WTF • Fun • Fact    ( /dʌb(ə)lˌju/  /ti/   /ef/ • /fʌn/ • /fækt/ )

     1. noun  A random, interesting, and overall fun fact that makes you scratch your head and think what the...

WTF Fun Fact 12933 – Two California Tomato Highway Spills

It’s never fun to see a highway spill. You just know someone is in big trouble for letting a product spill out of their truck and onto the roadway to snarl traffic. But we couldn’t help but at least stifle a bemused “oops” when hearing about two California highway spills – partly because it just seems so absurd.

Granted, we doubt it was amusing to any of the drivers – or the people in need of tomatoes those days.

The first California highway spill

On August 30, 2022, a truck crash resulted in part of I-80 in Vacaville, California spilling its load of 50,000 pounds (!) of fresh tomatoes all over the highway on a Monday morning, disrupting traffic for hours.

The California Highway Patrol said the truck transporting the tomatoes crashed into another vehicle near an offramp. This caused the truck driver to lose control and hit the center divide and spill hundreds of pounds of tomatoes across the lanes. While drivers tried to maneuver around the mess, they also crashed into each other, creating an even bigger traffic disaster (we’re just guessing – but gawking while driving probably played a role here).

While the driver of the truck and two other people were treated at a local hospital, no major injuries were reported at the time.

The second spill

By sheer coincidence, the same thing happened again a few days later on another California highway. And we can only imagine the California Highway Patrol’s reaction when they got the call. Did they think they were being pranked?

According to Trucker’s News (cited below): “For the second time in a week, a tractor-trailer spilled a large load of tomatoes on a California highway. On Friday, Sept. 2, a load of tomatoes covered the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 in Elk Grove near Sacramento. The California Highway Patrol reported a trailer loaded with tomatoes detached from a truck around 7:45 a.m. PDT. There were no injuries reported.”

The two California highway spills took place about 50 miles away from one another. Considering just how big California is, that’s quite a coincidence.

Playing ketchup

A Sacramento Bee story on the crash by Michael McGough was full of puns on the messy coincidence:

“Running late in morning rush-hour traffic? Time to ketchup.
For the second time this week, a truck carrying tomatoes spilled on a Northern California freeway near Sacramento, painting the roadway red and causing delays.
A trailer carrying the fruit detached from a truck around 7:45 a.m. Friday on southbound Interstate 5, south of Elk Grove Boulevard, according to the California Highway Patrol’s online activity log.“

We’re glad no one was hurt and just hope this doesn’t lead to a BLT shortage in the area. — WTF fun facts

Source: “For 2nd time in a week, large load of tomatoes spilled in California” — Trucker’s News

WTF Fun Fact 12932 – Nigel Richards, French Scrabble Champion

Nigel Richards is from New Zealand. He’s a worldwide Scrabble champion, but his most impressive feat may just be winning the French-language Scrabble World Championship without actually knowing how to speak French.

Memorizing vs learning

If you’ve ever tried to learn a language, you know that there are two parts to success – grammar and vocabulary. You can be great at grammar, but if you can’t memorize new words then it doesn’t do you much good. Equally, you can know lots of vocabulary words, but if you can’t put them together in a sentence (or even pronounce them), you can’t actually speak the language.

Nigel Richards memorizes the dictionary

Before trying his hand with French, New Zealander Nigel Richards won a couple of English-language Scrabble championships. But that clearly wasn’t enough of a challenge. That’s when he decided to tackle French.

But when you’re playing Scrabble, grammar doesn’t matter, only the words in the dictionary do. So Richards decided to try and memorize as many words as possible from the French dictionary.

Clearly, he did a great job, because he beat all of the actual French speakers in a 2015 tournament.

According to NPR (cited below): “It was only in late May [of 2014] that Richards began his quest to win the French world title, according to the French Scrabble Federation. That’s when he set about memorizing the French Scrabble dictionary.”

Richards obviously has an impeccable memory. After all, there are 386,000 words in French Scrabble and only 187,000 in North American Scrabble.

Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsis told NPR: “Basically, what he does is, he looks at word lists and looks at dictionary pages… he can conjure up the image of what he has seen. He told me that if he actually hears a word, it doesn’t stick in his brain. But if he sees it once, that’s enough for him to recall the image of it. I don’t know if that’s a photographic memory; I just think it’s something that his brain chemistry allows him to do.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Winner Of French Scrabble Title Does Not Speak French” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12931 – Killed by elephants in India

If you live in certain parts of India and encroach on the increasingly small amount of land where wildlife still rules, you could be one of the 100+ unlucky people to be killed by an elephant each year. In fact, a woman in India was killed by an elephant in January 2022 and witnesses say it returned to her funeral and trampled her corpse.

Typically, elephants are empathetic creatures, but as their land is increasingly encroached upon, they can be dangerous.

Killed by an elephant in India

Elephants typically keep to themselves. But as building and other types of habitat destruction increase, some small farmers are forced farther into elephant territory to find land to grow food. There, they can have their crops trampled or be killed by a single elephant or group of elephants that feel threatened.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (cited below), over 100 people are killed by elephants each year in India “over 200 people have been killed in Kenya over the last 7 years.”

The WWF notes that “Elephants are often killed in retaliation. Wildlife authorities in Kenya shoot between 50 and 120 problem elephants each year and dozens of elephants are poisoned each year in oil palm plantations in Indonesia.”

Rare incidents involving elephants

Perhaps one of the most popular (albeit unconfirmed by official sources) incidents involving an elephant in India happened in January of 2022.

According to Mashable:

“On June 10, 2022, the woman named Maya Murmu, who hailed from Raipal village in the district of Odisha Mayurbhanj, was brutally attacked by an elephant in a nearby forest while collecting water.

According to news reports, she was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead very quickly after.

After bringing her body home, her family proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for her funeral, but it was all for nought as on the day of her funeral, the very same elephant returned to the village in an extremely foul mood.”

In Odisha, elephant attacks are slightly more common due to their proximity to the creatures. But this is very atypical behavior. While some people insist the woman was assisting poachers in threatening baby elephants or throwing stones at the creatures, there’s no legitimate evidence of that.

However, there are multiple reports that “the elephant then proceeded to attack the funeral and targeted Maya’s corpse, trampling it furiously before letting out a roar that signalled other elephants from its herd to wreck the rest of the village. The same elephant also somehow managed to identify Maya’s home, and went on smash it, killing the goats living there.

By the end, nearly the entire village had been wrecked, and many of the inhabitants had lost their homes (although thankfully, no one else was hurt).”

Indian newspapers have reported it, but local authorities have yet to directly confirm the specifics.

It’s hard to know what to believe in these cases, but it’s clear that elephants are capable of getting pretty angry under certain circumstances. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Battles over ever decreasing land” — WWF

WTF Fun Fact 12930 – Koala Bears Sleep 22 Hours a Day

Koalas bears might be cute, but they’re some of the least energetic animals on Earth. In fact, koala bears sleep 22 hours a day (or at least from 18-22 hours). The rest of the time they spend wanding around looking for food or mates.

Koala bear facts

The koala is a marsupial (not a bear) native to Australia. They live in the eucalyptus forests in south and east Australia, which is where they find their food – it’s like sleeping at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Considering how brutal competition can be among the world’s creatures, it’s a wonder that koalas still exist. They only eat one thing (eucalyptus), that thing is toxic, and it doesn’t reall have many nutrients. Nevertheless, they eat about 1 pound of eucalyptus a day, which is also where they get most of their water.

Their little bodies can break down the toxins in ways other animals can’t, however, while they manage to extract enough nutrients to stay alive, their diet doesn’t really provide them with any extra energy. Hence all the sleeping.

Koala bears sleep most of their lives

Beacuse eucalyptus doesn’t provide them with enough nutrients for a high-energy diet, koala bears sleep for the vast majority of the day – from 18-22 hours. During this time, their bodies need much of the energy they take in to break down the eucalyptus.

The rest of their time is dedicated to survival – eating and mating to be exact.

Koala bear survival

Between poaching and habitat destruction, koala populations have plummeted. According to National Geographic (cited below): “Land clearing, logging, and bushfires—especially the devastating 2019-2020 season—have destroyed much of the forest they live in. Koalas need a lot of space—about a hundred trees per animal—a pressing problem as Australia’s woodlands continue to shrink.”

