facts

WTF Fun Fact 13053 – The Mere Exposure Effect

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We tend to find things more pleasant and attractive the more we see them. When it comes to people, we tend to find their faces more attractive the more familiar we are with them. This is called the “mere exposure effect” (or “familiarity principle”).

The mere exposure principle

By merely exposing our brains to the sight of a person, we can build pathways that make them seem more attractive to us over time. The familiarity alone is enough to make us feel better about them. (Of course, this isn’t always the case, especially when there’s bad behavior involved.)

Research on this effect goes back to the early 19th century when German Gustav philosopher and experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner and Edward B. Titchener, who studied the structure of the mind. However, early hypotheses were eventually rejected, and it wasn’t until the 1960s that they were revived.

In the 60s, Polish social psychologist Robert Zajonc found that the brain’s exposure to novel stimuli elicited a fear or avoidance response. In other words, new things make us nervous. The same is true in both humans and animals.

But he found that each time a person viewed that stimulus again, there was less fear and more interest in the object. And after repeated looks, the observing person or animal will begin to act more fondly towards the object that was once new.

The black bag experiment

Wikipedia sums up a critical experiment in 1968 best:

“Charles Goetzinger conducted an experiment using the mere-exposure effect on his class at Oregon State University. Goetzinger had a student come to class in a large black bag with only his feet visible. The black bag sat on a table in the back of the classroom. Goetzinger’s experiment was to observe if the students would treat the black bag in accordance to Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect. His hypothesis was confirmed. The students in the class first treated the black bag with hostility, which over time turned into curiosity, and eventually friendship. This experiment confirms Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect, by simply presenting the black bag over and over again to the students their attitudes were changed, or as Zajonc states “mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.”

This may have to do with perceptual fluency. In other words, our brain just have an easier time processing objects that they’ve already processed in the past.

However, when marketers try to use this to increase our familiarity (and propensity to buy something) by sticking it in our faces constantly, it doesn’t always work. In some cases, familiarity can breed hostility. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Mere-exposure effect” — Wikipedia

WTF Fun Fact 13052 – Fatbergs

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“Fatbergs” are clogging sewers around the world. They are giant masses of oil and grease poured down drains that congeal around flushed waste like baby wipes. “Flushable” wipes and cooking grease are the biggest culprits.

The trouble with fatbergs

These solid masses in sewer systems can cause big problems. In fact, the largest fatberg found so far (in London) weighed 130 TONS! That’s similar to 11 double-decked busses – and once they congeal, they’re as hard as concrete.

London in particular has a problem with these masses because their narrow Victorian sewer systems have yet to be updated. But fatbergs are a problem everywhere that people wash grease down the sink and flush non-biological matter like wipes and tampons.

According to Newsweek, “Fatbergs are placing an increasing financial burden in cities throughout the world. Clearing “grease backups” costs New York City more than $4.65 million a year. The U.K. spends about $130 million annually clearing roughly 300,000 fatbergs from city sewers. Even a smaller city like Fort Wayne, Indiana, shells out $500,00 annually to get grease deposits out of sewers. And the cost is usually passed along to customers through their water bills.”

The price we pay

Fatbergs raise the price of our water bills and taxes. But if they’re not treated, they’ll back up sewage into the streets.

There are professionals who remove these globs for a living, but they’re not terribly well-compensated for such an important-yet-dirty job.

The best way to stop the creation of fatbergs is to stop putting things in sewers that don’t belong there. And as for the greasy blobs that already exist, we have found some use for them. According to Newsweek, “…a good use was found for the debris, which was once London’s biggest fatberg—it was chopped up and converted into nearly 2,700 gallons of biodiesel.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “What is a Fatberg? The Gross Grease Giants Threatening Cities” — Newsweek

WTF Fun Fact 13051 – Pairing Cheetahs and Dogs

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Zoos are pairing their male cheetahs with emotional support dogs so that they have companions. It turns out that pairing cheetahs and dogs is a great idea for both animals.

Why pairing cheetahs with dogs works

Cheetahs are very nervous animals. Their “fight or flight” response is largely set to flight. That means they’re always looking out for predators. But in a zoo, they don’t have any. Nevertheless, it’s an instinct, so all the nervous energy builds up inside them. Needless to say, no one wants a stressed-out cheetah.

