WTF Fun Fact 12590 – The Spider That Eats Its Mother

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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

WTF Fun Fact 12589 – Lockheed Martin’s Metric Problem

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In a move that John Logsdon, director of George Washington University’s space policy institute, called “so dumb,” engineers at Lockheed Martin made a math error that cost millions.

Sloppy errors had plagued the U.S. space program for years by the time it all took place in 1999, but this mistake was one for the record books.

NASA’s rockets were being built by engineering powerhouse Lockheed Martin before being sent to NASA. Meanwhile, the Mars mission launched in early 1999 was run by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the nine months between launch and mishap, no one had noticed that the math for the Orbiter’s orbiting program was off.

The LA Times explained:

“A navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet, and pounds.
As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.”

Instead of landing on Mars, the Orbiter entered the planet’s atmosphere incorrectly and burned up upon entry, costing roughly $125 million.

The Times went on to explain why people were pretty fed up at this point:

“The loss of the Mars probe was the latest in a series of major spaceflight failures this year that destroyed billions of dollars worth of research, military and communications satellites or left them spinning in useless orbits. Earlier this month, an independent national security review concluded that many of those failures stemmed from an overemphasis on cost-cutting, mismanagement, and poor quality control at Lockheed Martin, which manufactured several of the malfunctioning rockets.”

The basic discrepancy wasn’t all Lockheed Martin’s fault. Engineers at the two facilities had been exchanging data for months and no one ever noticed the numbers were off.

There was a shot at redemption that year as the Mars Polar Lander was scheduled to set down on December 3, 1999, on the frozen terrain of Mars’ south polar cap.

Unfortunately, it crashed into the planet’s surface along with $165 million of hopes and dreams. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Mars Probe Lost Due to Simple Math Error” — Los Angeles Times

WTF Fun Facts 12588 – The Walkie Talkie Skyscraper

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In 2013, a 38-story skyscraper needed a bit of a redesign during construction. Located at 20 Fenchurch Street in London, the building is nicknamed the “Walkie-Talkie” because of its shape. The building has an interesting top-heavy shape.

The building cost around £200million and was designed by architectRafael Viñoly. But it wasn’t very popular. In fact, in 2015, the Carbuncle Group named it the worst new building in the UK. But they weren’t the people who were most upset.

It turns out that on those rare sunny London days, the building could become a giant magnifying glass.

For 2 hours a day, the sun shone just right so that the building acted like a concave mirror, beaming that light down onto the streets. (In this magnifying glass metaphor, that makes humans the ants.)

Developers only realized that it was creating temperatures up to 243 degrees F at ground level in the summer of 2013 when a beam six times brighter than direct sunlight started melting a car – a Jaguar XJ, to be exact. The owner, Martin Lindsay, told the BBC that he only realized what happened when he saw a photographer taking photos of the vehicle and asked about it. He recalled the moment:

“The photographer asked me, ‘have you seen that car? The owner won’t be happy.’

“I said: ‘I am the owner. Crikey, that’s awful.'”

The wing mirror, panels, and Jaguar badge all melted.

“It could be dangerous. Imagine if the sun reflected on the wrong part of the body. On the windscreen, there was a note from the construction company saying, ‘your car’s buckled; could you give us a call?'” Lindsay said.

A reporter named Jim Waterson even managed to fry an egg in a pan on the sidewalk.

After that, the building got some new nicknames – “Walkie-Scorchie” and “Fryscraper,” for example.

Of course, an immediate and permanent solution needed to be found, so an awning was installed on the south side of the building to keep it from inadvertently incinerating Londoners and their pricey vehicles.

The same architect, Viñoly, also designed a building in Las Vegas with a similar problem and its windows needed to be coated in non-reflective film.

Viñoly blamed himself, but also the fact that he didn’t realize it was ever that sunny or warm in London. Meanwhile, the Jaguar owner got his repairs paid for by the developers.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Walkie-Talkie’ skyscraper melts Jaguar car parts” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12587 – Discount Turns to Debt

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In what may be one of the most expensive typos in history, in April of 2006, Alitalia had the price of their business class flight from Toronto to Cyprus (an island nation in the Mediterranean) deeply discounted. The regular cost was $3,900, but a glitch resulted in the price losing two zeros. Tickets were sold for just $39 – for a 12-15 hour flight! (And that’s just in Canadian dollars – it was $33 in US dollars. Then again, once you add taxes and fees, it was closer to $200.)

Word spread quickly on the website FlyerTalk before Alitalia could make any changes and while they didn’t release the specifics, guesses as to the number of tickets sold range from hundreds to over 2000.