Koalas are now on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of the 10 most vulnerable animals to climate change. And NatGeo notes that “Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is decreasing the nutritional quality of eucalyptus leaves (which is already quite low) and causing longer, more intense droughts and wildfires.”

Droughts also force koalas to go in search for water, which means they have to leave their eucalyptus trees “spending precious energy and putting them at a higher risk of predation. Predators include dingoes and large owls. They’re also at risk of getting hit by cars and attacked by dogs.”

Chlamydia is also very common among pockets of koala bear populations and causes many of the animals to be blind and infertile.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Koalas 101” – National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12929 – Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley

Roswell Park is a well-known, world-class cancer research and care center in Buffalo, New York. It’s named after Dr. Roswell Park, whose backstory involves his duty to his patients and the death of a U.S. president. Despite the way it may have changed history, the story of Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley isn’t well-known.

President William McKinley shot in Buffalo

In 1901, the Pan-American Exposition took place in Buffalo. The months-long event is known mostly for its dark moment in presidential history though.

On Friday, September 6, 1901, President William McKinley visited the Expo and was shot in the Exposition’s Temple of Music by 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz. As the young man walked up to the president who was shaking hands with guests, he pulled out a .32-caliber handgun and shot McKinley twice – once in the chest and once in the abdomen.

The bullet aimed at his chest bounced off a bullet and merely grazed the president. But the bullet in his abdomen was the one that would end up killing him.

Before Czolgosz could do more damage or get away, he “was tackled by James B. Parker, an African-American man who had been standing behind him in line, and members of the security staff quickly subdued the gunman,” according to Roswell Park Cancer Center (cited below).

Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley

The president was still alive when he was transported to the Pan Am Emergency Hospital on the fairgrounds.

There was one doctor in town who was highly qualified to treat the president’s injury, which was complicated by President William McKinley’s weight. Dr. Roswell Park was a trauma surgeon who had experience treating abdominal wounds. However, he wasn’t at the hospital that day. He was (not far away) in Niagara Falls operating on a lymphoma patient.

A messenger was sent to fetch Dr. Park and ran into the operating room to alert him that he was needed in Buffalo. As one of Park’s assistants later recalled, Park replied “Don’t you see that I can’t leave this case, even if it were for the president of the United States?”

The messenger then informed him: “Doctor, it is for the president of the United States.”

Too late

While finishing up on his patient, Dr. Park sent a fellow surgeon to the railroad station to “make the necessary arrangements for a special engine or train” to get him to Buffalo as quickly as possible, but it didn’t work out that way. The train station was a mess when he got there and he had to wait 15 – 20 minutes for a regularly scheduled train to arrive.

In the meantime, the physicians who were present at the hospital started without him since the only source of light in the operating room was the sun, which was setting fast.

McKinley had been shot at 4:07 pm and Dr. Park arrived at 6:50 pm. By then, the surgery was nearly finished.

According to the cancer center now named after Dr. Park: “Matthew D. Mann, M.D., a gynecologist with no surgical experience involving the upper abdomen, had performed the operation. His work was complicated by the fact that the president was a heavy man with a very large abdomen, and consequently Dr. Mann was unable to locate the bullet. When Park walked into the operating room, he noticed that neither Mann nor any of the other surgeons wore surgical gloves, caps, or gowns, nor had they taken steps to disinfect the surgical area. Perspiration from one of the attending surgeons dropped into the president’s open wound. The wound was closed without a drain in place. With the surgery complete at 7:32 p.m., the president was transferred by electric ambulance to the home of John Milburn, chair of the Pan Am Board of Directors, to recover. Dr. Park and another physician rode in the ambulance with the president.”

It took over a week for McKinley to succumb to his injuries, and he died on September 14th. His autopsy showed that the cause of death was gangrene, almost certainly a result of the sloppy surgery. Dr. Park suffered from the disappointment of not getting there in time throughout the rest of his life.

But aside from a delay that he couldn’t prevent at the train station, Park was also delayed by his commitment to care for the patient he was operating on at the time. — WTF fun facts

Source: “One day in September” — Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

WTF Fun Fact 12928 – The Church Rocket War

Two churches in Vrontados, Greece have a very unconventional way of marking the Easter holiday. The churches fire rockets at one another.

