WTF Fun Fact 13039 – Alternate Names for the Seven Dwarfs

by

The Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is based on an 1812 fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. But in the original, the dwarfs did not have names. And when Disney decided to make their 1937 film, they went through some interesting alternate names for the seven dwarfs.

Decisions, decisions

According to Disney Diary, “It wasn’t until the 1912 Broadway play “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” that they were given monikers. And the names were not what you think. They were called Blick, Flick, Glick, Pick, Quee, Snick, and Whick.”

Disney didn’t necessarily love those names, so they went through quite a few alternate names for the seven dwarfs until they finally settled on Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy.

We can’t confirm it, but according to Treasured Family Travels, “It is popularly believed that Walt Disney named the Seven Dwarfs after his own seven staff animators: Carmine Coppola, Ted Sears, Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, and William Cottrell.” Or, at least, he named them after their personality traits.

The Seven Dwarfs’ alternate names

According to Mental Floss (cited below): “Disney and co. went through dozens of names before deciding on the seven we know today.” Some of them include Jumpy, Deafy, Chesty (?!), Hickey (again, ?!), Wheezy, Baldy, Gabby, Tubby, Burpy, and Awful.

Some of those might be a bit too on-the-nose to illustrate in an inoffensive way.

Modern Seven Dwarf Names

Disney Diary notes that modern retellings still change the names of the dwarfs.

“In ‘Mirror Mirror’ with Julia Roberts the dwarfs are named Butcher, Chuckles, Grimm, Grub, Half Pint, Napoleon, and Wolf. In the upcoming “Snow White and the Huntsman,” being released June 1, the names are Beith, Coll, Duir, Gort, Muir, Nion and Quert.”

We may just be biased by childhood fondness, but we think the Disney names are the best.

If you’re bothered by the spelling dwarfs (as opposed to dwarves, you may be interested to know that “dwarves” didn’t become a popular plural until JR Tolkien’s use of the word in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Burpy, Hickey, Chesty and Other Alternate Dwarf Names” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 13038 – Men Spend on Halloween

by

Halloween spending continues to rise, with even our furry friends getting increasingly involved. Of course, they’re not the ones who spend money on the holiday. In fact, the biggest spenders are men. A 2018 National Retail Federation (NRF) survey found men spend on Halloween at higher rates than women.

Halloween spending

According to the most recent NRF Halloween spending report, “Participation in Halloween-related activities will resume to pre-pandemic levels, with 69% of consumers planning to celebrate the holiday this year, up from 65% in 2021 and comparable to 68% in 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics. With the spike in participation, total Halloween spending is expected to reach a record $10.6 billion, exceeding last year’s record of $10.1 billion.”

Consumers plan to spend about $100 a piece on the holiday in 2022. That’s down from an all-time high of $103 last year.

And what are they spending it on? The NRF says “The top ways consumers plan to celebrate include handing out candy (67%), decorating their home or yard (51%), dressing up in costume (47%), carving a pumpkin (44%) and throwing or attending a Halloween party (28%). Similar to last year, one in five plan to dress their pet up in a costume.”

What do men spend on Halloween?

The last time the Halloween spending survey was broken down along gender lines appears to have been 2018. That survey (cited below) found that “Celebrants are planning to spend an average of$87.Although men and women plan to purchase the same festive items, men plan on spending$14 more, on average, than their female counterparts.” They were also more likely to find costume inspiration on social media sites like YouTube.

The costumes may be the factor that pushed men’s spending up. “Women are much more likely than men to celebrate by carving pumpkins and decorating their homes. Men, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to attend a party.” Who doesn’t want to look their best for those Instagram photos? —WTF fun facts

Source: “2018 Halloween shopping behavior” — National Retail Federation

WTF Fun Fact 13037 – The First Trick or Treat

by

According to CBC News (cited below): “While the act of going door-to-door in costume in exchange for something sweet to eat has been around since the Middle Ages, it wasn’t until sometime in the last century that people started saying ‘trick or treat.'” Apparently, the very first trick-or-treat took place in Alberta, Canada.