The price was active for around 12 hours, and you better believe that Alitalia tried not to honor the price at first. And purchasers had the angry reaction you’d imagine. In fact, things got so heated that Alitalia ended up honoring the tickets that were officially confirmed. (People who bought through Orbitz and other brokers were largely out of luck.)

The lucky buyers who were given ticket confirmation numbers upon purchase took their trips, costing Alitalia around $7 million.

CBC News interviewed one of the lucky travelers shortly afterward, Donnie Bowers of New Haven. “I didn’t even know where Cyprus was,” he said.”I looked at the regular price, and I thought, wow, this is something to really get involved in.”

They reported that 509 people made purchases, though other sources report higher numbers.

“Why not roll the dice and see what happens?” Bowers said as he prepared for his October 2006 trip. – WTF fun facts

Source: Flyertalk Forums, 2006

WTF Fun Fact 12586 – Using Urine to Treat Stains

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Healthy urine is 95% water, 2.5% urea, and 2.5% salts, minerals, enzymes, etc. That doesn’t necessarily make it the ideal laundry detergent, but there’s plenty of historical evidence that it was used as such going all the way back to ancient Rome.

The key here is urea, which decays into ammonia. You’ll find ammonia in many household cleaners because it can cut through dirt and grease.

Even after the invention of laundry soap, some people preferred to use urine for tough stains. (Our question remains: what do you use to get out the urine stains and smell?!)

Hey, it’s free and never in short supply, so we can see why you might want to soak a particularly terrible grease stain every now and then when you had no other choice. And one would need to use stale urine to get the correct chemical reaction, so perhaps that’s easier to rinse out? We’re not sure; we’ve never tried.

Urine also had other uses back in the day – disinfecting wounds and softening leather, for example. But there’s really no reason to try this at home to see how it works.

Now, for those who continue to claim that Romans used it for whitening their teeth, we’d like to see some more evidence. The only citation for this “fact” is a poem by Catullus, famous for writing scandalous and filthy poems (and who hardly makes a factual claim).

– WTF fun facts

Source: “From Gunpowder to Teeth Whitener: The Science Behind Historic Uses of Urine” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12585 – Ronald Wayne Sells Apple

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We’ve all heard of Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. But do you remember the third co-founder, Ronald Wayne?

The trio founded Apple Computer Company (now Apple, Inc) in 1976. But while Wozniak and Jobs each owned 45% of the company, Wayne had 10%, which would make him the tie-breaker in any disagreements between the two Steves.

He was the administrative brains among the computer geeks. And like any good businessman, he wanted to mitigate his risks.

Funny enough, Wayne’s first business sold slot machines (and ran out of luck, going into debt that he had to pay off personally).

The three met when they all worked at Atari, and Wayne invited Wozniak and Jobs to his house to discuss the future of computers. Jobs suggested they start a business, with Wayne (who was the 41-year-old “elder”) at the time acting as “the adult in the room.”

Wayne drafted the partnership agreement and designed Apple’s first logo (which was replaced the following year). But he got cold feet as he considered the future of the business in light of his past failure and the resulting debt.

Legally, all partners in a company are responsible for its debt, so when Jobs made a purchase order with a $15,000 loan, Wayne started to get cold feet. The vendor Jobs purchased from wasn’t known for being speedy with their deliveries, and Wayne saw warning signs.

His job at Apple also wasn’t his passion – he enjoyed engineering and his slot machine designs. So he did what any intelligent businessman might do – he moved on to greener pastures. Well, at least they seemed greener at the time.

Renouncing his 10% of the ownership after just 12 days (though Wozniak’s account is that it took a few months), Wayne sold his shares back for $800.

Just for comparison, in 2011, the contract signed by all 3 men in 1976 was sold at auction for $1.6 million. (Oh, and Wayne sold that as well – in the 1990s he gave it up for $500 before he knew what it might be worth someday.)

Wayne says that he made the best decision he could with the information he had at the time, which is respectable. And while he retired to a trailer park to collect stamps and play penny slots, he insists he doesn’t regret the decision.

Had he stayed with the company, his life would have certainly been different. Those shares would be worth a mind-boggling $300 BILLION today. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Apple just hit a $1 trillion market cap—here’s why its little-known third co-founder sold his 10% stake for $800” — CNBC

WTF Fun Facts 12584 – Largo di Torre Argentina

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Largo di Torre Argentina is a popular Roman tourist destination. It holds a great deal of ancient history, but that’s not why everyone goes. Many people come to see the cats. There are dozens of them climbing and napping on the ancient ruins, and while no one is supposed to feed them, you can always find cans of cat food nearby.

The location is crumbling at an alarming rate, so Rome has recently made some renovations. After all, it does hold the site of Julius Caesar’s murder by members of the Roman Senate.

