WTF Fun Fact 12644 – The Parrot Who Saved a Dead Language

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German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt embarked on a 5-year exploration of North and South America in 1799. His trip was successful, and when he returned home in 1804, he had an extensive collection of plant and animal specimens

Humboldt also took voluminous notes, including some interesting jottings from a trip through Venezuela in 1800 where he spent some time chatting with a local parrot.

According to Mental Floss:

“According to legend, during his exploration of the Orinoco River, Humboldt met and stayed with a local indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures. The tribe, so the story goes, had a number of tame parrots kept in cages around the village, many of which had been taught to speak—although one, Humboldt noted, sounded noticeably different from the rest. When he asked the locals why this parrot sounded so unusual, he was told that it had belonged to a neighboring tribe, who had been the Caribs’ enemies.”

In other words, the parrot was speaking a different language than the rest. And sadly, the parrot was the only speaker left. The rest of the tribe had been wiped out, and not a single native speaker remained. Just the parrot. It was the last vestige of their linguistic culture.

Being the keen observer and recorder, Humboldt wrote down what the parrot sounded like, transcribing the sounds phonetically and coming out with about 40 words from the parrot’s (and the lost tribe’s) vocabulary.

We’ll never know how accurate the language is, but the notebook holds the last of what we have.

Interestingly, in 1997, an artist taught two more parrots to speak the language based on Humboldt’s notebook.

Some think the parrot’s story is mere legend, but Humboldt recounted his trip down the Orinoco river in his Equinoctial Regions of America in great detail and accurately described the Atures tribe that the parrot spoke the language of. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Parrot That Kept A Language Alive” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 12643 – The First Sad Clown

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Joseph Grimaldi is often hailed as the first modern “clown.” And while people tend to break down into two camps – those who find them funny and those who find them terrifying – Grimaldi’s story is proof that they’ve always been both.

Joseph Grimaldi had a long and illustrious career marked by extreme emotional outbursts. And one of the reasons we know so much about him is because of his well-written biography – by none other than a young newspaper writer named Charles Dickens.

Dickens gave readers some insight into the brutality of Grimaldi’s upbringing, and in particular, his treatment by his father, Guiseppe, a dentist and performer who moved from Italy to England for a career change.

Abusive to all of his children, he capped off his life by demanding that his daughter cut off his head before he was buried in order to receive her inheritance, all because he was terrified of being buried alive.

He wasn’t any more pleasant to his other nine children either, but only Joseph grew up and created the character of the modern clown. While he gave his all on stage, he would often burst into hysterics between acts and pull himself together just in time to entertain during the second act.

When trying to treat his intractable melancholy, he visited a doctor who had an even more depressing prescription: “relaxation and amusement… perhaps sometimes at the theater;—go and see Grimaldi.”

“Alas!” he shouted, ‘”hat is of no avail to me; I am Grimaldi.” –WTF fun facts

Source: “Here We Are Again!—How Joseph Grimaldi Invented the Creepy Clown” — JSTOR Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12642 – The Cereal Made for Orange Juice

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May the 4 may be a day that lives in infamy. That’s the day fruit company Tropicana announced it will release a new cereal that you’re supposed to pour orange juice on top of instead of milk. It seems they do not realize that we could have done that all along and have just chosen not to for the most part.

Some people seem excited, while others are disgusted – so in that sense, it’s just like any other piece of random news.

According to the fruit company’s website for the cereal, you can buy your first box of Tropicana Crunch on May 4, 2022. The “Cereal Made for OJ.” (Not Simpson, we assume.)

We’re not sure how you “engineer a cereal” for citrus other than just suggesting it (which is really all it takes for most people), but the company seems oddly confident that the “unforgettable breakfast experience” is going to change breakfast forever.

And why May 4th, you ask? That’s National Orange Juice Day.

We’ll admit that the crunchy honey almond-flavored cereal doesn’t sound bad in itself, but we’ll just let you find out for yourselves how it tastes. – WTF fun facts

Source: “SNAP, CRACKLE… JUICE? NEW CEREAL MADE TO BE EATEN WITH ORANGE JUICE, NOT MILK” — Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

WTF Fun Fact 12641 – A Great Ball of Fire

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The world didn’t end on April 27, 2022, though we’re confident that a few people thought it might after seeing a giant fireball in the sky headed straight for earth at 8 am.

Around 60 people in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana saw what turned out to be a meteor, but hundreds of people heard the loud boom. That’s because it exploded 34 miles above a swampy area in Louisiana with the power of 3 tons of TNT. Frankly, we would have just gone back to bed after all that.