While the San Diego Zoo was one of the first places to try pairing cheetahs with companions, the idea originated elsewhere.

According to Atlas Obscura (cited below), it all began in Oregon. “In 1976, research scientist and conservation biologist Laurie Marker was living in Winston, a town of about 3,000 people. As the curator of a cheetah-breeding program at Wildlife Safari, she found herself hand-rearing a lonely cheetah cub named Khayam.”

Marker didn’t have a littermate to entertain Khayam, so she turned to man’s best friend. More specifically, she enlisted the help of a Lab-mix named Shesho.

Fast friends

Khayam and Shesho grew up together and acted as surrogate siblings for one another. The experiment was a success and the dog chilled out the cheetah. “Now, when a cub that’s abandoned or orphaned ends up in human care, many zoos pair the cat with a dog as a substitute sibling,” noted Atlas Obscura.

Marker provided the San Diego Zoo with a cheetah named Arusha a few years later and recommended they raise him with a dog. That was when the pairing hit the news. Who doesn’t love an interspecies friendship story?

Cheetah moms will often forsake single cubs, so finding a way to make captive cubs happy (or save them from death by neglect in the wild) was an important move for those trying to save cheetahs from extinction. — WTF fun facts

Source: “An Emotional Support Dog Is the Only Thing That Chills Out a Cheetah” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 13050 – The Cost of Daylight Savings Time

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While it may be nice to “fall back” in November and get an extra hour of sleep (if you’re lucky), the cost of daylight savings time on our health is high. Is it worth it? Most Americans don’t think so.

(Also, it’s technically called daylight saving time, with no “s” at the end.)

The high cost of daylight savings time

CBS News (cited below) gathered studies that showed that daylight savings time has been linked to
– More heart attacks and strokes
– More car crashes
– More workplace injuries
– More deer strikes
– More headaches
– More depressive episodes,
– Lower SAT scores

And there are multiple studies to show these connections. It’s just not beneficial to our health to mess around with our biological clocks.

Where did the idea of daylight saving come from?

Most people believe it was Ben Franklin who came up with the idea of daylight saving. But it wasn’t. You can “thank” an entomologist from New Zealand named George Vernon Hudson for the time changes. Believe it or not, he was interested in having more daylight for hunting bugs and originally suggested a 2-hour time change.

According to National Geographic:

“Seven years later, British builder William Willett (the great-great grandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin) independently hit on the idea while out horseback riding. He proposed it to England’s Parliament as a way to prevent the nation from wasting daylight. His idea was championed by Winston Churchill and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—but was initially rejected by the British government.”

The idea came around again in 1916 when the Germans decided to pick up Britain’s idea in order to save energy.

In 1916, two years into World War I, the German government started brainstorming ways to save energy. Once they did, other countries saw the potential energy-saving benefits. In 1918, the US Congress enacted the first daylight savings law (which also formally defined US time zones as well).

While it did save energy in a coal-powered world, the US House of Representatives is trying to pass a law to end daylight saving. It’s up to the Senate to take a look at the bill now. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Not-so-fun facts about Daylight Saving Time” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 13049 – Missing Work for Back Pain

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It’s very likely that you’ve experienced back pain (especially lower back pain) at some point in your life. And if a backache or spasm has make you call in sick, you might be interested to know that missing work for back pain is common. In fact, it’s the most common cause of missed work days.

Missing work for back pain is common

Not only is back pain the leading cause of missed work days, but according to Georgetown’s Health Policy Institute (cited below), 64% of workers with low back pain have missed at least one day of work in the past year due to some type of illness or injury. On the other hand, only 45% of those who do not suffer from back pain missed work for illness or injury.

The Health Policy Institute also reports that:
“Roughly 83 million days of work are lost per year due to back pain.
Back pain is a leading cause of work-loss days as well as work limitations.
Between 1998 and 2000 the number of back pain injuries that have involved time away from work has increased.“

The number of days of work that people with back pain miss is also higher than those without back pain.

Finally, “adults with back pain spend almost 200 million days in bed a year.”

The commonness of back pain

If you’ve ever suffered from back pain, it’s hard to believe that some adults haven’t experienced it. After all, it can be caused by sports injuries just as much as it can be caused by a sedentary lifestyle. 8 out of 10 people will experience back pain in their life.

