WTF Fun Fact 12686 – RIP Sandy Island

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Sandy Island was 15 miles long, roughly the size of Manhattan. Or at least that’s what the maps showed in the decades leading up to 2012. It even showed up on Google Maps in the Coral Sea, east of Australia.

Discovered in 1876, the best we can guess is that there might have been a floating pile of pumice there at some point that made explorers think it was an island. In any case, they put it on a map, and there it stayed until 2012. That’s when a research crew passed by the site and realized the island wasn’t there.

It hadn’t been covered by water. There was no evidence at all that an island had ever been in that location. The water a mile down was free of any proof that a landmass had ever been in that location.

As if embarrassed, everyone from National Geographic to Google quickly and quietly removed the island from their maps. (Which, let’s face it, raises some questions about maps in general and what they encourage us to believe without asking further questions.)

The truth is, the island had been “undiscovered” even before 2012 as people reported that there was nothing there and some maps labeled Sandy Island “ED,” or “existence doubtful.”

Maybe it started with a false sighting or perhaps with a simple recording error, but that error was replicated in databases for over 100 years without anyone questioning it (or looking for proof via satellite).

David Titley, a retired Navy rear admiral who spent over three decades as an oceanographer and navigator, told The Washington Post:

“When we look at these computer displays, with the three-dimensional imagery and colorized, it can give you a sense that we know more than we do. A lot of people in the Navy don’t always understand the difference between having a chart and having the survey data that formed that chart.”

There is no longer a Sandy Island on modern maps. Scientists even published an obituary for it in 2013. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Pacific island that never was” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12685 – A Pristine Forest In A Sinkhole

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But there are 30 giant sinkholes throughout China, and explorers who rappelled down into one of them in May of 2022 discovered that nature was hiding something from us – a pristine, ancient forest. In fact, we know so little about this ecosystem that it would very well harbor wildlife we’re never seen before!

The sinkhole is 630 feet deep, 1,004 feet long, and 492 feet wide. Some of the trees inside the sinkhole are 130 feet tall!

While he was not involved in the expedition, George Veni, the executive director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI) in the U.S, told Live Science more about these features:

“The discovery is no surprise, Veni told Live Science, because southern China is home to karst topography, a landscape prone to dramatic sinkholes and otherworldly caves. Karst landscapes are formed primarily by the dissolution of bedrock, Veni said. Rainwater, which is slightly acidic, picks upcarbon dioxideas it runs through the soil, becoming more acidic. It then trickles, rushes and flows through cracks in the bedrock, slowly widening them into tunnels and voids. Over time, if a cave chamber gets large enough, the ceiling can gradually collapse, opening up huge sinkholes.”

He also said China was an ideal place to find sinkholes with something worthwhile inside: “So in China you have this incredibly visually spectacular karst with enormous sinkholes and giant cave entrances and so forth. In other parts of the world you walk out on the karst and you really don’t notice anything. Sinkholes might be quite subdued, only a meter or two in diameter. Cave entrances might be very small, so you have to squeeze your way into them.”

The sinkhole is located in a UNESCO world heritage location in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, near Ping’e village in the county of Leye.

While we don’t usually think of sinkholes as harboring anything special, this one surely did. These giant sinkholes are called a “tiankeng” in Mandarin, meaning “heavenly pit.” –WTF fun fact

Source: “Giant sinkhole with a forest inside found in China” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12684 – Pushed Into a Fortune

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Some people come into our lives and make them richer. Other people barrel through our lives just because they’re rude and we’re in their way. For LaQuedra Edwards, it only took one person to do both.

In April of 2022, the Southern California woman was buying her weekly lottery ticket at a grocery store in Tarzana when “some rude person” (as she described them) bumped into her and didn’t even stop to say excuse me. That ended up pushing her into the machine as she was about to hit the button for the ticket she wanted. Except her finger veered off course due to the surprise and landed on the button for a $30 scratch-off.

She had already bought some other tickets and went out to her car, unhappy with the overall investment. But as many lottery players know, sometimes those cards end up paying for themselves.