Luxury fashion house Bvlgari will pay around $1.1 million to clean the ruins and build walkways through the site. Before this, people could only look down into the ruins from the street. We’re not sure how the cats feel about all this, but we will guess “cranky.” Many are not fond of people.

You might wonder how such an important historical location ended up in such disrepair in the first place, but that’s the price of expanding a city. The site was largely lost until Italian dictator Benito Mussolini set out to unearth ancient Rome and tie his dictatorship into the lore of the Roman Empire as part of a propaganda effort. They found four temples and part of the Theater of Pompey, the site of the Roman senate.

During World War II, the Largo di Torre Argentina became neglected once again, and Rome lacked the funding to restore it until recently.

And don’t worry about the cats – the feline colony is protected by the laws of the State and the Municipality. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Site Where Julius Caesar Was Stabbed Will Finally Open to the Public” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12583 – How California Got Its Name

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California is named after a 16th-century Black Queen of an island of women. The only catch is that she’s fictional.

Real or not, she’s still the inspiration behind the state’s name.

Queen Calafia was a character in Castillian author Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Las Sergas de Esplandián, an early 16th-century adventure-romance novel. A Black warrior queen, Calafia ruled a mythical island called California inhabited only by Black women.

Calafia was also a fierce queen with quite an arsenal – armor made of fish bones, weapons made of gold, and an army of griffins (because, hey, why not?).

Needless to say, many people are surprised by this origin story. At the very least, it was rare for a man during the Renaissance to write in such a triumphant way about a woman, much less a Black woman. There is no sense of racial inferiority (which was a common trope) in her story.

So how did an American state come to be named after a mythical character?

Well, the novel was so famous in Spain that when conquistadors arrived on the tip of what is now the Baja Peninsula, they thought they had found the mythical island of California. So that’s what they called the whole area.

And while the name stuck, Calafia has been largely forgotten until recently.

An excerpt from the book reads:

“Now I wish you to know about the strangest thing ever found anywhere in written texts or in human memory. […] I tell you that on the right-hand side of the Indies there was an island called California, which was very close to the region of the Earthly Paradise. This island was inhabited by black women, and there were no males among them at all, for their life style was similar to that of the Amazons. The island was made up of the wildest cliffs and the sharpest precipices found anywhere in the world. These women had energetic bodies and courageous, ardent hearts, and they were very strong. Their armor was made entirely out of gold—which was the only metal found on the island—as were the trappings on the fierce beasts that they rode once they were tamed. They lived in very well-designed caves. They had many ships they used to sail forth on their raiding expeditions and in which they carried away the men they seized and whom they killed in a way about which you will soon hear. On occasion, they kept the peace with their male opponents, and the females and the males mixed with each other with complete safety, and they had carnal relations, from which unions it follows that many of the women became pregnant. If they bore a female, they kept her, but if they bore a male, he was immediately killed. The reason for this, inasmuch as it is known, is that, according to their thinking, they were set on reducing the number of males to so small a group that the Amazons could easily rule over them and all their lands; therefore, they kept only those few men whom they realized they needed for their race not to die out.“

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Our Origin Story’: Queen Calafia Returns to California in New Theatre Production” — KQED

WTF Fun Fact 12582 – Blessing a Sneeze

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When someone sneezes, it seems rude not to acknowledge it in some way. In fact, saying “bless you” or “God bless you” has become a part of modern etiquette.

But where did this come from?

Most people have been told that the habit comes from the belief that the soul momentarily separates from the body during a sneeze. Therefore, “bless you” is a way of sending your best wishes their way in case the soul doesn’t come back. Some also believe that blessing the soul prevents it from being snatched up by evil spirits while it was disconnected from the body during a sneeze.

But it’s likely that the origin of “God bless you” goes back to 590 AD when a plague was ravaging Europe. Sneezing was often the first sign that someone was ill (and while they didn’t realize it at the time, it was also the way the plague spread). In order to bless the would of those who may get deathly ill, Pope Gregory the Great commanded that sneezing people be given a quick blessing.

While “God bless you” and “bless you” go back to the 6th century, the acknowledgment of a sneeze goes back even further – by hundreds of years. Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote in his 77 AD Natural History:

“Why is it that we salute a person when he sneezes, an observation which Tiberius Caesar, they say, the most unsociable of men, as we all know, used to exact, when riding in his chariot even?”

The superstition predates the pope, but Pliny offers no explanation as to why the sneeze was acknowledged.

Of course, there are secular ways of acknowledging a sneeze as well. Those who don’t believe in disembodied souls can keep it polite with a quick “gesundheit.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Why We Feel Compelled to Say ‘Bless You’ When Someone Sneezes” — The New York Times