NASA confirmed the meteor and verified that pieces of it had been recovered on the ground in Mississippi. At first, they estimated its speed at 55,000mph but later amended it to a more modest 35,000mph.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said the event caused no physical injuries or property damage. However, we’re pretty sure there was at least a little bit of existential damage done to anyone who thought they were about to meet the same end as the dinosaurs.

Because the law states that meteorites belong to whoever owns the property they land on, NASA will not disclose the locations of any of the fragments. (We’re pretty sure someone on Facebook will take care of that.)

NASA also reminded people: “We are not meteorite people, as our main focus is protecting spacecraft and astronauts from meteoroids.” So they won’t be identifying or authenticating any other rocks people claim are meteorites. They also confirmed that Mississippi is particularly meteorite-prone, with incidents occurring in 1854, 1910, 1922, and 2012. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Pieces of ‘fireball’ that exploded while zooming over 3 Southern states are being found on ground, NASA says” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 12640 – A Presidential Wild Child

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Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest child of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was apparently quite a hoot.

Her mother died just days after she was born, and she was initially raised by her aunt, Anna Roosevelt. But when her father remarried in 1886, she was sent to live with the family and her five half-siblings.

She was intelligent and bold and happy to be in the spotlight as a celebrity first daughter. She made news for such antics as smoking on the White House roof and carrying a pet snake named Emily Spinach in her handbag, sometimes taking her out and wearing the snake around her arm. She also publicly bet on sports races, something ladies of the stature didn’t do at the time.

It appears that her parent wanted to do something about her behavior but felt unable to do so since she was such a darling of the press.

Later in life, she became a political power of her own, marrying a Republican representative from Ohio, but they argued over her support of her father’s Progressive Party politics. However, Alice also wrote a newspaper column condemning some of those, including Rosevelt’s response to The Great Depression. Alice was also vocal in protesting the U.S.’s participation in the League of Nations and had isolationist tendencies – at least up until Pearl Harbor drew the country into WWII.

She was at the center of Washington society for decades after that, hosting the Kennedys, Nixons, and Johnsons.

After having a double mastectomy later in life, she insisted on referring to herself as “Washington’s only topless octogenarian.”

Those who joined her for tea would catch a glimpse of a pillow that read, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

Alice Roosevelt died at age 96 in 1980. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Alice Roosevelt Longworth” — Theodore Roosevelt Center

WTF Fun Fact 12639 – Prosecuting Space Crime

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Pretty soon, it may be illegal for Canadian astronauts to go on crime sprees in space.

Now, we’re pretty sure that’s not why Canadians become astronauts in the first place, but apparently, you can never be too careful.

So, what’s this all about? Well, Canada just proposed an amendment to the country’s Criminal Code in their no-doubt riveting 443-page Budget Implementation Act in the House of Commons. It basically states that any crime committed in space by Canadians will be considered to have been committed on Canadian territory and punished accordingly. In other words, if you commit moon murder as a Canadian, you better not come back.

Interestingly, Canada has been preparing for space crime for a while now. Their Criminal Code already lays out prohibitions on crimes Canadian astronauts may commit during space flight to the International Space Station. accounts for astronauts who may commit crimes during space flights to the International Space Station.

Canada is part of the Lunar Gateway Project, a NASA-backed orbiting space platform. Part of that plan includes a trip to the moon, and apparently, the government wants to make sure Canadians maintain their reputation for being polite even among extraterrestrials.

The proposed code change reads:

“A Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offense is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada.”

There are two interesting questions at play here – 1) who controls space justice, and 2) what gives a country the right to say space in their territory for prosecutorial purposes?

If you think space crime is absurd, there have already been accusations that have raised questions (however, no crime actually occurred). In 2019, astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged spouse, Summer Worden, of improperly accessing bank records from the International Space Station. But McClain was later cleared after her spouse admitted to lying.

Still, it made people wonder how we might prosecute crimes in space, where no one technically owns territory (yet) and no one has jurisdiction.

Now, we already have some guidelines for international space law, believe it or not. According to CBC News:

“‘There are five international treaties governing activities in space but the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by Canada and more than 100 other countries, is the most relevant when it comes to dealing with alleged crimes in space, wrote Danielle Ireland-Piper, an associate professor of constitutional and international law at Australia’s Bond University. ‘As for the question of who prosecutes space crimes, the short answer is that a spacefaring criminal would generally be subject to the law of the country of which they are a citizen, or the country aboard whose registered spacecraft the crime was committed.'”

But things might be different if the astronaut-on-astronaut crime occurs between two different nations. In that case, there might be some disagreement about which country is able to prosecute the space offender. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Crimes on the moon could soon be added to Canada’s Criminal Code” — CBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12638 – Drinking Gold To Stay Young

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Humans have always been obsessed with living forever. And, as you may have guessed, we’ve continued to fail.