Ms. Edwards $30 scratch-off DID pay for itself – and then some! She scratched it off to find she had won the lotto’s biggest prize, a whopping $10 million!

“I didn’t really believe it at first, but I got on the 405 freeway and kept looking down at [the ticket], and I almost crashed my car,” she said in a statement to the California Lottery. “I pulled over, looked at it again and again, scanned it with my app, and I just kept thinking this can’t be right.”

The odds of winning $10 million in that particular scratch-off game were 1 in 3 million! And while there are plenty of rude people out there who just keep on barreling through the lives of other folks, we almost have to wonder if this wasn’t some sort of “guardian angel.” (Or at least a fairy godmother in a rush.) –  WTF fun fact

Source: “An accidental encounter with a ‘rude person’ made this woman $10 million richer” — Fortune

WTF Fun Fact 12683 – From New Hampshire to Norway

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Right before the pandemic closed schools, students at New Hampshire’s Rye Junior High School were working on a science project to launch a boat into the ocean with GPS attached to see where it would end up and what route it would take.

According to NPR: “Rye Junior High and the nonprofit Educational Passages — which says it aims to connect students around the world to the ocean and one another — started working together on the project in 2018, according to a release. The organization provided students with an assembly kit in 2020, though the construction and launch were complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.”

They thought it was lost when GPS stopped transmitting for a while, but eventually, it pinged again from a little uninhabited island off the coast of Norway. They just needed someone to retrieve it. Enter local sixth-grader, Karel Nuncic, who took a boat with his parents and puppy out to the island (which they could see from their coastal home) to recover the vessel. It wasn’t in great shape, but the hull containing artwork from the students who launched it was intact and dry.

In a Facebook post, the school said:

“RJH’s miniboat made it across the Atlantic! Our students put together a 5 foot drifter and had it launched into the middle of the Gulf Stream current on Oct. 25, 2020. Which way did it go? The onboard GPS recorded its location, most of the time. Then it went silent for a while. On Sunday, it pinged again and its location was on a small island off of Norway! Stayed tuned for more of the story! Here are the before and after photos of our miniboat and a map of its path. (Thanks to Educational Passages and The Clipper Foundation!)”

–  WTF fun fact

Source: “A Norwegian student found a boat launched by New Hampshire middle-schoolers in 2020” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12682 – France’s Water Cures

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Want a prescription to spend 3 weeks at a spa as part of your free healthcare? Become a French citizen! (Ok, that’s no easy task for most of us.)

The New Yorker just published an article that made us long for a doctor’s visit that ended in a “spa cure.” They say:

“Let’s say that you suffer from arthritis, arthritis, bronchitis, bursitis, colitis, diverticulitis, endometriosis, laryngitis, osteoporosis, rhinitis, sinusitis, tendonitis, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Raynaud’s disease, multiple sclerosis, angina, asthma, sciatica, kidney stones, sore throat, dizziness, spasms, migraines, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, back pain, earaches, vaginal dryness, menstrual cramps, itching, bloating, swelling, constipation, gout, obesity, gum disease, dry mouth, psoriasis, acne, eczema, frostbite, hives, rosacea, scarring, stretch marks, or varicose veins, or that you are depressed, trying to quit smoking, or simply dealing with a lot of stress. You also, crucially, live in France. You go see the doctor. She writes you a prescription for a thermal cure, indicating to which of the country’s hundred and thirteen accredited thermal spas you will be sent. Then you fill out a simple form and submit it, along with the prescription, to the national healthcare service. Your application is approved—it almost always is—and you’re off to take the waters.“

Ok, first of all, we have a hard enough time getting our medical care approved by our insurance company, we’d love to see their response to a thermal spa receipt for a sore throat. (Seriously, we mean that – we want it on camera.)

Yes, yes, the tax money. Of course. This is not an economic fun fact, because none of that discussion is fun. This is about notions of health and well-being – and you can call them kooky or brilliant, but it’s hard to deny that it’s also fascinating that these treatments – which date all the way back to the ancient world – are still practiced (and paid for) as part of mainstream(ish) medicine. Frankly, it dovetails nicely with much of what we know about the effects of stress and poor mental health on our physical health.