The first trick or treat

Nick Rogers, who teaches history at York University in Toronto and wrote Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, the earliest use of the phase can be traced to a newspaper clipping from 1927. On November 3rd of that year, The Blackie Timesof Blackie, Alberta, noted that:

Halloween gave an opportunity to the young to use up some of their surplus energy which was freely taken advantage of. Threshing outfits, wagons, old autos, barrels, etc., decorated the front streets and buildings were overturned, while front and back doors were invaded and inmates held up by the awful word “Trick or Treat” from the youthful invaders who carried…

Prior to this, historians believed the first use of the phrase occurred in 1947.

Trying to end Halloween fun

The holiday has long been associated with a bit of misbehavior, especially among older kids. Throughout the 20th century, North Americans have long tried to get ahold of Halloween hooliganism, even trying to replace the holiday with a more wholesome one.

CBC noted that “[i]n July 1950, the U.S. Senate recommended that Halloween be renamed ‘Youth Honor Day,’ andyoung adults and teenagers would pledge good behaviour on Halloween and try totone down the holiday.”

It never really took off.

Rodgers explained that while Halloween is something wild today, going door to door at this time of year wasn’t always associate with tricks or treats.

“It goes right back to Hallow Mass to the original Christian holiday of honouring the dead,” Rodgers said. “Back thenit was called ‘souling,’ where people would collect food from neighbours’ homes in exchange for praying for their dead relatives. ‘The idea being that, if you prayed hard enough, you would help them get to heaven.'” —WTF fun facts

Source: “Albertans may have been 1st to say ‘trick or treat'” — CBC News

WTF Fun Fact 13036 – The Original Potato Jack-o-lantern

by

We wouldn’t dream of carving anything other than a pumpkin on Halloween. But the carving tradition actually originated in Ireland with the potato jack-o-lantern.

Stingy Jack and the origins of the potato jack-o-lantern

The history of jack-lanterns on Halloween originates with an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack from centuries ago.

According to History.com (cited below):

“According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.”

Jack sounds pretty savvy, but the story gets even more convoluted.

Jack of the Lantern

When Jack died, the folktale says that God refused to let him into heaven because of his sneaky deeds. The Devil didn’t want him either. So, “[h]e sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since.”

That’s really not a story we could have guessed.

Nevertheless, Jack’s glowing figure was eventually referred to by the Irish as “Jack of the Lantern” and later simplified to “Jack O’Lantern.”

The spooky tradition of carving one’s own Jack-o-lantern started in Ireland and Scotland, where potatoes and turnips were plentiful. (Pumpkins are native to South America, so there were no pumpkins in Europe before colonization.)

Even creepier is England’s use of beets (which would look bloody and bright!).

The tradition came to America with immigrants, who realized the pumpkins made an even better vessel for Jack’s face. —WTF fun facts

Source: “How Jack O’Lanterns Originated in Irish Myth” — History.com

WTF Fun Fact 13035 – The Truth of Fake It Til You Make It

by

The last thing any unhappy person wants to hear is “smile,” “cheer up,” or “can’t you just try to be happy?” The answer to all of those requests is usually “no.” But once those people leave the room, you may just want to try it out next time you’re grumpy. It turns out there’s some truth to the whole “fake it til you make it” thing.

Smile though your heart is aching

It’s hard, perhaps impossible even, to smile all the time. But if you’re in a bad mood and you’d rather not be (and let’s face it, sometimes we want to wallow), your physiology can sometimes affect your mood.

In other words, smiling may help you change your emotional trajectory.

According to Psychology Today (cited below):

“This might sound odd, as convention dictates that when you are happy, you smile and laugh, and when you are sad, you frown and cry. However, it turns out that the relationship between your emotions and your behavior is a little more reciprocal than that. This means that if you force a smile when you are feeling down, you will lift your mood, and alternatively, if you frown when you are happy, you will feel down.”

Fake it til you make it

This is based on real research, not just a web column. In fact, it’s based on a review of over 100 research studies that showed a connection between people faking a mood and then recording how they felt afterward. Researchers showed that to some small extent “an individual’s experience of emotion is influenced by feedback from their facial movements.” It’s called the facial feedback hypothesis.

