WTF Fun Fact 12632 – The Penal Treadmill

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If spending time on the treadmill feels like cruel and unusual punishment, that’s because it was designed to be. Prisoners were supposed to learn from their sweat, and the machines would typically power a mill or a water pump of some sort.

The “treadwheel” was invented by engineer William Cubitt and was first installed in London’s Brixton Prison. Prisoners would press down their feet on steps (sounds more like an elliptical!) that would cause a wheel to turn and ground corn.

Now, maybe you think it wasn’t so bad if you choose to walk on a treadmill today, but not only were there partitions between the (up to 24!) prisoners on the treadmill, but they were put on the machine for hours—ten hours in the summer and 7 in the winter.

When the British began to “reform” their prisons, they were concerned that the poor would use them to get free meals and a place to sleep, so they felt like they needed to deter them. Hence the punishment.

Eventually, the treadmills were no longer used to power machines and were merely an instrument of punishment…or some would (and did) say torture.

By 1842, 109 out of 200 prisons in the UK were making prisoners “work the treadmill.” But eventually, people began to see them for what they were, and by 1901, only 13 remained. Of course, they also exported the idea to America, which had four prison treadmills.

Eventually, prisons converted their work to a factory model, ostensibly to teach prisoners practical skills while incarcerated in the name of rehabilitation.

According to JSTOR Daily:

“It resurfaced in 1913 with a U.S. patent for a “training-machine.” In the 1960s, the American mechanical engineer William Staub created a home fitness machine called the PaceMaster 600. He began manufacturing home treadmills in New Jersey. (He used it often himself, right up until the months before his death at the age of 96.) Now, it’s the top selling piece of exercise equipment in the U.S.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Treadmills Were Meant to Be Atonement Machines” — JSTOR Daily

WTF Fun Fact 12631 – Killer Friendships

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It’s not so easy to monitor giant sea creatures like killer whales close enough to know about their social lives. But thanks to drone footage, we’ve recently learned that killer whales are a lot more social than most people give them credit for.

By tracking a pod of 22 killer whales for ten days, marine researchers noticed patterns in behavior that resembled complex relationships among some pod members that they think relate to the species in general.

While killer whales live their entire lives in the same pod, they’re not equally close to all members. Just like a group of humans, they let relationships come and go over time, getting close to some members, but then growing into other relationships over time.

More specifically, researchers noticed that the whales showed a preference for another specific group member. They would surface together and touch each other more often than they would other pod members.

These behaviors signal a desire to cooperate and be social with one other whale – a “best friend,” if you will. Adding to the hypothesis is the observation that these “besties” tended to be of the same sex and age.

According to an interview by ScienceAlert with behavioral ecologist Darren Croft from the University of Exeter:

“In many species, including humans, physical contact tends to be a soothing, stress-relieving activity that reinforces social connection. We also examined occasions when whales surfaced together – as acting in unison is a sign of social ties in many species.”

Apparently, the older the whale, the more anti-social they tend to be. That’s a behavior mirrored in humans as well. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Drone Footage Shows Even Killer Whales Have Close ‘Friends'” — Science Alert

WTF Fun Fact 12630 – Jack Ryan, Missile and Doll Engineer

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In his relatively short life (he died at just 65), engineer Jack W. Ryan designed and co-designed quite a few things that changed the world. That includes such dissimilar things as Raytheon’s Sparrow and Hawk missiles, Barbie, and Chatty Cathy.

According to a biography and an exposé on Mattel written after his death, he was also surrounded by scandal and just generally not a wholesome guy. That’s hard to put aside since some of that may have influenced his career trajectory, but it’s still the case that he played a significant role in both military technology and the toy company Mattel. Which is kind of weird, right?

As vice president of research and design (and later a consultant) for Mattel Inc., he helped design Hot Wheels as well. But when it came to Barbie, it was his unique engineering that helped seal the deal – he’s the reason she can bend her legs and turn her arms. It is, ahem, probably worth noting that Mattel was sued over the design because Ryan “borrowed” it from a German “adult” doll called Bild-Lilli. He knew he had to make it less provocative, but it does explain a bit about why Barbie might look so…adult.

Of course, let’s not forget that the IDEA for Barbie belongs to Ruth Handler, the president of Mattel. She was the one who came up with the idea of a 3-dimensional life-like doll for kids. She was also once indicted for influencing the company’s stock price too, so let’s just say that toy companies aren’t the best place to let your children hang out. Stick to the toy stores. –WTF fun facts

Source: “JACK RYAN DIES; BARBIE DOLL AND MISSILE INVENTOR” — The Buffalo News

WTF Fun Fact 12629 – Pickled Roads

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Well, to be fair, we’ve driven on salted roads and sometimes the best we ever got was the need for a car wash afterward. So we believed it when we heard cities use other methods. We just wouldn’t have immediately come up with pickle or beet juice as the alternative.

As it turns out, pickle brine, the wastewater from beet processing, and even beer wastewater are all effective in combating icy roads.