And wait, there’s more:

“The French government introduced “social thermalism” for the masses in 1947, proclaiming that “every man, whatever his social condition, has a right to a thermal cure if the state of his health demands it.” The full cure, consisting of treatments that use mineral water, mud, and steam from naturally occurring hot springs, lasts twenty-one days—six days of treatments with Sundays off, over three consecutive weeks. In 2019, around six hundred thousand French people undertook cures, targeting specific pathologies and subsidized by the state at sixty-five percent. Around three million more visited thermal spas as paying customers.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Seeking a Cure in France’s Waters” — The New Yorker

WTF Fun Fact 12681 – What Lies Beneath Stonehenge

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Stonehenge has long been a mystery to us. The stones are too big for us to understand how they were moved to their location. They are clearly from a location far away (no, not outer space far ) from the site. We still don’t know if it was built as a burial site, a ceremonial site, a place for religious pilgrimages, or a memorial (or something entirely different).
(In case you’re in the dark entirely about Stonehenge, here’s a good primer.)

Humans began building it 5000 years ago and added the rest of the stones 2500 years ago. We know there are burial mounds surrounding the site (some of which seem to date back 8500 years). But, now, we have another mystery to add – thousands of pits dug nearby.

Oh, and the oldest of these appear to be around 10,000 years old. Others were constructed long after Stonehenge was completed.

Some seem pretty straightforward – they were used to trap animals that would fall into the pit and provide food for hunters and their families. But others don’t seem to have been dug for the same reason.

Using an algorithm, archaeologists have identified 415 locations likely to hold large pits (over 7.9 feet) and over 3000 smaller pits. They’ve excavated 9 of the large pits and found hunting tools and the like in a few while others seem to be dug in a way that would relate to some kind of ceremonial purpose.

All we can say is the mystery continues! –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Thousands of prehistoric pits discovered around Stonehenge” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12680 – The Mummy In The Closet

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Archaeologists often get permission to dig at a site that includes permission to take whatever they find under the assumption that they will treat it well and restore it and hopefully make a discovery that tells the world a bit more about the history of that site.

But archaeologists often take more than they could ever handle, and things get stored away. Or, in some cases, people donate items to universities, and how they got these items is…how shall we say…somewhat fishy. The problem is that the home countries of these items don’t often get a chance to repatriate the objects that archaeologists ignore (and in some cases, they don’t have anyone with the expertise or desire to do that).

However, no one at Cornell can actually figure out how the mummy got there. Did someone from Cornell bring it back from Egypt? Was it part of a donation? Whoever does know has been dead for years.

But we do know that the little 2-pound mummy had been sitting around for about 100 years ago. They assumed it contained a mere hawk, which is presumably nothing special. And like so many things, it got stored away – in this case, in a closet (but perhaps it was a nice closet – we’re not judging the organizational strategy).

Recently, an archaeology graduate student at the university, Carol Anne Barsody was researching a project on how we can use technology to study objects without destroying them and how we can integrate these objects – which may look like nothing much on the outside – into museum exhibits that people can learn from. It sounds very cool (and would allow many more people to see objects that have been hidden away).

Frederic Gleach, the curator of Cornell’s Anthropology Collection, offered Barsody two little mummies that had been stored away. One contained twigs and the other the “hawk.”

Barsody and Gleach reached out to Cornell’s renowned College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) to get a CT scan of the mummy so they could learn more about the bird inside. And it was only then that they discovered it was not a hawk at all, but an ibis, a long-legged bird that thrives in marshlands.

This is important because the ibis was worshipped in Egypt in relation to their god Thoth, who was often depicted with the head of an ibis. That means the mummy was likely worshipped as a sacrificial object. It wasn’t just some bird. Thoth was the god of reckoning, learning, writing, and the moon.

The ibis mummy is between 1000 and 3000 years old (with some of its tissue still intact).

