WTF Fun Fact 12771 – The Saraha Desert Forest Mystery

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Ok, trigger warning: There’s a high chance of getting Toto’s “Africa” stuck in your head by reading this post. But, the truth is, there used to be plenty of rains down in Africa. Enough to have made the Saraha Desert a rainforest.

It’s not a huge shock, since we know the Earth has gone through different climatic periods, but this was one far more recent and accounts for a more radical change than scientists ever could have imagined. In other words, it really takes a lot to turn a vibrant forest into a bone-dry desert, and this happened a mere 6000ish years ago! It’s pretty interesting.

How did the Sahara go from forest to desert?

So, what’s the deal here? Well, since we don’t have a time machine, we can’t know for certain. It could have to do with the tilt of the Earth’s orbital axis changing, it could also be part of a longer, larger pattern of transition.

African Humid Periods in the distant past meant….you guessed it…more rains down in Africa. In particular, northern Africa (which is where the Sahara is, in case you don’t have a map handy). But at some point, those rains went away.

As Smithsonian Magazine (cited below) explains:

“With more rain, the region gets more greenery and rivers and lakes. All this has been known for decades. But between 8,000 and 4,500 years ago, something strange happened: The transition from humid to dry happened far more rapidly in some areas than could be explained by the orbital precession alone, resulting in the Sahara Desert as we know it today.”

Cool use of archaeological data

We can see from archaeological data (which is not perfect, but is overwhelmingly in favor of showing past water and trees in certain areas) that the area was once forest, and even rainforest. But what’s also interesting – and seals the deal for most people – is that in this period there is also evidence of pastoralists. That means people were raising and herding animals. And you definitely can’t do that in a desert.

Are humans to blame?

If it wasn’t solely an axial issue (regarding the Earth’s tilt), some scientists believe that humans could have played a big role in changing the climate due to overgrazing.

There have been suggestions that the end of the humid period in northern Africa could have been brought about by humans letting domesticated animals eat up all the moisture-loving plants. They would have probably had to use fire as a land management tool as well. And that may have been enough to trigger the big change that turned the forest into a desert.

It’s not that easy, of course, but that’s the general idea. There are also hypotheses that humans had nothing at all to do with it. And neither one of those would be related to whether or not humans are affecting the climate currently, so it’s not a political discussion (thankfully). – WTF fun facts

Source: “What Really Turned the Sahara Desert From a Green Oasis Into a Wasteland?” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12770 – Grapes In A Bottle Of Wine

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Have you ever wondered how many grapes are in a bottle of wine?

Well, it all depends on the type of wine you’re drinking, but typically it’s around 600-800. However, some bottles contain up to 1200 grapes.

Harvesting grapes for a bottle of wine

Protecting a vineyard from birds, bees, deer, and other pests that enjoy poking into and picking off grapes takes a lot of work. But if you’re able to get around ten good clusters, you’d be able to make at least one bottle of wine (although the wine-making process is pretty laborious for such a small payoff).

As grapes are harvested in the fall, imperfect clusters get tossed to the side. And many high-end vineyards will pick off each grape and try to inspect them individually to ensure they’re in good shape and free of pests that might change the taste of a wine (such as ladybugs).

The number of grapes in a bottle of wine may vary

You can’t make good wine out of just any old grapes. For example, concord grapes often get sold to big corporations such as Welch’s for grape juice (the non-fermented kind).

Wine grapes need extra help and aren’t sold at grocery stores. But if you want to get a sense of how many grapes are in a bottle of wine, think of it this way – most bags of grapes at the grocery store have about 3 – 4 clusters inside. So it would take at least three bags to make just one bottle of wine.

So, if three bags of grapes costs you a few dollars, you know that wine you’re getting at the under $10 price point is probably not all that special (though it can still be tasty!).

Vineyard vines

A vineyard can produce anywhere from 2 to 10 tons of grapes per acre, depending on the farming methods they employ. For example, organic vineyards will produce close to 2 tons per acre.

According to VinePair (cited below): “The output level of a vineyard is where price and quality get determined. A vineyard that produces less grapes per acre results in grapes that are usually fuller in flavor and more concentrated, whereas a vineyard with a large output generally creates grapes whose juice is watery, which means it ultimately will take more grapes to create a flavorful wine.”

When we’re talking about grapes per bottle, we’re looking at around 700+ bottles per acre (or around half a million grapes).

