fun fact

WTF Fun Fact 12191 – The Prevalence of Thunderstorms

At any given moment, there are around 2,000 thunderstorms taking place on the planet. Each year, 16 million thunderstorms take place on Earth.

What are thunderstorms?

A thunderstorm is simply a rain shower during which you can hear thunder. They are the result of moisture being lifted from the ground and into the air via a phenomenon called convection.

According to NOAA (cited below): “Three basic ingredients are required for a thunderstorm to form: moisture, rising unstable air (air that keeps rising when given a nudge), and a lifting mechanism to provide the ‘nudge.’ The sun heats the surface of the earth, which warms the air above it. If this warm surface air is forced to rise—hills or mountains, or areas where warm/cold or wet/dry air bump together can cause rising motion—it will continue to rise as long as it weighs less and stays warmer than the air around it. As the air rises, it transfers heat from the surface of the earth to the upper levels of the atmosphere (the process of convection). The water vapor it contains begins to cool, releases the heat, condenses and forms a cloud. The cloud eventually grows upward into areas where the temperature is below freezing. As a storm rises into freezing air, different types of ice particles can be created from freezing liquid drops. The ice particles can grow by condensing vapor (like frost) and by collecting smaller liquid drops that haven’t frozen yet (a state called ‘supercooled’). When two ice particles collide, they usually bounce off each other, but one particle can rip off a little bit of ice from the other one and grab some electric charge. Lots of these collisions build up big regions of electric charges to cause a bolt of lightning, which creates the sound waves we hear as thunder.”

A thunderstorm usually starts without rain and does not need to contain lightning.

Facts about thunderstorms

Each year, there are an estimated 16 million thunderstorms on the planet and 10,000 in the U.S. alone. However, only 10% of these reach the “severe” thunderstorm category in which wind, rain, and lightning can do damage.

While spring and summer are the most common time for thunderstorms, they can occur year-round.

Thunderstorms might seem innocent, but they can be deadly. NOAA notes that “Many hazardous weather events are associated with thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, rainfall from thunderstorms causes flash flooding, killing more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes or lightning. Lightning is responsible for many fires around the world each year, and causes fatalities. Hail up to the size of softballs damages cars and windows, and kills livestock caught out in the open. Strong (up to more than 120 mph) straight-line winds associated with thunderstorms knock down trees, power lines and mobile homes. Tornadoes (with winds up to about 300 mph) can destroy all but the best-built man-made structures.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Severe Weather 101” — NOAA

WTF Fun Fact 12908 – Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s Swearing Parrots

Five African grey parrots at the UK’s Lincolnshire Wildlife Park got separated by staff because they were perceived as having a “bad influence” on one another. Someone taught the parrots to swear. And there’s a reason they call repeating things “parroting.”

While no guests complained, the zoo took the proactive step of separating them in case any visiting children ever decided to parrot the parrots.

Parrots and profanity

According to The Guardian (cited below), “The parrots – named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade and Tyson – joined Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s colony of 200 grey parrots in August. But soon after, they started encouraging each other to swear.”

“We saw it very quickly – we are quite used to parrots swearing but we’ve never had five at the same time,” Steve Nichols, CEO of the wildlife park reportedly said. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”

No one got rid of the parrots – they were simply “distributed to different areas of the park so they do not ‘set each other off.'”

Naughts parrots

Guests weren’t put off at all by the parrots. In fact, as you might expect, they drew people into the facility. “People have come to us but they think it’s highly amusing, we haven’t had one complaint,” Nichols said, according to The Guardian. “When a parrot tells you to fuck off, it amuses people very highly. It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.”

We know some humans who offer that service for free as well, but someone it just seems less rude coming from a parrot.

The paper also noted that “The park is also home to parrot Chico, who made headlines in September after learning to sing a range of pop songs, including Beyoncé’s If I Were a Boy.”

It sounds like quite an interesting place! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Swearing parrots separated after telling folk where to go” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12907 – The Controversy Over Santa Anna’s Leg

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón – known as General Santa Anna – was a Mexican politician and military general who fought for the independence of Mexico in the mid 1800s. And while much is known about him, less is known about the ongoing “fight” between Illinois and Texas for custody of Santa Anna’s leg.

When did Santa Anna lose his leg?

Santa Anna was a controversial figure who gave up Mexican territory to the U.S. but continued to be a hero to his troops nevertheless.

In the little-known Pastry War (1838-1839) against the French, he lost his left leg.

French troops shot Santa Anna in the leg at the Battle of Veracruz (1838). They used a French grapeshot (a bag of smaller caliber rounds bound together rather than a single piece of ammunition), which damaged the leg so badly that doctors had to amputate it. Later, Santa Anna used the moment not only to hold a full military funeral for the leg but to use it as propaganda to gain back power after retiring a few years earlier.