“Not only was this once a living creature that people of the day may have enjoyed watching stroll through the water,” Barsody said to the Cornell newspaper. “It also was, and is, something sacred, something religious.”

She also told the Cornell Chronicle: “The goal is to gauge the public’s readiness for exhibitions without the artifacts. That gets into bigger questions about repatriation, institutional collecting practices, access, and education in this post-COVID world, where you might not be able to actually get to a museum. I’m really interested in the multisensory aspects. Using not just your sight, but also feel, smell, hearing.” –WTF fun fact

Source: “Cross-college researchers unravel mummy bird mystery” — Cornell Chronicle

WTF Fun Fact 12679 – OutHorse Your E-Mail

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Visit Iceland recently got a weird idea. They’ve launched an out-of-office email service called “OutHorse Your Email” so you can outsource to a horse.

So, apparently, you can get a horse to write your OOO emails.

This was all brought about by a survey that found that 55% of vacationers check their email at least once and 60% said their bosses expected a response. (Of course, we’re not sure how bosses respond to horse emails, but that’s a survey for the future.)

Check this out:

It seems like a joke, right? Well, there’s a website and all you need to do is select a horse and put in your email information to generate your email.

According to IFL Science:

“The huge typing platform is then placed outside with the stunning backdrop of Iceland to complement the tip-tapping of typing horses writing the OOO emails of lazy humans. You can get your own emails written via the Visit Iceland website where Litla Stjarna Star from Hvítárholt, Hrímnir from Hvammi and Hekla from Þorkellshó are waiting to assist you.”

We’re sure your boss will be pleased. –  WTF fun fact

Source: “In Iceland, Horses Will Write Your “Out Of Office” Emails For You” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12678 – The (2nd?) Tallest Statue of Jesus

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When we see scenes from Rio de Jeneiro in Brazil, their epic Christ the Redeemer statue is always part of the photo montage. However, it’s not even the tallest Jesus statue anymore – and it’s no longer the tallest one in Brazil! Of course, that all depends on whether or not you want to count pedestals.

TheJesus Buntu Burakestatue in Sulawesi, Indonesia stands at 172.4 feet (131 without the pedestal), whileChrist the Kingin Swiebodzin, Poland stands at 172.2 feet (108 without the pedestal). But feel free to correct us in the comments since it’s probably hard to get a tape measure up there and we only know what we read on the Internet (but it was from Architectural Digest)!

Rio’s statue is a mere 98 feet tall (and it’s pedestal adds another 28 feet) by comparison. But a tiny town nearly 1000 miles southwest of the city just took the Brazilan title for tallest Jesus statue away from their Christ the Redeemer.

Cristo Protetorde Encantado was built with funds raised by the Associação Amigos de Cristo, and cost of $350,000. It is also far more detailed than Rio’s (though we’re not sure that matters in the long run).

Mexico now pledges it will build the tallest statue of them all in Ciudad Victoriaat standing at 252 feet. Christ of Peaceis currently being constructed.

Holy monument? Pilgramage site? Both? More than 37,500 people have come to visit so far, even before Jesus was “open for business.” When he’s done, he will have interior shops, restaurants, and viewing areas, including a glass heart to view the city from.

You can look at him from his base for $4 on the weekends from 9am to 5pm. He opens fully in early 2023.

Now, there’s a little confusion in the press over the height of all of these status and whether or not the official tally includes the base. Smithsonian Magazine seems to think this new statue will be the tallest, however it will stand at 143 feet (43.5 meters) with the pedestal (making it the largest Jesus, but not the largest full statue. Without the pedestal, the statue is 123 feet (37.5 meters), so by our math, Indonesia’s is still bigger in that sense.

Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world and Jesus is a big travel draw. It remains to be seen to what extent the people of this small town will benefit financially, but we’re sure it’s quite a sight nevertheless. –WTF fun fact

Want to see a video about all of this? Here ya go:

Source: “This Statue Is Now the Third Tallest Monument of Christ in the World — and Will Open to Visitors in 2023” — Travel & Leisure