So if you’re buying wine from a small estate, chances are they are producing far less wine and are typically charging more. Of course, if the vineyard had a famous brand name attached, you’re also paying for that. –WTF fun facts

Source: “How Many Grapes Are Inside Your Bottle Of Wine?” — VinePair

WTF Fun Fact 12769 – The Marriage of Mickey and Minnie Mouse

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Sometimes Disney love stories do come true. Just take the example of the real voice actors behind the classic characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor were married from 1986 until Allwine’s death in 2009.

Are Mickey and Minnie Mouse married?

According to the Disney Parks Blog (cited below), everyone wanted to know if the two cartoon characters were meant to be married.

“In the September 30, 1933 issue of Film Pictorial magazine, Walt Disney was asked if his two stars were married. He explained, ‘A lot of people have written to him asking this question because sometimes he appears to be married to her in his films and other times still courting her. What it really amounts to is that Minnie is, for screen purposes, his leading lady. If the story calls for a romantic courtship, then Minnie is the girl; but when the story requires a married couple, then they appear as man and wife.'”

So, it was a marriage of convenience for the cartoon characters at least.

The real Mickey and Minnie Mouse

Taylor was the official voice of Minnie Mouse from 1986 to 2019, while Alwine voiced Mickey from 1977 to 2009.

But Allwine and Taylor kept their real-life marriage on the down low.

“When we got married, we kind of kept it quiet, because everybody was saying, ‘Oh, Mickey and Minnie got married. ‘It wasn’t Mickey and Minnie; it was Wayne and Russi. We wanted to keep it about us and not about the characters.'”

Of course, the creators of Mickey and Minnie Mouse were husband and wife as well – Walt and Lilly Disney!

It just goes to show that the Disney tradition has been a family affair from the get-go. It’s pretty sweet when you think about it.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Disney Romance: Mickey and Minnie and Walt and Lilly” — Disney Parks Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12768 – English as a Second Language (ESL)

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Technically, English is the most commonly spoken language in the world. However, that’s only because of the number of non-native speakers who learn it as a SECOND language.

In fact, English is more popular as a second than it is as a first language.

If you count only native speakers then Mandarin Chinese is the spoken language in the world.

How many people speak ESL?

There are roughly 378 million people who speak English as their native language. That sounds like a lot, but compare that to the roughly 995 million people who speak some form of Mandarin Chinese as a native language (that’s about 71% of China’s population).

However, due to the number of people who learn ESL, including many Mandarin speakers, English has become the most widely spoken language in the world.

There are around 743 million non-native speakers who learn ESL in the world. So if you add those to the native speakers, that tops the number of Mandarin speakers.

In 2022, surveys found that 1.5 billion people worldwide spoke English either natively or as a second language. Mandarin dialects still come in a very close second.

Second-language speakers

Native English speakers, particularly in the U.S., tend to be less likely to become fluent in a second language (despite learning a bit in school).

In Europe, people are more likely to truly learn to speak a second language. An EU survey found that 56% of Europeans speak a second language. The number of Americans who are bilingual hovers around only 20%.

Interestingly, even though many people the world over speak some English, the country with the highest level of proficiency when it comes to ESL is The Netherlands. Their citizens are more likely to be fluent. They’re followed by Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

In nearly every country surveyed, women had better ESL skills than men.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Which countries are best at English as a second language?” – WE Forum

WTF Fun Fact 12767 – Lyrebird Mimicry

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There are actually two types of lyrebirds, both live in Australia, and both are fabulous mimics. We just think the superb lyrebird has a better name. The other one is called Albert’s lyrebird and it’s a little less showy (but equally capable of mimicry).

Lyrebird taxonomy

The superb lyrebird belongs to the genus Menura (family Menuridae, order Passeriformes, if you like to get truly taxonomic). The birds live in the forests of southeastern Australia and do not fly – they are groundbirds.

For the most part, they’re not so impressive to look at. They look a lot like brown chickens. Well, except for the male superb lyrebird – he has to show off to attract females.

What does a lyrebird look like?

According to Britannica (cited below), “the male’s tail consists of eight pairs of ornate feathers, which resemble a lyre when erect. There are six pairs of filmy whitish feathers. One pair of 60–75-cm (24–30-inch) feathers that form the arms of the ‘lyre’ are broad and curled at the tip and are silvery on one side and marked with golden-brown crescents on the other. There are also two equally long ‘wires,’ narrow, stiff, slightly curved feathers that correspond to a lyre’s strings; they are situated in the centre of the curved ‘arms’…When the male displays in small clearings, which he makes at several places in the forest, he brings his tail forward so that the white plumes form a canopy over his head and the lyrelike feathers stand out to the side.”

