WTF Fun Fact 13191 – Shel Silverstein Is The Father of A Boy Named Sue

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You may know the song “A Boy Named Sue,” by Johnny Cash. It’s about a boy who seeks revenge against his father for giving him a traditional girl’s name. But did you know Shel Silverstein is the father of A Boy Named Sue? No, not the biological father, but the person who wrote the lyrics.

How is Shel Silverstein the Father of A Boy Named Sue?

According to a history of the song by The Capital Repertory Theater (cited below):

“In 1969, it was a guitar pull – a get together where songwriters try out new songs – that brought together Cash and renowned children’s book author Shel Silverstein. The guest list for the gathering also included Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, but it was Silverstein who shined with his song which centered around a man named Sue, whose long-sought revenge on his father for giving him a girl’s name ends in a bar fight and ultimately understanding.”

Silverstein is a beloved children’s author, and the lyrics are unlike anything else he wrote. He was inspired by a friend named Jean Shepherd who was made fun of as a child for his feminine-sounding name.

Silverstein wrote a follow-up named “The Father of a Boy Named Sue” from the father’s point of view.

The debut Sue

Cash even played the song at the White House (for Nixon) and on his show next to the lyricist/poet himself. But the first debut of the song was at Cash’s iconic show at San Quentin Prison in California.

It was June Carter Cash who convinced him to try out the song on his tough audience. But Cash didn’t quite know the lyrics yet. He read them off a piece of paper. In fact, you can hear him laughing along with the audience on the track.

Not only did his prison audience love it, but the song also became a national hit, climbing to number 2 on the charts. — WTF fun facts

Source: “A Boy Named Sue” — Capital Repertory Theater

WTF Fun Fact 13190 – Victorian Pteridomania

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Victorians had a lot of fun quirks, especially when it came to nature and collecting. For example, in 1829, “fern fever,” also called Pteridomania, gripped amateur botanists around Europe and the U.S.

What set off “fern mania”?

The craze for ferns (yes, the plants) came about in part as a result of an invention by a British surgeon. Nathaniel Bagshaw Warn invented the Wardian case. It was a mini greenhouse that could keep plants alive in England despite the dreary weather. Exotic specimens were being collected all over the world. Thanks to the case, they could now be brought back and put on display in greenhouses and in homes with grimmer weather.

According to Atlas Obscura (cited below): “His invention allowed botanist George Loddiges to build the world’s largest hothouse in East London, which included a fern nursery.”

What was Pteridomania?

Ferns were associated with fairies and other mythical creatures, so it wasn’t hard to get people interested in them. But Loddiges needed visitors to keep his hothouse operating. So he spread the (unsubstantiated) word that spending time around ferns could increase intelligence and virility, and improve mood. That was enough to get people interested in not only visiting his fern collection but to start mini collections of their own.

Amateur botany transcended classes, and everyone from aristocrats to miners started collecting ferns as a hobby. When the Victorians weren’t collecting ferns they were reading about them. Roughly 300 books on ferns were published during this time. 

According to Atlas Obscura, things eventually got out of hand.

“Since the fern was not easy to cultivate, even with Wardian cases at hand, prices soon skyrocketed. After all, there were only 40 types of ferns in the English countryside, and collectors needed more. A non-British specimen could cost up to the Victorian equivalent of 1,000 pounds. Professional fern hunters wrote accounts of scouring the West Indies, Panama and Honduras for a never-seen-before fern. If you could not afford to sponsor a scientific expedition to South America or Asia, there was always the notorious underworld to turn to: crimewaves of fern-stealing plagued the countryside for decades.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “How the Victorian Fern-Hunting Craze Led To Adventure, Romance, and Crime” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 13189 – I Hate Elvis Badges

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Meme sites and Reddit boards have long shared a tidbit of Elvis’s history that people find hard to believe. Elvis Presley’s manager once sold “I Hate Elvis” badges so he could make money off of people who hated The King just as he did with fans. And it appears to be true.

Selling I Hate Elvis badges

Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker was quite the marketing genius. He was also excellent at making himself money in any way possible. Many of Elvis’s early music and performance deals paid Parker half of the money.

By the end of 1956, Elvis’s merchandise was bringing in $22 million! For this, Parker got 25% of the profits. But it was a little reverse psychology that made him even more money.