And that’s a good thing because we do know that too much salt is problematic in lots of ways, to us and to the surrounding land. In 2014, a U.S. Geological Survey found that 84% of U.S. streams in the northern part of the country had toxic levels of chloride. And road salt is sodium chloride. These levels peaked during the months when road salt is used. A lot of this salt also ends up in our lakes as it leeches through the land. These are big consequences that we’ll have to deal with soon, somehow. Just think about how well water is going to be affected.

According to Big Think, here’s how road salt works:

1. Salt attracts ice and snow molecules.
2. The salt break the bonds that hold together the ice and snow molecules.
3. This melts the snow, creating a brine consisting of salt and water.
4. The brine spreads, repeating the process as it moves over the road.

Beet wastewater can have the same effect. It contains sugar to lower the temperature of ice. However, the communities that have used it tend to dislike the smell – something it smells like soy sauce or stale coffee. Now, if it smelled like FRESH coffee, we’d be in business!

Pickle juice has some similar smell issues, but all of these alternatives (cheese brine is another) are less corrosive to cars as well.

Want to read more about the alternatives? Check out the source below – it’s pretty interesting to see how we may all use something different based on what’s available to us in our region.  – WTF fun facts

Source: “Why Pickle Brine On Icy Roads Could Be Smarter Than Salt” — Big Think

WTF Fun Fact 12628 – Mr. Goxx, the Crypto Trading Hamster

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Not only did a hamster named Mr. Goxx have more success at trading crypto than most people, but he also had 18,000 Twitter followers at the time of his death in November of 2021.

Owned by two friends in Germany, Mr. Goxx used his cage to make “predictions” about cryptocurrency.

The BBC explained:

“The business-minded rodent has a trading office attached to his regular cage. Every day, when he enters the office, a livestream starts on Twitch, andhis Twitter accountlets followers know: Mr Goxx has started a trading session.

By running in his “intention wheel”, he selects which cryptocurrency he’d like to trade, as the wheel spins through the different options. His office floor has two tunnels nearby: one for buy, one for sell.

Every time he runs through a tunnel, the electronics wired to his office complete a trade according to Mr Goxx’s desires.”

His handlers would stream him live on Twitch, where thousands would watch him make his moves.

Considering he only began his career on June 12, 2021, he was pretty successful. Though with the current crypto downturn, we’re not sure how his former portfolio is looking these days.

But he taught us what his owners set out to teach, which is that a hamster making random choices still makes better choices than most cryptocurrency investors. –WTF fun facts

Source: “Mr Goxx, the cryptocurrency-trading hamster, dies” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12627 – The Face of Resusci Annie

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If you ever learned CPR, there’s at least a fair chance that you learned it using a life-sized mannequin called Rescue Annie (aka Resusci Anne, L’Inconnue de la Seine (Unknown Woman of Seine), the Mona Lisa of Seine, and The Most Kissed Girl in the World). We use these large dolls so that we don’t have to practice on each other, which is a good thing since CPR can result in broken ribs.

While we never really thought about how she got her face, 2 dental students in the UK decided to do some research a few years back and find out just how Rescue Annie got made. And the answers are creepier than we could have imagined.

The face of Annie is the death mask of a woman who drowned and was never identified.

In the late 19th century, the body of a girl was pulled out of the River Seine in Paris. An examination of her face led to guesses that she was roughly 16 years old, but no one could identify her.

The body was put on public display in the hopes that someone could identify here, which was common practice at the time (and a popular attraction). People were more than a little curious about the placid-looking teen, who came to be known as “L’Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine).” 

The pathologist who performed the girl’s autopsy had a model maker create a death mask for her. It was a plaster cast tmade by Lorenzi model makers, the same people who eventually decided the mask was too good not to be shared, so they replicated it in bulk and sold copies. You can still purchase “Noyée [Drowned Woman] de la Seine” from them.

So how did a death mask come to be the face of a CPR doll? Well, in the 1950s when Archer Gordon decided to make a CPR dummy for medical students to practice on, he called on toymaker Åsmund Laerdal, who had seen a copy of the mask and decided to use it for the face.

The website calls her Resusci Anne, a name that just somehow stuck. The company estimates that roughly 300 million people have laid their lips on a version of the doll to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Another fun fact? Michael Jackson’s line “Annie are you okay?” in the song “Smooth Criminal“ is an homage to the doll. In CPR training, trainees are told to check for a response in the patient by asking “Annie are you okay.”  – WTF fun facts

Source: “How a girl’s ‘death mask’ from the 1800s became the face of CPR dolls” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12626 – Joseph Ducreux’s “Meme” Paintings

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The painting by Joseph Ducreux that you may have seen in memes is a legit 18th-century painting titled Self-Portrait in the Guise of a Mocker. It happens to be a self-portrait and a rather unique style. At the time, paintings took enormous time to make, so goofy “selfies” might have seemed a waste.

However, Ducreux was keenly interested in the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the attempt to assess a person’s character from their facial features and expressions. Hence the interesting poses he struck in his self-portraits.