Lyrebird mimicry

Here’s our favorite part of Britannica’s description: “In this position he sings, while prancing in rhythm, far-carrying melodious notes interspersed with perfect mimicry of other creatures and even of mechanical sounds.”

You might not think much of that at first, but the fact that a bird can mimic just about any sound is not only impressive but potentially creepy. Imagine walking through the deep forest in Australia (known for all manner of amazing-yet-terrifying creatures) only to hear the sound of a predator, a crying child, or a chainsaw!

We’d be freaked out, to say the least.

Seriously, listen to this bird mimic a baby crying!

Ok, now listen to construction noise (we had to double-check to make sure it was real):

Next time you head construction in the outback, look closer to the ground if you don’t see any men with tools. It may just be a lyrebird trying to troll you.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Lyrebird” – Britannica

WTF Fun Fact 12766 – Hashtag Octothorpe

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Hashtag, pound sign, number sign – call it what you will. This -> # <- is an octothorpe (or octothorp).

It’s not a word we had ever heard before, but it’s no surprise that signs we use quite frequently for many different purposes actually have proper original names.

The 14th-century octothorpe

According to Mental Floss, the sign originates in 14th-century Latin manuscripts when monks used it to abbreviate libra pondo (or the Latin term for weight in pounds). That would have been lb (like we use today), however “At the time, it was common to add a horizontal bar to abbreviations, known as a tittle, to show that the two letters were connected, and that the letter “l” was not the numeral 1.”

But as scribes began to write faster, the lb with a dash through the l began to look more like a # (in other words, a pound sign).

The octothorpe goes mainstream

No doubt a lot happened in between those Latin manuscripts and the # appearing on typewriter keyboards, but we haven’t found any proper explanation of how that happened.

However, when AT&T made its first phone keypads, it wanted them to be a perfect square. That would mean adding two more buttons. They chose * and # because they were already common on typewriters.

But why an octotherp, octothorpe/octothorp?

But when did the pound sign turn into an octothorpe? When an employee at Bell Labs decided to make up a name for the sign.

The thought process went like this, according to Google engineer Chris Messina’s history of the word:

  • There are eight points on the symbol so “OCTO” should be part of the name.
  • We need a few more letters or another syllable to make a noun, so what should that be? (Don MacPherson at this point in his life was active in a group that was trying to get JIM THORPE’s (ibid) Olympic medals returned from Sweden) The phrase THORPE would be unique, and people would not suspect he was making the word up if he called it an “OCTOTHORPE”.

The birth of the hashtag

Ok, so why and when did we start calling # a hashtag?

According to CBS News, it started with a Tweet.

“It all started back on Aug. 23, 2007 with a tweet by San Francisco techie and former Google developer Chris Messina. He wrote on Twitter, “How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

People didn’t like the idea, but that clearly didn’t stop it from catching on.

Then, a few days later, another user named Stowe Boyd suggested the # symbol be called a hashtag.

And the rest, as they say, is #history.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Where Does the Hashtag (a.k.a. Octothorpe) Come From?” — Mental Floss
“The Real Source of The Word “Octothorpe” — Chris Messina, Medium

WTF Fun Fact 12765 – The North Carolina Nuclear Bomb

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The North Carolina nuclear bomb incident occurred around midnight on January 23/24, 1961.

Despite the potential for catastrophe, not many people know about the event. But when documents from the incident were declassified in 2013 after a Freedom of Information request, we found out just how close the U.S. came to suffering a self-inflicted nuclear disaster.

North Carolina Nuclear Bomb incident

Residents of the small farming town of Faro, North Carolina (near Goldsboro) awoke one night in 1961 to the sound of a B-52 bomber accident.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress broke up in the air, releasing the two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs it was carrying. But dropping a bomb like this is different from having it explode. The nuclear payloads inside the bomb casings are what would have caused the major disaster and they had extra fail safes.

The plane

The plane was meeting up with a tanker for in-air refueling when the crew saw that it had a fuel leak in the right wing. Eventually, the pilot lost control of the rapidly leaking aircraft and ordered the crew to eject at 9000 feet. Unfortunately, two died in the crash, unable to parachute out, and one man died during his parachute landing. Five men survived.

The bombs then broke free of the aircraft and broke up roughly 1-2000 feet above the ground, releasing their payloads (but not activating them).

A very close call

In order for the payloads to detonate, the four arming mechanisms would have needed to break. In 2013, the US government released records showing that 3 out of the 4 mechanisms did fail, and one bomb had started to arm itself and charge its firing capacitors.