Back pain happens to all age and ethnic groups, however it it slightly more common in people aged 18 to 44 and in those whose annual income is less than $20,000. This may be because of the types of jobs people in these groups have, or their inability to seek proper help for back pain. Without some sort of intervention, pain can become chronic and even more debilitating.

Around 25% of people with low back pain are in fair to poor physical or mental health, so it’s associated with other issues as well.

Getting help for back pain is key

Over 4 million adults in the US said they have had trouble staying employed due to back pain and earnings among back pain sufferers are lower than among those without it. All of these statistics indicate that getting help for back pain is crucial to long-term wellbeing.

Since everyone’s pain is different, there’s no one common cure. Pain relievers, physical therapy, and targeted exercise are all options. The need for surgery is rare. And the good news is that a lot of back pain can be resolved by lifestyle modifications, which are free. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Chronic Back Pain” — Georgetown Health Policy Institute

WTF Fun Fact 13047 – Robert Liston’s Infamous Surgery

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Robert Liston was a respected 19th-century surgeon. In fact, surgical instruments have been named in his honor. And while he might have taken great pride in amputating limbs as fast as possible, the goal was to save the patient from prolonged pain. There were no anesthetics back in that day. The faster the surgery was over, the better. But one amputation went horribly awry, killing 3 people.

The surgery with a 300% fatality rate

While there’s a chance it may be an apocryphal story, Liston’s most infamous amputation involved 3 fatalities. During a leg amputation, he cut so fast that he severed the fingers of his surgical assistant. And while he was switching instruments, he slashed the white coat of a doctor observing nearby.

Many patients died during amputations in the 19th century, so one fatality could be expected. However, the assistant ended up dying of a blood infection. To top it off, the man whose coat he had slashed wasn’t physically injured but ended up dying of shock because he thought he had been stabbed.

That makes this amputation the only one with a 300% fatality rate.

Robert Liston, showman

Liston was a show-off, but he was also a great surgeon. He also aided in the introduction of ether as an anesthetic.

During one procedure that lasted only 25 seconds, he gave the patient ether, severed the limb, and when the patient came to he asked when the surgery would take place. This greatly impressed the crowd. (In those days, surgeries took place in operating theaters with many other physicians watching.)

Robert Liston died in a sailing accident not long after that and didn’t get to see the evolution of anesthetics. However, he was remembered not only for being “the fastest knife of the West End” but for his willingness to take on the cases that other doctors would not. —WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Time Me, Gentlemen’: The Fastest Surgeon of the 19th Century” — The Atlantic

WTF Fun Fact 13046 – The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War

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What’s now referred to as the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War was not really a war by modern standards. But technically it’s true that the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (off the coast of Great Britain) were in a diplomatic state of war for 335 years. But it’s because they forgot to sign a peace treaty.

The longest “war’?

Also called the Dutch-Scilly War, the bloodless war didn’t officially end until 1986.

During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians fought the Royalists for control of the government. When Cromwell took Cornwall, the Royalist Navy retreated from England into the Isles of Scilly.

At the time, the Dutch Navy was aligned with the Parliamentarians. They took heavy losses from the Royalist fleet. In 1651, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp went to the Scilly Isles to demand payback for the Royalists’ attacks on their ships. But there was no agreement, and he declared war on the Isles of Scilly themselves.

How does a war last three hundred and thirty five years?

The Parliamentarians won the English Civil war, so the fact that the Dutch had declared their war on the Royalists on the Isles of Scilly meant very little after that. The Dutch left without ever firing a shot.

However, since the war was peripheral to the main event, they never declared peace either. Tromp’s declaration of war was so obscure and relatively meaningless that no one really noticed it was happening.

It wasn’t until a historian on the Isles of Scilly started researching the legend of the war that he realized it was technically still in effect. Roy Duncan wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London and that’s when everyone discovered there was no peace treaty.

As a result, Duncan invited the Dutch ambassador Jonkheer Rein Huydecoper to visit Scilly and declare peace on April 17, 1986, 335 years after the war began.