They used to use cannons, but those were outlawed.

The church rocket war

We know churches “compete” for parishioners in some sense, but we didn’t realize how hostile things could get.

On the Greek island of Chios, two rival churches have been using the Easter holiday to continue to carry out a tradition that’s been going on for as many as 400 years. According to Atlas Obscura (cited below): “The churches, which sit on opposite hillsides about 400 meters away from one another, recreate a yearly ‘Rocket War’ (or Rouketopolemos) which is exactly what it sounds like.”

“Until 1889, real cannons were used in this annual performance, which no one really seems to know the origin of. After their cannons were outlawed and confiscated, the two churches in question, Angios Marcos and Panaghia Ereithiani, had to resort to homemade bottle rockets. These fiery weapons are produced throughout the year for the blazing spectacle that draws a high number of tourists.”

All in good fun (or in the name of tourism)

The churches aren’t out to literally destroy one another (at least not anymore). But that doesn’t mean there isn’t real damage.

For starters, building homemade rockets isn’t a safe hobby. People lose digits and more during these events (not unlike in the US during the 4th of July, when injury rates spike from amateurs using explosives).

Windows, signs, and outdoor furniture can be another casualty if people nearby don’t board things up. And we imagine that feels pretty inconvenient, especially around such an important holiday in the church calendar.

Up to 80,000 fire sticks are launched by both churches’ congregations, and people have indeed lost their lives trying to blow off pieces of the rival church’s bell tower. It’s probably not a very peaceful Easter service for those who attend inside either.

But because it brings tourists to the island, the tradition continues.

Atlas Obscura notes that “By the next morning, ears are ringing, throats are filled with smoke and sulphur, fires have been put out, and burns have been treated, but a winner is never officially decided on. The sign of victory is the most direct hits afflicted on the rival, but every year both congregations declare themselves the winners, and they agree to disagree and settle the score next year.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Chios Rocket War” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12927 – Sidney Poitier Was Once Homeless

When the legendary Sidney Poitier died in January of 2022, people who paid tribute to him remembered an interview from 1985 in which he told ABC News that he arrived in NYC with $3 to his name, worked as a dishwasher, and was homeless.

Working his way up

If you’re over 40, you probably immediately recognize the name Sidney Poitier, even if you never sat down and watched “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.” If you’re lucky, you’ve seen him in movies such as “In the Heat of the Night” and more. Poitier was the first Black person to win an Academy Award for lead actor.

But his beginnings were far more humble. He arrived in New York City from his home in the Bahamas with dreams of being an actor but was quickly dismissed. According to his obituary in the LA Times (cited below):

“It was the most unlikely of beginnings. Newly arrived from the Bahamas with a thick West Indian accent, Sidney Poitier fumbled his lines so badly when he tried out for the American Negro Theatre in Harlem that he was advised he’d be better off getting a job as a dishwasher.

Humiliated but unbroken, Poitier bought a $13 radio and spent hours listening to the announcers, mimicking their pronunciation and the rhythms of their speech. When he returned to the theater, his audition was little better, but when another unknown actor, Harry Belafonte, pulled out of a performance, Poitier stepped into the limelight.”

Poitier’s time homeless on the streets of NYC

While his subsequent rise to stardom was the stuff dreams are made of, in 1985 he sat down with ABC News to describe those early days in New York working as a dishwasher. And with the dignity he seemed to exude so effortlessly, he dropped the bombshell that he once used to sleep in the public toilets on the streets of the city.

They cost a nickel to get into, so he’d put in his money, prop his feet up against the stall door, and sleep “uncomfortably” for the night until it was time to go back to work or auditions.

Poitier’s first film came out in 1950 and was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. In “No Way Out” he played an intern in a hospital prison ward in a film that explored racial prejudice.

At the time, Black actors had such minor roles as maids and janitors that they could be easily cut out of the films when they aired in the U.S. South. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Sidney Poitier, trailblazing star who helped break down Hollywood color barriers, dies at 94” — LA Times

WTF Fun Fact 12926 – The Zero Star Hotel

In our last fun fact, we mentioned the Null Stern Hotel in Switzerland. Some of those rooms have no walls. But let’s talk about the whole concept of Null Stern, which means “zero star,” as in a zero-star hotel.