Only one functioning arming mechanism stood between North Carolina and a nuclear disaster. No one knows why the fourth mechanism stood up to the damage and failed to cause the explosion.

Remnants remain

The second bomb did not fully arm itself, but plunged into a muddy pit where it could not be recovered. All the military could do was remove the mechanism needed to detonate it and extract pieces of the bomb. Then, it covered the remaining parts with an easement, where it still sits today. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Remembering the night two atomic bombs fell—on North Carolina” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12764 – Mindfulness Meditation Changes the Brain

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We need more large-scale studies to make definitive claims, but mindfulness meditation seems to have some cool cognitive benefits. In fact, we can see on brain scans that people who practice mindfulness meditation experience changes in their brains.

Minding your thoughts

Mindfulness practice encourages people to stop and spend time noticing their thoughts and then letting go of the ones that are negative, disorganized, or aren’t serving a positive purpose. It’s designed to help us notice and control our thinking. (As opposed to most meditation practices, which center around emptying the mind of thoughts.)

The part of the brain affected by mindfulness practice is called the amygdala. This is also called the “fight or flight” center because it is linked to fear and emotional responses. Brain scans have shown that mindfulness practice helps shrink the amygdala. While that may sound like a bad thing, an overactive amygdala can be bad for concentration, mood, and emotional regulation.

Regulating the amygdala

However, mindfulness has been shown to help increase the connections between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. That’s a good thing because those connections help us regulate our emotional responses.

We need our amygdala, we just don’t want it to be hyperactive. And when we practice mindfulness, our bodies get better at regulating those emotional responses.

While some of the effects of mindfulness have been overstated in the press, there is evidence that it can modestly increase physical health and compassion and even reduce bias in addition to negative thought patterns.

The popularity of mindfulness meditation

A U.S. survey found that the percentage of adults practicing some type of mantra-based meditation,mindfulness meditation, or spiritual meditation in the previous year tripled between 2012 and 2017 (from 4.1% to 14.2%). Even among children (4 to 17 years of age), the percentage increased from less than 1% to over 5%. These emotional regulation techniques continue to grow in popularity.

Of course, there’s a lot we still don’t know about mindfulness and meditation in general, and they’re not always the best practices for everyone.

There are also different types of mindfulness meditation to practice, each with slightly different outcomes. For example, body scanning can help reduce negative thoughts. But practices in which participants are asked to observe their thoughts can sometimes lead to more negative thinking, especially among those who have just started practicing the skill and can’t let go of those thoughts easily.

In the end, it may be best for those who are new to mindfulness and observing their thoughts to do so with guidance from a teacher or tool so that they can stay on the right track and get the most out of their mindfulness practices. –WTF fun facts

Source: “10 Things We Know About the Science of Meditation” — Mindful

WTF Fun Fact 12763 – The Harvard – Yale Prank

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Every year, Ivy League universities Harvard University and Yale University meet up in a college football matchup that only alumni could possibly care about. (Yale has been bad for over a century, while Harvard has had a few eye-raising moments in the last few decades, but not enough to be a contender in the wider world of college football.)

The game is all about the rivalry, so pranks are fairly common. But a November 20, 2004 prank was at least good enough to make the evening sports news and go down as an embarrassment for Harvard.

Who carried out the Harvard – Yale prank?

Two Yale students from the class of ’05 named Michael Kai and David Aulicino gathered about 20 classmates to carry out the prank. The students dressed as members of the Harvard pep squad and handed out placards to the middle sideline section of Harvard fans. The idea was that when everyone held up the placards at the same time, it would spell out “Go Harvard.” At least that’s what the fans were told.

Impressively, they managed to hand out 1800 squares of paper, so it would have been hard for anyone to know what it was about to say (people only had small parts of letters).

Trolling their own team

Of course, now we know those placards didn’t spell out “Go Harvard.”

Instead, they spelled out “We Suck.”

The section was mostly full of alumni (which somehow makes it even funnier). The student section was off to the side, so the Harvard students couldn’t quite see it – and they later denied it even happened (despite the photo).

But Yale fans and players could see it, and so could that Harvard football team.

Prankster Dylan Davey didn’t feel bad about hoodwinking the alumni. According to the Yale Daily News (cited below):

“It was almost sad,” said Davey. “There were all these grandfather and grandmother types — and they all had big smiles, saying, ‘Oh you’re so cute, I’m so glad you’re doing this.’ I felt bad for about two minutes. Then I got over it.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Elis outsmart Harvard with prank at Game” — Yale Daily News