Not everyone loved Elvis. And we all know that when something or someone is super popular, people take great pride in outwardly hating it to somehow set themselves apart from the “masses.” (Not to mention that older generations saw Elvis as a corrupting influence.)

As a result, Colonel Parker decided to make both sides happy and created “I Hate Elvis” badges for non-fans. That way he could make money off of the other side too. (Too bad he didn’t come up with an “I feel ambivalent about Elvis” badge – he could have covered all his bases.)

In a book titled Colonel (The True Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley), author Alanna Nash mentions the badges. She states:

“Parker, who tied on a vendor’s apron to peddle both I LOVE ELVIS and I HATE ELVIS buttons to folks who reacted strongly one way or another, didn’t care what the newsmen said as long as they said it — and paid their own admission to the shows.”

All press is good press if you’re making money off of it, apparently! You can still find vintage “I hate Elvis” buttons online. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Did Elvis Presley’s Manager Sell ‘I Hate Elvis’ Buttons to Profit From ‘Haters’?” — Truth or Fiction

WTF Fun Fact 13188 – Geckos Turn Off Sticky Feet

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People have long wondered how geckos manage to stick to the sides of structures without falling off. The short answer is that they have sticky feet. But did you know geckos turn off sticky feet when they need to run faster?

How do geckos turn off sticky feet?

Geckos use toe hairs to turn the stickiness of their feet on and off. Oregon State University (OSU) discovered the details of this mechanism in 2014. They published their results in an article that appears in the Journal of Applied Physics.

The researchers noted that the geckos’ “adhesion system mechanism” has long been a curiosity. According to Science Daily (cited below):

“‘Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have wondered how geckos are able to stick to walls — even Archimedes is known to have pondered this problem,’ said Alex Greaney, co-author and an assistant professor of engineering at OSU. ‘It was only very recently, in 2000, that Kellar Autumn and colleagues proved unequivocally that geckos stick using van der Waals forces.'”

Geckos have a system of hairs called “seta” on their toes. The seta can bend when they come into contact with rough surfaces in order to provide points of contact that keep the sticky surface of the gecko’s toe pads from adhering. Those hairs provide millions of points of contact to allow the creatures to maneuver over terrain without sticking.

Other insects and spiders also have this adhesion system. That’s why they can stick sideways to walls, seeming to defy gravity.

The stickiness system

Greany told Science Direct: “Understanding the subtleties of the process for switching stickiness on and off is groundbreaking. By using mathematical modeling, we’ve found a simple, but ingenious, mechanism allows the gecko to switch back and forth between being sticky or not. Geckos’ feet are by default nonsticky, and this stickiness is activated through application of a small shear force. Gecko adhesion can be thought of as the opposite of friction.”

The stickiness of geckos’ feet has long fascinated scientists seeking to produce material for use in adhesives. The ability of geckos to turn off sticky feet is yet another piece of the materials science puzzle that may come in handy someday in fields like construction and robotics. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Geckos use toe hairs to turn stickiness on and off” — ScienceDaily

WTF Fun Fact 13187 – Writing the Oxford English Dictionary

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It’s no surprise that writing the first comprehensive dictionary (complete with linguistic and historical details) took many years. But writing the Oxford English Dictionary took many decades. To give you some perspective, it took the writers five years just to reach the word “ant.”

The history of writing the Oxford English Dictionary

The OED (as it’s abbreviated) project took a long time to get going. It all started in 1857 when members of the Philological Society of London decided that no current English dictionaries were acceptable and that they should spearhead the ultimate version. It wasn’t until 1879 that, according to the OED website (cited below) “the Society made an agreement with the Oxford University Press and James A. H. Murray to begin work on a New English Dictionary (as the Oxford English Dictionary was then known).”

The goal was to produce a 4-volume dictionary of roughly 6,400 words with every English word recorded from 1150 AD to the present. The writers estimated that the project would take 10 years.

However, after five years, the writers had just reached the word “ant” near the middle of the A section. There was a long way to go!

This was partly due to the level of detail necessary to trace the origins of words as well as their evolution. And since language never stops evolving, some work had to be redone during the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary. To this day it remains a “living document,” updated frequently.

The first part (or fascicle) of the OED was planned for an 1884 publication, but that didn’t quite work out. It would take an extra 30 years.

The dictionary required teamwork

As the team of writers grew larger, the work moved more quickly.

Murray directed a growing team and the last fascicle was published in April of 1928. Sadly, Murray did not live long enough to see the completion of the original OED since he died in 1915.