The practice of drinking cold goes all the way back to ancient China and Egypt but came back into high fashion in the 16th-century in France. Members of the court of King Henry II tried different tonics with gold to reduce wrinkles and stave off death, but, of course, it killed many of them.

De Poitiers was very influential, and despite her choice of cocktail ingredients, she did live to be 66. According to Atlas Obscura: “Brantôme, the French historian, once wrote about meeting de Poitiers six months before she passed away at the age of 66. Though he admitted to not knowing much about the ‘potable gold and other drugs’ she took daily, which contributed to her ‘fine appearance,’ he quickly added: ‘I believe that if this lady had lived another hundred years she would not have aged … in her face, so well-composed it was.'”

Gold drinking was perhaps even more popular in the medieval period after an alchemist devised a method for dissolving solid gold into a liquid. The drinkable gold was called aurum potabile (or aurum potable), and it was advertised as a medicinal drink that could cure everything from epilepsy to manic episodes.

One of the oddest recipes comes from Pope John XXI, who, in In 1578, wrote a recipe for an elixir of youth that included “taking gold, silver, iron, copper, iron, steel, and lead filings, then placing that mixture ‘in the urine of a virgin child on the first day,’ then white wine, fennel juice, egg whites, in a nursing woman’s milk, in red wine, then again in egg whites, in that order, for the following six days,” according to Atlas Obscura.

Bottoms up! – WTF fun facts

Source: “Drinking Gold Was a Grisly Anti-Aging Trend of 16th-Century France” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Facts12637 – Cow Burps Seen From Space

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While it may be kind of funny, it’s really not a good thing that the methane emissions from cow burps can be viewed from space. That methane actually gets trapped in the earth’s atmosphere and contributes to climate change.

These emissions were detected by an environmental data company called GHGSat. Their high-resolution satellites saw the emissions in February, but it took until April to confirm their suspicions.

The burping cattle reside on a feedlot in California’s Joaquin Valley. According to CNN: “If these emissions were sustained for just one year, enough gas would be released ‘to power 15,402 homes,’ the company said.”

Farm cattle contribute to 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity around the world. In California alone, there are 650,000 beef cows.

This marks the first time that scientists have been able to use satellite imagery to pinpoint methane emissions from cattle farming.

CNN explained the process:

“The company has three high-resolution satellites in orbit, which it has previously used to measure emissions from open-pit coal mines. Each satellite is just the size of a microwave oven, says GHGSat. “This is really pushing the envelope of our capabilities,” said Wight. “What’s unique about us is we can really kind of get to the source” of emissions, focusing in on specific feedlots. Each satellite flies over a designated location for just about 20 seconds, taking a quick “snapshot” of emissions, Wight said. Over time, regular monitoring with these satellites could create a “temporal picture” showing the change in emissions over time, allowing farmers to, for instance, test out the impact of different diets on cows’ methane emissions.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Planet-warming emissions from cow burps have been seen from space” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12636 – A Medical Device That’ll Make You Squirm

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Sure, it sounds gross. It is gross. But so is a lot of the creative stuff doctors do to keep us alive.

As it turns out, the resurgence of therapies that use maggots and leeches has saved thousands of lives. Doctors can use them because they are FDA-approved as medical devices, despite being living creatures.

Now, no one heads to the local community garden or dumpster to get medicinal leeches and maggots. They are created in labs within very specific parameters.

So, let’s start with maggots. How can they possibly be medicinal?

The maggots used in medicine are the larvae of bottle-green blowflies. Because maggots only eat dead skin and not living skin, they’re actually perfect for cleaning infected wounds. Instead of having some first-year resident scrubbing out your open wound, maggots are even more gentle by comparison. In fact, since they’re eating dead tissue that’s already numb, you don’t feel the chomping at all. And they do a darn thorough job!

Leeches, on the other hand, are known as blood drinkers. Both of these creatures have been used in medicine for thousands of years, but are just making a comeback. However, leeches weren’t always applied in helpful ways in the past. Now, they’re used to clean up pooled blood in the body.

According to Discover Magazine: “When blood starts pooling instead of circulating, the area swells, and the lack of fresh, oxygenated blood causes skin tissues to die. Leeches can prevent that from happening.”

In the 1980s, as more wounds became resistant to antibiotics, a few doctors wanted to try maggots again and got some men at the VA hospital to agree. After the trials worked, the doctor in charge realized that in order to share the maggots with colleagues, he had to file paperwork with the FDA, and they turned out to be hard to regulate. But it was possible and in 2003, the FDA approved maggots as a medical device. Six months later, leeches were approved as well.

Obviously, not all hospitals are keen to use them (and patients aren’t generally big fans of the idea either). – WTF fun facts

Source: “Leeches and Maggots Are FDA-Approved and Still Used in Modern Medicine” — Discover Magazine