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 12598 – Volunteering for Prison

Zurich West Prison is designed to house no more than 241 people awaiting trial in Switzerland. Prison isn’t a fun place in any country, but that didn’t stop people from lining up to give the place a test run earlier this year. The prison is accepting volunteers over the age of 18 who live or work in Zurich.

As of February, over 832 people had applied to spend a couple of nights testing the facility in April 2022. What can we say, people are willing to try just about anything!

But they won’t be Instagramming the experience – there are no phones allowed. So, you won’t be able to see their prison meals, while they’ll be able to choose from a list of vegetarian, halal, or meat-based options.

Oh, and get this – they’ll also be able to opt-in to a strip search! (We’d pass, but that’s just us.) Of course, as volunteers, they’ll have the option of leaving at any time.

Switzerland’s prisons had come under scrutiny for their poor conditions, so Zurich West Prison wants to iron out any kinks beforehand. They aren’t prepping it to be a luxury stay, but they want to get a sense of how the prison operates with people in it before those people are those who have been charged with a crime.

According to an article in Bloomberg:

What else do we know about the experience volunteers should expect? For starters, they won’t pay anything, and they also shouldn’t expect to get paid for their time in jail. Daily life will include going through intake procedures, testing food, walking the yard, and sleeping in a cell. Cellphones and other electronic devices must be left at the door when checking in, and every volunteer will need a security clearance. To obtain this clearance, participants must go through a security checkpoint similar to airport TSA. And as for strip searches? According to officials, those are voluntary. (Whew!)

During the authentic incarceration experience, volunteers will receive safe words. That way, if things spiral out of control, they can let authorities know ASAP. The same goes for those who get cold feet at any point during the test run. In return, the experience will let officials of the prison system test the new facility’s capacity, operations, and services. It will also give correctional officers a chance to communicate and cooperate with authorities like prosecutors and law enforcement.”

The prison hopes the safe words won’t be necessary.  – WTF fun facts

Source: “Swiss Prison Flooded With Volunteers for Three Nights in Jail” — Bloomberg

WTF Fun Fact 12597 – The Man Who Married A Pillow

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 12596 – Martin Luther’s Christmas Tree

Christmas trees are a pagan tradition that predates Christianity (and, therefore, Christmas). That might lead someone knowledgeable about theology or Christian history to believe that the Protestant reformer Martin Luther wasn’t a fan since he wasn’t exactly known for going all-out on the holidays.

In the 16th century, so the story goes, Martin Luther was taking a Christmastime walk and was inspired by the twinkling stars above him. That’s when he got the idea to gussy up a Christmas tree. He used candles, of course, since they didn’t have those infuriating strings of lights yet.

It became a wider German tradition after that (since Martin Luther was also known for spreading his ideas around). And when German emigrated all over Europe and North America, they brought that tradition with them.

Decorated trees became an even more visible tradition when Queen Charlotte introduced the practice to her new husband, King George III, and his English court in the mid-18th century. After that, Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree was illustrated in an 1848 edition of Illustrated London News. That immediately made it more fashionable.

The tradition of lighting up Christmas trees probably came to the US around the 18th century as well when Hessian troops came to back up the British during the Revolutionary War. When German immigrants moved over in later decades under more polite circumstances, they reinvigorated the trend that others then found fascinating and decided to copy.

So just remember to blame Martin Luther when you’re untangling those lights next Christmas. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Why do we have Christmas trees? The surprising history behind this holiday tradition” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12595 – A Dream Job That Gives You Nightmares

Well, it may not be a long-term gig, but someone is going to make $2,400 to watch true crime documentaries.

The offer has been extended by MagellanTV and they’re technically offering one lucky person $100 an hour to watch 24 hours of documentaries and report back to them on the experience as part of their Third Annual True Crime Watch Dream Job.”

MagellanTV is a streaming service and they’re offering the money plus a free year-long subscription to one person. However, you don’t have a whole year to get your “job” done.

The winner needs to watch all 24 hours’ worth of true crime documentaries in a 48-hour period AND document the experience on social media.

Here’s who they’re looking for:

“Our ideal candidate lives for True Crime—they can handle the most menacing serial killer, the goriest details, and don’t flinch at the chilling paranormal. And they love it so much that they’re willing to stream it nonstop for 24 hours. Along with watching, they’ll be documenting their True Crime all-nighter on social media so everyone will see if they can hack it… or not.”

Documentaries include: “Lady Killers: Elizabeth Bathory,” “The Writer With No Hands,” “Nurses Who Kill: Paul Novak,” “Murder on the Internet: Fatal Targeting,” “21st Century Killer,” “Body Snatchers of New York,” “Nightclub Killer,” “The Family Who Vanished,” “Great Bank Heists,” and “CyberCrimes with Ben Hammersley,” and “Murder Maps.”

Sounds like you might have to plan for some nightmares and maybe spend some of that $2,400 for therapy. – WTF fun facts

Source: “You could earn $100 an hour — just by binging true crime” — CNN

WTF Fun Facts 12594 – Hot Dog Diplomacy

King George VI was the first sitting British ruler to visit a U.S. president. It was kind of a big deal after the whole Revolutionary War and the sore feelings that left.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president at the time and wanted to give the king a royal greeting, American style.