The final version of the OED was far larger than planned. It stretched to 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes (instead of the planned six). It continues to be updated to this day. — WTF fun facts

Source: “History of the OED” — Oxford English Dictionary

WTF Fun Fact 13186 – Medical Term for Ice Cream Headache

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Eating ice cream too fast can hurt! In fact, so many people have experienced the phenomenon of these headaches (also called “brain freeze”) that there’s an official name for them. The medical term for ice cream headache is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Why is there a medical term for ice cream headache?

The world loves ice cream. And sometimes we eat it too fast either because 1) it’s so delicious, or 2) we need to eat it before it melts. But we pay the price.

But what we sometimes call an ice cream headache is also referred to as “brain freeze” and can happen without the delicious ice cream.

According to the Cleveland Clinic (cited below), “Brain freeze is a brief but intense pain in the front part of your head. It occurs when you eat, drink or breathe something extremely cold…” So it can include breathing in freezing air as well as eating slushies, ice cubes, popsicles, etc.

While we have lots of colloquial names for the pain, the scientific/medical term for ice cream headache is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Who is at risk for getting ice cream headaches?

Anyone can get a brain freeze. Children may be more likely to get brain freeze because they may not have learned to slow down when eating something fun like an ice pop.

Some research has shown that sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is more common in people who get migraine headaches.

What is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia?

An ice cream headache comes on quickly, but it also goes away relatively fast. It’s often gone in a few minutes, tops, and doesn’t need to be treated with medicine.

Brain freeze doesn’t cause other symptoms either – no nausea or sensitivity to light, for example. It’s just temporary pain that occurs “When your body senses sudden, extreme cold in the mouth or throat” and “tries to react and warm up.”

The headache sets in as “Blood vessels throughout the head expand to let extra blood into the area for warmth. That quick change in blood vessel size causes sudden pain.”

Of course, you can prevent the pain caused by doing that thing by avoiding that thing. But who wants to avoid ice cream and other cold treats? Instead, try warming up your mouth and throat by drinking room-temperature water or pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Or just slow down on the ice cream. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Brain Freeze” — Cleveland Clinic

WTF Fun Fact 13185 – Non-Religious and Atheist People

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There are roughly 2.38 billion Christians,1.91 billion Muslims, and 1.16 billion Hindus in the world. But a growing number of people identify as non-religious and atheist. In other words, they don’t affiliate with any specific religion, though their range of beliefs is still quite wide.

It’s interesting to see that 85% of the world still does identify with some organized religious group.

Defining non-religious and atheist people

Of course, religion is complicated. You may identify as a Christian but believe the person sitting next to you in a Church pew is not. However, what matters is how they identify, not whether they act according to a religion’s belief system.

People often associate religion with someone’s morals. But it’s not true that non-religious and atheist people don’t have a set of morals and virtues they abide by. Those “rules” or guidelines simply don’t come from a single, organized religion. And non-religious people and atheists may not even have much in common.

Non-religious people may be agnostic or spiritual. In other words, they may believe in the eternal or an afterlife, but not a deity that controls it). Atheists are a diverse group, though they tend to be defined as those who do not believe any kind of god exists. However, there are generally two types of atheists – those who reject the idea that gods exist and those who aren’t as explicit in their rejection of deities but still don’t believe in any.

While there are famous atheists who have tried to define the word to the world and construct a system of thinking around the world. But atheists are free to reject these words and still call themselves atheists.

Atheists in the world

The number of atheists has always been difficult to measure. Some have posited that the number of atheists is declining because the birth rates in religious countries have gone up. But that implies that those children will not someday identify as atheists (at least on a survey when asked privately!). Others have suggested that there are far more non-religious and atheists in the world who still identify as religious out of social pressure. And since many people incorrectly associate atheism with anti-religious beliefs or fringe beliefs (like Satanism), they may be reluctant to identify as such.

The countries with the most “convinced atheists” (at least in a 2012 survey) were China, Japan, the Czech Republic, France, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, and Australia (10%). — WTF fun facts

Source: “Religion by Country 2023” — World Population Review

WTF Fun Fact 13184 – People in India Read the Most

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People in India spend 10 hours and 42 minutes a week reading, the most of any country on Earth. The U.S. makes up about 30% of the world’s book-buying population. But Americans don’t crack the top 5 for the time spent reading metric.