A Zero Star Hotel

According to Architectural Digest, their hotel rooms with no walls can be fairly posh, in a way, if they’re situated in the right location:

“Although the hotel lacks many common amenities, guests may find comfort in an on-site butler who will play a ‘central role,’ in the experience, according to [hotierl Daniel] Charbonnier. Null Stern’s slogan, ‘The only star is you,’ is a key philosophy at the alternative accommodations, where the founders strive to put the guests at the center of the stay. At all of the zero real estate suites, a butler provides meals and facilitates other requests from guests during their stay. At the anti-idyllic suite, the butler ‘provides a sense of security and care in an environment of insecurity,’ Charbonnier said.”

The concept was launched back in 2009 but began to make headlines in 2017 when their suite in the Swiss Alps got a reputation for having a waitlist of thousands (it’s up to 6000). And while the only “star” might be the guest in their open-air suites in the Swiss Alps, you can certainly get a good view of the stars.

But it all began as something slightly less glamorous than glamping in the Alps.

The original concept

The first hotel that twin brothers Frank and Patrik Riklin created and named Null Stern was an old 1980s nuclear fallout shelter that they retrofitted.

According to The Guardian (cited below), it’s located in “the small Swiss town of Teufen, in the canton of St Gallen near the Austrian border.”

“Billed as the world’s first zero-star hotel, the Null Stern Hotel occupies the underground space of a nondescript apartment block. The hardened concrete structure and near-two-foot-thick blast doors were designed to take the full brunt of a nuclear or chemical attack. In time of crisis the bunker would have been able to hold more than 200 people.”

We just want to know if this is considered an Instagrammable location.

The original zero star hotel is no longer open since it has been turned into a museum, but you can still grab a room (or sign up for the waiting list at other locations, including in the mountains or at the corner of a busy street outside a gas station). — WTF fun facts

Source: “Switzerland’s Null Stern Hotel: the nuclear option” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12925 – The Hotel Room with No Walls

Back in 2017, a Swiss hotel room with no walls made the headlines. And it turns out the people who designed it have come up with another version – people are now paying over $300/night to sleep…wait for it…at a gas station!

An “open-air” suite

Do you like the idea of open-air sleep? Do you like sleeping outside for $340/night?

Well, as long as you don’t like fresh air or sleeping peacefully, we might know just the place for you.

For us, the most important part of a hotel room is the ability to get some rest, so we won’t be signing up any time soon for the “room” located at an intersection and entirely without walls. Even if you have that fairly common love for the smell of gasoline, the idea of hearing traffic, noise, and smelling gas all night as you sleep outside a gas station (in a nice bed, though!) may not be the right choice for you either.

According to Architectural Digest (cited below): “Brothers and conceptual artists Frank and Patrik Riklin, who partnered with hotelier Daniel Charbonnier to create this hotel ‘room,’ are perfectly aware that you won’t be sleeping peacefully in their newest hospitality experience—but that is exactly the point. ‘In view of the current world situation, there is no time to sleep,’ the brothers said in a statement.”

But isn’t that why we try to get away?!

AD notes that “The open-air suite—which is located between a gas station and busy intersection and purposefully lacks a door, ceiling, or walls—is designed to keep you up so you have time to contemplate current social, economic, and environmental issues.”

Hard pass.

A room with a view

The designers became famous with a similar concept a few years back – and while it’s still not one we would personally indulge in, at least it seems more fun and relaxing. In fact, the brothers’ first hotel room still has thousands of people on the waitlist after making headlines in 2017:

“This room is another iteration of the founders’ ‘zero real estate suites,’ which they launched back in 2008 as part of their Null Stern Hotel. The first three suites, which include a queen bed on a platform and two nightstands, all make use of the Swiss Alps and breathtaking Saillon landscape to create picturesque overnight stays in a glamping-like experience. Currently, there are over 6,000 guests on the waitlist eager for the opportunity to spend an evening at the non-traditional hotel,” says AD.

The Riklins don’t have the only open-air suites in the world – there are other hotel rooms without walls as well, and they’re quite popular.

We say to each their own. It’s just that we like to call that camping. — WTF fun facts

Source: “This Bizarre Hotel Room With No Walls or Doors Is Going for $340 a Night” — Architectural Digest