The leg funeral took place in Mexico city. However, protestors later dug up the limb and dragged it through the streets.

But this is not the leg at the heart of the controversy.

The battle for a wooden leg

Santa Anna had a wooden prosthetic made to replace his leg. Today, it’s in Illinois of all places.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

“In 1847, the United States and Mexico fought what Americans call the Mexican War and Mexicans call the Invasion of Mexico. During that conflict, his forces were surprised by a gallant Illinois infantry unit. He fled on horseback, leaving the prosthesis behind.
Our troops took the abandoned appendage into custody and transported it to Illinois, prudently assuring it would never again be put to warlike purposes. It has resided here since, and is currently among the holdings of the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield.”

Over the last few decades, Texas has tried to claim ownership of the wooden leg. Illinois will not relinquish it.

In an editorial in 2016 (cited below), the Tribune’s board wrote: “A museum at the San Jacinto Battlefield, where he was captured and forced to give up his claim to Texas, has petitioned the White House to get the leg moved there, where it would keep company with his knee buckle and tent stake. Students at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio think they should get the leg so they can give it to Mexico.”

The answer to Texas’ request has been a resounding “no” from Illinois. “At San Jacinto, Santa Anna still had the legs he was born with. Texans didn’t inflict the injury that necessitated the replacement, and Texans didn’t capture it or preserve it for 169 years. As we all know, possession is nine parts of the law,” noted the editorial board. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Santa Anna’s leg? Come and take it.” — Chicago Tribune (editorial board)

WTF Fun Fact 12906 – People Seem to Love Throwing Bikes in Water

We don’t understand it. It’s a phenomenon that’s still being investigated across the world. What’s behind the desire for people to throw perfectly usable bicycles into waterways like rivers, lakes, and canals? After all, it’s such a waste.

Mistreated bikes are a big problem

Amsterdam is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. And yet, lately, city workers have been pulling out roughly 15,000 bikes each year(!) from canals. There are so many bikes on the bottom of these canals that they sometimes scrape the bottom of barges coming through. And despite that obscenely large number of trashed bikes, it’s actually less of a problem than it was years ago.

Bike-sharing companies have had to pull their bikes out of rivers in Southern China and Rome’s Tiber River as well. In fact, bike-sharing companies have pulled out of some cities because they cost is greater than the reward.

But why on earth are people so wasteful? What’s the point of trashing a (in most cases) perfectly good bike?

Why do people throw bikes in the water?

On a 2022 episode of NPR’s All Things Considered (cited below), author of Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle, Jody Rosen, tried to shed some light on the matter.

She said: “When you see the bicycle go in there and slip below the surface of the water, there’s just a certain satisfaction, a certain free zone in that. And I say that not because I’ve done it myself, mind you. This is a practice which is documented online, for instance, on YouTube quite comprehensively. So there’s lots of videos that you can see where people are tossing bikes into water and taking videos of it for fun and sport. So that is definitely a factor. But there’s all kinds of other types of vandalism that surround this, which I think are interesting.”

Rosen believes bike-sharing programs make it easier for people to take these two-wheelers for granted, noting, “The fact that these bike programs are proliferating across the world, which I think we can say is a good thing — we need more bicycles in the city — but there are simply more of them around. And in fact, you can imagine that people feel a little bit more impunity, that a potential bicycle drowner would feel less guilt attached to tossing a bike in the water if it’s a share bike that has a bank or some sort of corporate sponsor’s logo on the mudguard as opposed to, you know, some individual joe-schmoe’s bike.”

Interestingly, Rosen also thinks there may be a political dimension to this – that somehow people are threatened by bikes because they are so attached to the idea of driving a car. “We’re seeing a kind of increasingly heated debate over what kinds of vehicles belong on the streets of cities. Motorists are reacting to the increased numbers of bicycles on the streets, sometimes with great annoyance and and sometimes with actual violence. So it may be that at least these drowned bikes, these trashed and vandalized bikes reflect a kind of ongoing battle for the right to the roadways,” she suggested.

Whatever the reasons, this is happening all over the world, in bike-friendly cities. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Why do so many bikes end up underwater? The reasons can be weird and varied” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12905 – Monkey Blamed for Fake 911 Calls

It’s illegal to make fake 911 calls, so the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office tried to track down the culprit of a recent dial-in. They also wanted to make sure no one need their help on the end of the suddenly disconnected call. The tracked the phone down to the “Zoo To You” near Paso Robles and deduced that it was likely a Capuchin monkey that made the call.