Of course there was a state dinner with all the attendant fancy food. But it was a casual picnic that really made the trip memorable because that’s when King George VI had his first hot dog on June 11, 1939.

It was a private picnic, but the hot dog moment was anything but a secret. In fact, a NYT headline the following day read: “King Tries Hot Dog and Asks For More.”

The brand was Swift, for those who need to know these things. And the king very appropriately had a beer with his 2 hot dogs as well, according to the Times.

Looking back on the moment in 2009, Dan Barry wrote in the NYT:

There is no record of the founding fathers ever eating hot dogs, no trace, for example, of mustard on the Declaration of Independence. But the hot dog has played a role in American foreign relations since at least June 1939, when the king and queen of England attended a picnic at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., while soliciting American support for England in the war about to consume Europe.”

The king’s mother was with him at the time and also partook in a hot dog – but she is said to have eaten it with a knife and fork.

Upon inviting an Iranian delegation to the US, the Obama administration relied once again on the diplomatic dogs. There’s no word on how they went down, but Barry seemed to think that it was an essential part of the diplomatic process either way, noting:

The hot dog, it seems, figures in American diplomacy only when absolutely needed. In 1999, for example, President Bill Clinton gathered at a table with Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to eat hot dogs. Kosher, of course.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “When Franklin Delano Roosevelt Served Hot Dogs to a King” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12593 – Vienna Makes For Strange Neighbors

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 12592 – The Robot Monk

Softbank’s former line of Pepper robots took on many tasks in Japan, including duties in hospitals, retail stores, and even Buddhist temples. Pepper was even programmed to become a stand-in for a Buddhist monk, news outlets reported in 2017.

While the robot monks can deliver blessings and beat a drum, their real purpose is to preside over funeral services in Japan, which has a significantly increasing elderly population.

The robot funerals not only pick up some slack when there aren’t enough human monks to go around, but they’re economical as well. A robot funeral cost about 1/5 of what a regular one would

It’s a question for the ethicists and theologians.

Another interesting fact is that human Buddhist monks have shown the same respect for robots as well, presiding over ceremonial funerals for obsolete robotic dogs in Japan.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “The Robot Priest” — Tech Top 10 List

WTF Fun Fact 12591 – The Animal With the Poisonous Elbow

There is only one venomous primate in the world, and it’s not exactly a fierce-looking creature. The slow loris is the poison primate in question, and they’re native to Indonesia. Unfortunately, they’re also going extinct because they are thought to contain medicines and spiritual properties.

We don’t know about any of that, be we do know they pack a poisonous sac in their elbow.

It sounds like something out of a Marvel comic – a character that can deliver a striking blow with a sharp elbow to the face. But they don’t attack with their elbows.

Instead, they suck out the poison, swish it around in their mouths a little, and then deliver the venom through a bite.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t save them. They’re treated pretty brutally, and if someone plans to catch one, they typically remove its teeth. And the slow loris gets its name in part because it can’t outrun predators, especially humans.

Animals rescuers are trying to save them from their brutal fates, but studying them is hard because they’re nocturnal, secretive (and not super keen on humans who have a habit of dismembering and cooking them over fires). Go figure.

Lorises don’t typically attack other species with their poison bites – they’re far more likely to attack other lorises, which certainly doesn’t help those sustainability numbers.

While the loris is the only venomous primate, there are other venomous mammals: vampire bats, two species of shrew, platypuses, and solenodons.

But loris venom is truly gruesome causing necrosis causes necrosis (or tissue death), so victims can lose the limb affected.

This is just one more piece of proof that you can’t just blindly trust a cute face. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Slow loris: the eyes may be cute, but the elbows are absolutely lethal” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12590 – The Spider That Eats Its Mother

It may sound like just another day at the office for some mothers used to giving their all to their children, but some spider moms really do make the ultimate sacrifice for their young.

It’s called matriphagy, the act of eating one’s mother, and it’s rare. But it happens in a spider species called Stegodyphus lineatus.

These spiders only have one group of babies throughout their lives. And when these spider babies are born, they are entirely dependent on their mothers to regurgitate food and feed it to them so they can grow up.

And what does she get in return?

Well, to be fair, the moms don’t put up a fight. After about two weeks of motherhood, they allow their children to consume them, leaving behind only an exoskeleton.

The spiders are native to Israel, and research into matriphagy in this species showed another interesting thing. Females that had given birth actually started to digest their own tissues before their gruesome deaths. Now, that might be a sign that the species just wasn’t designed to survive motherhood. However, Dr. Mor Salomon, a postdoctoral fellow in entomology at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food & Environment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also found that the ovaries and the heart were the last organs to degenerate.

It also seems that spider mothers know their time is limited because they stop maintaining their web after their babies begin to grow.

Please don’t assume that females who don’t give birth have it any easier. They also tend to sacrifice themselves when a member of the colony has babies. Researchers are still looking into whether this is conditioned behavior or part of the species’ biology. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Arachnid Matriphagy: These Spider Mothers Literally Die for Their Young” — Entomology Today