school wasn’t willing to do that. I had told them in advance that I would be away (I had been an actor since I was four, so this wasn’t really news) but during the long shoot it became too much of an issue for them. I don’t really blame them – it was very unusual, especially in the Canadian suburbs, in the early 90s. As for the legality of it all, I really don’t know. I was embarrassed and didn’t want to be somewhere I wasn’t wanted – so we didn’t fight it. I ended up attending a private school after that, for a short time. They also struggled with accommodating my strange work schedule. I was told that wasn’t a good fit, either. So, I never graduated from high school. When I was in my twenties, after I left LA and retired from acting, I got my GED. When I was thirty-one, I graduated from the University of Virginia. I still live in VA, and I’m a writer now. (I tell this whole story in my book, if you’re interested – You Look Like That Girl http://www.amazon.com/You-Look-Like-That-Girl/dp/0825307465 ) So, it all turned out ok in the end! But of course the point of all of this is really that Robin was a spectacular individual, who took the time to fight for a kid going through a personal problem. And I’m just glad that people are hearing that story – because that’s who he truly was. That’s how I like to remember him.”

– WTF Fun Facts

Source: “‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ actress: Robin Williams was ‘spectacular’ when I needed help” — TODAY

WTF Fun Fact 12417 – The Aussie Life-Saver

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Much like the Golden Gate Bridge, “The Gap” has become a popular place for those with suicidal intentions to meet their end. While it’s a relatively secluded cliff, there is one important home nearby – the one that belonged to Don Ritchie before his death in 2012.

Over the 50 years Ritchie lived in his home, the Australian WWII Navy veteran struck up hundreds of conversations with nearly inconsolable people by asking, “Is there something I could do to help you?”.

Some say he likely saved around 500 lives simply for being there for people, though the official number is 160.

Interestingly, Ritchie was a life insurance salesman, and his choice of where to live was intentional.

He died in 2012 of natural causes but was recognized during his lifetime with a Medal of the Order of Australia. The so-called “Angel of the Gap” hoped that some kind soul would move into his house and take his place someday. –WTF Fun Facts

Source: “Australia mourns ‘Angel of the Gap’ Don Ritchie, the man who talked 160 out of suicide” — The Independent

WTF Fun Fact 12411 – The Green Man

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The urban legend of the Green Man, also known as “Charlie No-Face,” was partly made up to scare kids. But many people who tell the tale of a man without a face walking the highways at night have no idea that the story is based on a real man.

Raymond Robinson wasn’t green, but he was missing most of his face.

On June 18, 1919, the 9-year-old was playing with friends behind his parents’ home when the boys decided to climb the poles of some nearby railroad tracks. And you can probably imagine all of the horrible ways that could have ended.

Robinson had no idea the equipment was electrified. Alas, when he hit an electrical line, he was gravely injured. The boy survived, but not only was his face massively disfigured (he lost his nose and eyes), he also lost an arm.

He didn’t want to let the accident ruin his life, so he tried to live as normally as possible and enjoyed taking walks near his home in Western Pennsylvania along State Route 351. Some locals tried to get a peek at him, and people knew of his disfigurement, hence the stories.

Robinson took up weaving and continued to spend time with his family, even going out in the daytime (sometimes with and sometimes without big glasses).

His nephew said: “He never discussed his injuries or his problems at all. It was just a reality, and there was nothing he could do about it, so he never spoke about it. He never complained about anything.”

Some locals accepted him, but others would pick him up and drop him in random locales, beat him, and even hit him with their cars. But he never let that stop him from taking his beloved walks. –WTF Fun Facts

Source: The Legend Of The Green Man: Raymond Robinson Had No Face, Friends — History Daily

WTF Fun Fact #12391 – A Desert Marathon Disaster

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A 39-year-old former Italian police officer Mauro Prosperi decided to run in the 1994 Marathon des Sables. The 6-day race requires a 155-mile run through the Sahara Desert, but the former Olympic pentathlete felt up to the challenge.

However, a sandstorm hit the runners, and Prosperi got lost in the desert for 10 days. He survived by eating small animals such as lizards, drinking bat blood and his own urine, and covering himself in the sand at night to stay warm.

Fearing he would be declared missing and his wife wouldn’t be able to claim his life insurance for 10 years unless his body was found, he tried to cut his wrists. However, he was so dehydrated that his blood clotted immediately and he lived.

Telling his story to BBC News in 2014, he said: “My wife, Cinzia, thought I was insane – the race is so risky that you have to sign a form to say where you want your body to be sent in case you die. We had three children under the age of eight, so she was worried. I tried to reassure her. “The worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned.”

The race has changed since the debacle.

“These days the Marathon des Sables is a very different experience, with up to 1,300 participants it’s like a giant snake – you couldn’t get lost if you tried. But back in 1994, there were only 80 of us, and very few who were actually running, so most of the time I was on my own,” Prosperi said.

–WTF Fun Facts

Source: How I drank urine and bat blood to survive — BBC News