Finding the source of the call

Dispatchers tried to call and text back when the call first came in. Then they sent in the police, only to find that no human on the premesis had any idea what they were talking about.

The call came from a cell phone that was left in a golf cart used on the property.

They finally deduced that a Capuchin monkey named Route had apparently picked up the zoo’s cellphone, which was in a golf cart used to move about the property.

In a Facebook post, they recounted the story:

“Our Deputies have seen their fair share of “monkey business” in the County. But nothing quite like this.
It all started Saturday night when we received a 911 call that had disconnected. Dispatchers tried to call and text back but they received no response. So Deputies were sent to investigate.
The address took them to the offices of Zoo to You near Paso Robles. No one there had placed the call.
Was someone trying to make us look like a monkey’s uncle?
Then they all realized… it must have been Route the Capuchin monkey.
Apparently, Route had picked up the zoo’s cell phone… which was in the zoo’s golf cart… which is used to travel around the zoo’s 40 acre site.
We’re told Capuchin monkeys are very inquisitive and will grab anything and everything and just start pushing buttons.
And that’s what Route did… just so happened it was in the right combination of numbers to call us.
As you can tell from these photos, Route is a little embarrassed by the whole thing. But you can’t really blame her, after all monkey see, monkey do.”

Emergency monkey dial

You’ve no doubt heard of the infinite monkey theroem that posits that a monkey sitting at a typewriter for an infinite amount of time would eventually get around to typing out a full line of Shakespeare.

Abstract statistical metaphors aside, it turns out the a Capuchin with a cell phone and nothing else to do will eventually press 9-1-1-send. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Capuchin Monkey Accused Of Calling 911 From California Zoo” — HuffPost

WTF Fun Fact 12904 – The Popularity of Guinness in Nigeria

If you go to Lagos, Nigeria, you’re just as likely to hear about how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness beer as you are in Ireland. In Nigeria and throughout the African continent, Guinness is one of the most popular beers around.

Guinness in Africa

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below): “The dark brew makes up about 45 percent of beer sold by Diageo, the company that owns Guinness, on the continent, and Diageo is one of four companies that split about 90 percent of the African beer market. Popularity varies from country to country, and Guinness is a particular favorite in Nigeria.”

In the US and UK, we tend to get a slightly different type of Guinness depending on whether we have it on draught or in a bottle. But the Foreign Extra Stout in Nigeria is the Foreign Extra Stout, which has the same formula as the beer the British colonies got in the 18th century.

And there’s definitely something special about it for fans in African since the continent (which is, admittedly, enormous and diverse) now rivals the UK in stout consumption.

“In 2007, Africa surpassed Ireland as the second largest market for Guinness worldwide, behind the United Kingdom, and sales have only climbed since then (by about 13 percent each year),” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Guinness in Nigeria

In 1803, Arthur Guinness II inherited the brewery from his father and began exporting the beer to England. But after that, the British colonies were the next obvious place to export the beer. First, Guinness’ “West Indies Porter” went to Barbados and Trinidad. Then, it became known as Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and arrived in Sierra Leone in 1827.

While the beer went to soldiers of the British Empire, breweries were eventually built on the continent itself in order to bottle beer for Africans. Even as colonies gained their freedom, the beer remained. And when Nigeria won its independence in 1960, Lagos (the capital) got the first long-term Guinness brewery outside of Ireland. Now, 13 breweries produce Guinness in Africa.

Smithsonian notes: “In his book Guinness: The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint, historian Bill Yenne discussed the popularity of Guinness abroad with brewmaster Fergal Murray, who worked at the Guinness brewery in Nigeria in the 1980s. ‘I’ve talked to Nigerians who think of Guinness as their national beer,’ Murray recalled. ‘They wonder why Guinness is sold in Ireland. You can talk to Nigerians in Lagos who will tell you as many stories about their perfect pint as an Irishman will. They’ll tell about how they’ve had the perfect bottle of foreign extra stout at a particular bar on their way home from work.'”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “How Guinness Became an African Favorite” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12903 – Annual T-Rex Race

After a brief pause during Covid, the annual T-Rex Race at Emerald Downs is back. Granted, you probably never noticed it was missing unless you live in or around Auburn, Washington or watched the viral video of the 2019 race.

The T-Rex Race

According to an Emerald Downs press release (cited below), the T-Rex Race “produced one of the most watched videos in the world in 2019” and “was viewed more than 100 million times on social media and was featured in People Magazine and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Newscasts from coast to coast and around the world covered the unique event.”

Somehow, we missed that. But I think we can all agree our lives have been infinitely improved by knowing such a thing exists.