This tracks with another principle called the Hebbian theory, or Hebb’s Law, stating that “neurons that fire together wire together.” (However, Hebb’s Law has more to do with learning.)

The point is that if you can muster a smile and even a joyful tone, you can trick your brain into releasing some of those happy chemicals. (There’s also the possibility that the people around you will be happier. And this tends to make situations more pleasant too.)

We’re not saying you should force a smile all the time. But if you’re looking to lift your mood, the answer lies inside you.

Providing facial feedback

The facial feedback hypothesis is partly based on the work of Charles Darwin, who noted that facial expressions can affect a person’s emotional experience. And since Darwin was deeply depressed for much of his life, we imagine he tried it for himself on more than one occasion.

Researchers have tried to see if smiling helps improve mood without even asking a person to fake a grin. They just had subjects put a pe between their teeth to make the right muscles move. Moods lifted. A pen between the lips tended to lessen the cheer, however, since that activated frowning muscles.

And the effect doesn’t appear to be limited to smiling either – posture can help. Unslumping shoulders, standing up straight, and holding your head up all help. These actions can make it easier to engage with people in a positive way, improving your mood. It also helps with confidence (and first impressions).

Some version of the “fake it til you make it” adage has been around for a long time. For example, philosopher William James once wrote: “If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.”

Of course, that doesn’t make it ok to tell someone to smile. — WTF fun facts

Source: “How “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” Really Is a Thing” — Psychology Today

WTF Fun Fact 13034 – The Ronald McNair Library Story

by

Google sees quite a few searches for the Ronald McNair library story. And this one is true.

Ronald McNair library story

In 1959, a nine-year-old Black child named Ronald McNair walked into a segregated library to check out a calculus book. The librarian threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave. The young aspiring astronaut waited while the librarian called the police and his parents. It appears he was eventually allowed to check out the book after the officer asked the librarian why she wouldn’t just give him the books.

Ronald McNair, astronaut

That same boy would go on to get a Ph.D. from MIT and earn 4 honorary doctorates. A NASA program supported by Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols designed to attract more people of color recruited McNair, and his dreams of becoming an astronaut came true. He was the second African American to go to space.

Sadly, one of his missions was aboard the space shuttle Challenger, which famously disintegrated 73 seconds after takeoff, killing its whole crew.

His original burial place was Rest Lawn Memorial Park in his hometown of Lake City, South Carolina. The city moved to the city’s new Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park in 2004.

And that’s not the only site people named in his honor. The library that tried to refuse him that calculus book as a boy is now named after him as well – it’s called the Ronald McNair Life History Center.

Other interesting facts about Ronald McNair

McNair was more than a hometown hero and NASA trailblazer. He was a nationally-recognized laser physicist, a 5th-degree black belt in karate, the first member of the Bahá’í Faith to go to space, and a talented saxophonist.

McNair also has a crater on the moon and a building at MIT named after him. He also has two dozen U.S. K-12 schools named after him. — WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Black in Space’ Looks at Final Frontier of Civil Rights” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 13033 – The Proposed U.S. Referendum on War

by

The request for a referendum on war has come up many times since WWI. But one of the more memorable proposals of a U.S. referendum on war came from a group of Nebraskans in 1916 who largely wanted to encourage either peace or isolationism. At the very least, they wanted the people who voted for war to walk to the walk.

A referendum on war

A 1987 article in the NYT (cited below) listed some of the amendments citizens have proposed over the years. Among them was one from a group of Nebraskans that tends to recirculate any time the U.S. appears to be about to engage in a war effort.

“The petition, sent to Washington by a group of Nebraska residents in 1916, proposed an amendment requiring a national referendum before Congress could declare war. To dissuade votes for war, the petition proposed that all those who voted in favor of the United States entering World War I be willing to enlist.”

The petition got so many signatures in the petitioner’s town that the US Archives noted that he had to add extra pieces of paper to accommodate them all.