Huydecoper joked that it must have been terrifying to the residents of the island “to know we could have attacked at any moment.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Dutch Proclaim End of War Against Britain’s Scilly Isles” — New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 13045 – The Tale of Two Lovers

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One of the most popular novels of the 15th century was an erotic one. A man who later became pope wrote it. It’s called The Tale of Two Lovers.

No stranger to love

It turns out that like many early popes, Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini had an interesting life even before his rise to power. Born in October 1405 in what is now Pienza in Tuscany, Piccolomini was already a secretary to bishops and cardinals by 1435. But that’s when things got a little steamy.

In 1435, the Church sent him on a diplomatic mission to Scotland to meet with King James I. The boat trips weren’t exactly luxury cruises in those days. So when he got to shore, he vowed to walk all the way from Dunbar to Whitekirk to give thanks at the nearest shrine to the Virgin Mary. That meant trekking 8 miles – in the snow. He had leg pain for the rest of his life after that.

At some point after his arduous trek, he started having some impure thoughts. We know he fathered children in Scotland (as well as England), but that didn’t derail his religious career.

The tale of two lovers

In 1444, Piccolomini must have had some pent up lust to get out. That’s when he set about writing a steamy novel called Historia de duobus amantibus (The tale of two lovers).

The epitolary novel (one whose story is told via a series of letters between characters) is set in SIena. It’s about a married woman named Lucretia and Euryalus, a courtier of the Duke of Austria. They fall in love, realize their feeling are mutual, and begin writing erotic letters to each other.

Piccolomini is responsible for the words, but by the time the book was printed, the publisher, Ulrich Zell, also found someone to supply erotic images to go along with it.

Naturally, it became hugely popular (even if someone couldn’t read, they could still enjoy the images, after all).

While the book was set in Siena and written by an Italian priest, one of the remaining copies lies in the National Museum of Scotland (and another at the British Museum). However, it went through many printings.

Piccolomini becomes pope

Years after the novel was written, Piccolomini became a Cardinal. In another interesting turn of events, he served on a papal conclave (the meeting to select the next pope) and nominated himself for the role. No one knows precisely what goes on in these meetings, but it appears to have been a unanimous vote to crown Piccolomini over a wealthy French Cardinal who was also in the running.

The Church made the university-educated, world-traveling, dad-of-at-least-2 pope on September 3, 1458. He even chose the name Pope Pius II. —WTF fun facts

Source: “The Tale of Two Lovers” — National Library of Scotland

WTF Fun Fact 13043 – The Whiskey Empire of George Washington

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George Washington spent his post-presidential years running a booming whiskey business. Seemingly not content to retire from working life altogether, at age 65 he decided to into the alcohol trade thanks to the ability to grow rye at Mount Vernon.

George Washington’s whiskey

In 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon. When he hired a Scottish plantation manager who had moved to Virginia a few years earlier, the man – James Anderson – noticed that the estate could be used to grow rye as a cover crop.

Rye not being a very popular grain for eating, Anderson pitched the idea of turning it into whiskey. Washington ran the idea past a friend who was a rum maker and presumably got the thumbs up.

Using just two stills, Anderson’s first whiskey was so appealing to Washington that he greenlit the construction of a full distillery with five stills.

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), by 1799, Washington’s distillery was the largest in the U.S. and “produced 11,000 gallons of clear, un-aged whiskey, which Washington sold for a total of $1,800 ($120,000 by today’s standards).”

What happened to Washington’s whiskey empire?

Of course, Washington also died in 1799, and he left the distillery to his nephew. Lawrence Lewis wasn’t able to keep things running. And when a fire destroyed the operation in 1814, he didn’t have it rebuilt,

The state of Virginia purchased the site of the former distillery in the 1930s. But turning it back into an alcohol producer was thwarted by Prohibition and the Depression.

It wasn’t until 1997 that archaeologists found the site of the distillery. They used imaging technology to reconstruct what it would have looked like.

Smithsonian notes that “after securing key funding from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) in 2001, a group of archaeologists, historians, and distillers …carefully searched records for hints about how the distillery functioned on an industrial level…” And by 2007, the distillery was reconstructed and opened to the public.

Today, they do distillation twice a year, just as Anderson did for Washington. And they also make peach brandy. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Long Before Jack Daniels, George Washington Was a Whiskey Tycoon” — Smithsonian Magazine