Where do most readers live? People in India read the most

India, Thailand, China, Phillippines, and Egypt round out the top 5 for the most time spent reading per person, on average, per week.

Data collected between 2017 and 2022 showed that:

  • India ranks first, with people spending 10 hours and 42 minutes reading per week (556.4 hours per year).
  • Thailand ranks second with weekly totals averaging 9 hours and 24 minutes (488.8 hours per year).
  • China readers average 8 hours a week (or 416 hours per year).
  • Those in the Philippines tend to read 7 hours and 36 minutes per week (395.2 per year.)
  • And Egyptians read for 7 hours and 30 minutes per week (or 390 minutes per year).

Books and their readers

Data collected between 2011 and 2020 shows that Americans love buying books (and they do read them, so it’s not just book hoarding). And most Americans do read books.

The World Population Review compiled numbers from various research studies and showed that while people in India read the most (in terms of hours spent reading):

Altogether, Americans read 275,232 books per year and makeup 30% of the market share of book buyers. A Pew Research Center study published in 2016 found that 72% of Americans had read a book the preceding year, a number that rose to 75% in 2022. But that rise was almost certainly due to the pandemic keeping people at home. In 2016 Americans read an average of 12 books a year (though 50% of the nation reads 4 or fewer, so we’re depending on some people to read a lot of books to make us look good). But we still tend to read more physical books than e-books, even though the e-book trend is growing in the U.S.

In other countries:

  • China reads 208,418 books on average per year (10% of all books purchased).
  • The United Kingdom reads about 188,000 books every year, and book sales have reached about 212 million!)
  • Japan makes up 7% of the market share for book buyers, and the Japanese read an average of 139,078 books per year. This makes up about 7% of the total market share.

What are the most popular books in the world? Well, you can probably guess – it’s the Holy Bible and the Holy Qu’ran. Next in line come The Harry Potter Series, The Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung, and Lord of the Rings. Eclectic! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Average Books Read Per Year by Country 2023” — World Population Review

WTF Fun Fact 13183 – The Gruen Transfer

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We’ve all fallen victim to the Gruen Transfer. In fact, stores, casinos, and malls are built around this theory in order to make us fall victim to it. The payoff is more spending on our part.

What is the Gruen Transfer?

Have you ever gone to a store and just started wandering around? Plenty of us can run in and out for what we need, but it’s hard to not start wandering occasionally, just to see if there’s anything else we might need or want. And that’s the whole point.

Marketers and designers specifically build floor plans and displays that disorient us and lure us in. It’s all designed to give us a general desire to keep shopping and looking at things. If you just go to Target for fun, you’re WAY deep into the Gruen Transfer.

According to Gizmodo (cited below): “The Gruen transfer is the idea that the shopping experience itself was worth doing, and that paying money for something not on any specific agendawasthe agenda.”

Of course, it’s all about getting you to consume more things.

Who was Victor Gruen?

The Gruen Transfer “mind trick” is named after architect Victor Gruen. But he’s probably rolling over in his grave since he hated the idea of disorienting consumers. His goal was to put items people needed in the same general location for convenience.

What his goal WASN’T was to confuse people and make them feel disoriented. In fact, Gizmodo’s article on the Gruen Effect (cited below) brings this to the fore, noting that “Gruen wasn’t a fan of the transfer at all. He railed against confusing, maddening stores that baffled consumers. In fact, his whole idea of a mall was based on efficiency on a very wide scale.”

“And, because there were only so many ways to design efficiently, many stores would be standardized. But Gruen wanted something more. Shopping places, he thought, should feature gardens, benches, cafes, and courtyards. It should be an experience. Then things like malls wouldn’t just be commercial zones, but would serve as public gathering places, where everyone, from every level of society, could mingle. He wanted to entice people, and get people to interact with each other, not confuse them.”

Making the transfer

Nevertheess, his name became associated with what the marketers and other designers did with his ideas. It became applicable within a store as well – such as a grocery store. Confusion reigns so you can see more things you might want to buy. The same is true of casinos. It’s easy for people to become disoriented, spend more time there, and part with more money.

Gruen just wanted public space for all. Now those places are ones where you can’t go to socialize anymore. You can only be there if you plan to shop.

As Gizmodo notes: “And so the guy who wanted to provide a public space, where everyone could get their shopping done so they could socialize, ended up inventing a system in which socialization equals shopping.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The cruel irony of the Gruen Transfer” — Gizmodo