The Ludlow Amendment

The 1916 attempt to give citizens the power to declare war wasn’t the only attempt.

The Ludlow Amendment was a constitutional amendment proposed in 1938 by Indiana Representative Louis Ludlow. According to the US House of Representatives Archives, it “called for a national referendum before the United States could enter a war, except in cases of invasion or attack on U.S. soil.” This would have removed the power to declare war from Congress in most cases.

A poll found that many people favored this amendment, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed everything. “On December 8, the House of Representatives voted 388 to 1 to approve President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request to declare war on Japan, with the President signing the declaration later that day. On December 11, Congress approved war resolutions against Germany and Italy, with Roosevelt also signing them the day they were passed.” (Source)

— WTF fun facts

Source: “WASHINTON TALK; Letters to Congress: Amend the Constitution? Let Us Count the Ways” — NY Times Archives

WTF Fun Fact 13032 – Stephen Hawking, Practical Joker

by

Physicist Stephen Hawking was known for many things. But those who knew him well knew had had a wicked sense of humor. Despite his lifelong battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, also called Lou Gerig’s Disease) which left him paralyzed, he was still a fan of practical jokes.

Stephen Hawking had wicked sense of humor

While he used technology for just about every function, including speaking, his humor managed to shine through. For example, according to Biography.com (cited below):

“Prior to the February 2015 Academy Awards, for which his biopic The Theory of Everything had garnered numerous nominations, Hawking said he was happy to let leading man Eddie Redmayne use his signature computerized voice box for the film. ‘Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘Eddie did not inherit my good looks.'”

Hawking’s practical joke

Hawking was also a fan of practical jokes. After the physicist died in March 2018, BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh told a story of a joke he played at Cambridge University in 2004. It’s one that probably stopped a few hearts – but not his own.

“Seeking to adjust his lighting, the camera operator yanked a cable from a socket, at which point an alarm sounded and Hawking slumped forward as if unplugged from his life support. The anxious visitors rushed over to find Hawking very much alive and giddy at his joke – the alarm was simply over the office computer losing its power supply.”

That’s right, he pretended to fake his own death!

We’re sure more than a few people relived that joke in their heads afterward!

Hawking often called his sense of humor the secret to surviving such a terrible disease for so long. He was one of the longest-living ALS sufferers, diagnosed at the young age of 21.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “10 of Stephen Hawking’s Funniest Zingers” — Biography.com

WTF Fun Fact 13031 – A Bear Sense of Beauty

by

Is there a bear sense of beauty? How do we explain wild bears who are seen at scenic spots staring off into the mountains, trees, forests, and river vistas? We may never understand this behavior. But if we use our own behavior as a reference point (which humans so often do), it may be that bears – just like us – enjoy a really good view.

Do bears have a sense of beauty?

Let’s start with one thing we do know – bears are smart. Their brains are difficult for us to understand because they’re not organized in a familiar way, but their size and complexity indicate that bears have a capacity for intelligence that was previously unknown to most humans.

Now, not every bear will share the same behavior, especially when it comes to something subjective, like beauty. But the fact that some bears seem to be able to scout out a good view for the day is fascinating. Some also build their dens near scenic points (and not just the ones that humans and their picnic baskets frequent). You know what they say about real estate – location, location, location.

So, does a bear staring into the beauty of the mountains mean there’s a bear sense of beauty though?

Sharing beauty with bears

The staring behavior was first noticed by people studying bears in the wild. After all, a bear showing up at a scenic parking lot in the Smokies is not going to arouse the same level of interest – just terror.

Canadian artist Maureen Enns and rancher Charles Russell have long been advocates of living alongside bears. They’ve also discussed the penchant for beauty they’ve witnessed from the creatures. They aren’t scientists, but they have gotten up close and personal with grizzlies and found them to be quite serene when they’re not threatened. Enns was one of the first people to publicly suggest that bears appreciate beauty. This was after seeing them gaze at a stunning view one day.

Since then, others have remarked on similar behavior. But investigating the bear’s sense of beauty doesn’t appear to be on any major research agendas right now.

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Sharing the wild with bears” – LA Times