But Joseph Ducreux was a skilled oil painter. A miniature of Marie Antoinette he made in 1789 won him a baronetcy and the title of “First Painter to the Queen” of France.

Of course, his place in high society made him unpopular during the French Revolution, so he hid out in London for a bit. That’s where he created the last portrait of Kind Louis XVI before the royal was beheaded.

He returned to France after the revolution and continued his career as a painter, indulging in the self-portrait series at the time.

They may look silly, but to Ducreux, they served a scientific purpose. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Quirky Self-Portraits of 18th Century Painter Joseph Ducreux” — Open Culture

WTF Fun Fact 12625 – The Hall of Records

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We’ve all seen pictures of Mount Rushmore National Memorial. There aren’t many places in the U.S. to see giant sculptures carved into the side of mountains.

This sculpture happens to be in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The 60-foot-high monument depicts U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It was completed in 1941, planned and executed by a man named Gutzon Borglum (his son, Lincoln, helped oversee the site).

You might not know that Borglum thought it needed a little something extra in the form of a written description. Specifically, he wanted to carve an inscription of the nine most important events in U.S. history from 1776 to 1906, roughly 80 by 120 feet in size. And he wanted it to be in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase.

His plan to add some extra flair failed since the text could not be made legible. Also, they needed the planned space for Lincoln’s head.

Borglum then developed a plan to build a room inside the mountain to hold documents and other artifacts that were important to American history. It was to be drilled into a small canyon behind Lincoln’s mouth and accessible by an 800-foot granite stairway.

This “Great Hall” was designed to have bronze and glass cabinets inside, containing documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And, of course, it wouldn’t be complete without the planned bronze eagle with a 38-foot wingspan with the words “America’s Onward March” and “The Hall of Records” engraved above it.

Construction on the Hall of Records actually began in July of 1938. It got to the point where a 70-foot tunnel was blasted into the side of the mountain. But Congress shut down the plan. Borglum died in 1941, and then the U.S. was preoccupied with WWII, so all work on the monument shut down.

According to the National Park Service:

“Although Borglum’s grand scheme for the Hall of Records had to be abandoned, the idea remained. On August 9, 1998, Gutzon Borglum’s dream was completed when a repository of records was placed in the floor of the hall entry. This repository consists of a teakwood box, inside a titanium vault, covered by a granite capstone. Etched on the capstone is the following quote by Gutzon Borglum:

‘..let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.‘

The repository contains sixteen porcelain enamel panels. Inscribed on the panels is the story of how Mount Rushmore came to be carved, who carved it, the reasons for selecting the four presidents depicted on the mountain and a short history of the United States. This repository is not accessible to visitors but is left as a record for people thousands of years from now who may wonder how and why Mount Rushmore was carved.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Hall of Records” — U.S. National Park Service

WTF Fun Fact 12624 – The Night Mower

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Edwin Bearn Budding is the inventor of the lawnmower. It’s a bit hard to imagine a world without lawns (though we’ve heard they’re not so great for the environment) and the people who take pride in them. In fact, the average American spends 4 hours a week taking care of their lawn.

But at first, Budding wasn’t so sure about his contraption. The year was 1830, and no one technically had a lawn to be mowed. Naturally, he figured people would make fun of him for the invention. And perhaps they would have.

Budding was so self-conscious about the invention that he would only test out his lawnmower prototypes at night, under cover of darkness, so his neighbors couldn’t see him. Of course, these were manual mowers, so they didn’t have the tell-tale engines that let us know when our neighbor is mowing today, though his machine was reportedly pretty noisy.

Most inventors seem pretty stoked about their creations, but perhaps Budding was just humble. While he was born the illegitimate son of a farmer, he got an education that led him to an interest in technical matters. He became a pattern maker at an iron foundry, then a machinist at a cotton mill.

Before his lawnmower, he also invented a pistol more sophisticated than a Colt, but it appears Colt’s 1836 patent won out in the end.

Budding’s lawnmower was conceived of during his time in the cotton mills, and in many ways, it mimics the movements of a napping machine, which uses blades to trim off long fibers from cloth evenly and efficiently.

The wrought iron machine had adjustable blades and was pushed from behind while a tray collected clippings at the front. (Frankly, it sounds better than some of the manual push mowers around today.)

After the patent, Budding went into business with John Ferrabee, who owned Phoenix Iron Works, so the machine could be mass-produced and sold (after all, you don’t get anything from just inventing something). Things went well for the pair, and a few years later, they were attracting buyers across England, selling 1000 machines by 1840.

Budding died of a stroke in 1846, so he never got to see how his invention changed people’s lives. It was used to care for sports fields and public parks, improve gardens, and cut down on manual labor on farms (a scythe or a grazing animal was your only choice before the lawnmower).

It also created a whole new class of gardeners and groundsmen who used it to create gardens as status symbols. A bit later, they were explicitly marketed to women as a fashionable way to get exercise.

We’ve come a long way since then (for better or worse), but it’s incredible to think it all started with one man mowing his lawn in the dark. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Budding Lawn Mowers” — The Daily Gardener