In 2022, the race was bigger and better than ever:

“Not only is the event returning but three times as many T-Rexes are expected to race. As in past years the staff of Tri Guard Pest Control in Renton will be participating and for the first time the race is open to the public. Anyone dressed in an inflatable T-Rex costume may run. There will be a race for kid dinosaurs aged 16 and under and one race for adults,” noted the press release.

Bigger and better than ever

We got a kick out of the statement that “Track officials are expecting this to be the biggest Dinosaur race in the past 233 million years!” No doubt!

There were horse races at the track on the day of the race, but the T-Rex races took place after the third and fourth horse races of the day. There was a race for adults and a race for children – at 3:15 and 3:45 p.m.

A resident of Auburn, Washington, Logan Kludsikofsky, won the adult race while 13-year-old Sebastian Davis of Silverdale, Washington won the kid’s race. – WTF fun facts

Source: “T-Rex Race Returns Sunday, August 21!” — Emerald Downs

WTF Fun Fact 12901 – Blue Whale Calorie Intake

It’s no surprise that a blue whale’s calorie intake is massive – after all, they’re the largest creatures on Earth (and the largest animal to ever live). But half a MILLION calories is a lot to take in – especially in just one mouthful of food!

Blue whale feeding

The majority of a blue whale’s diet consists of tiny shrimp-like creatures called krill (interestingly, one of the smallest ocean creatures). According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below): “A foraging whale lunges into a swarm of these shrimp-like animals, accelerating to high speed with its mouth open at a right angle. Pushed back by the rush of water, its mouth expands and its tongue (itself the size of an elephant) inverts to create more room. The whale engulfs up to 110 tonnes of water and any krill within is filtered out and swallowed.”

Jeremy Goldbogen studies blue whales at the University of British Columbia. He tagged 265 of the massive creatures to log the amount of energy they expended while lunging to eat. His devices recorded information for 650 feeding lunges.

“The data-loggers recorded the whales’ position, their acceleration, and the noise and pressure of the surrounding water. The noise was important – by measuring the sound of water rushing past the animal, Goldbergen could work out how fast it was travelling.”

Blue whales can move up to 8 mph in less than a minute and 770 to 1900 calories just to work up the momentum to take that big gulp of ocean water. An average feeding dive takes about 10 minutes, and the whales take around 3 to 4 gulps in that time. But they consume from 6 to 240 times the amount of calories they expend.

Blue whale calorie counting

If a blue whale expends so much energy simply diving for food, it makes sense that they would have to take in an enormous number of calories to make it worth the trouble. But it’s hard to believe just how many calories they can take in.

Smithsonian Magazine states: “If a big whale attacks a particularly dense swarm, it can swallow up to 500 kilograms of krill, eating 457,000 calories in a single monster mouthful and getting back almost 200 times the amount it burned in the attempt. A smaller whale lunging at a sparse collection of krill would only get around 8,000 calories, but that’s still 8 times more than what it burned. Even when Goldbogen accounted for the energy needed to dive in search of prey, the whales still regained 3 to 90 times as much energy as they spent.”

This makes it easier to think of all of the rest of our meals as relatively low-calorie, by comparison. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Blue whales can eat half a million calories in a single mouthful” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12899 – China Bans Reincarnation

According to the Chinese government, any Tibetan monk needs government permission to reincarnate. The goal of this law, according to foreign policy and religious experts alike is to ensure that the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, reincarnates inside of China’s borders so they can control his actions.

How did China ban reincarnation?

The current Dalai Lama is considered a threat to the Chinese government and its claim to Tibet. Despite the fact that the Chinese government is atheist by nature and its officials are not allowed to practice religion, they still want to regulate what they consider to be Tibetan “separatists” in the form of Buddhist monks. So they rubber-stamped legislation that tries to interfere with the spiritual leadership of the region.

In 2007, the legislation insisted that monks must have “recognition from the religious world and the temple” to reincarnate. “The selection of reincarnates must preserve national unity and solidarity of all ethnic groups, and the selection process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country,” it says.

That might sound non-controversial at first glance, but the Chinese government has published an official registry of “licensed Buddhas” (monks who have achieved the highest place in the Buddhist religion) along with their recognized temple and an ID card number. The goal is to use the database to recognize only certain monks who tow the party line. The Chinese government says that “fake living Buddhas” are the reason behind the action.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, and other Tibetan Buddhist monks pose a threat to the government with their desire for an autonomous Tibet, so they are not on the list.

In other words, if the Dalai Lama wants to reincarnate, he’ll have to do it within Chinese borders and be on the list in order to be recognized as the new, reigning Dalai Lama. Of course, the current Dalai Lama has refused to be reincarnated within Chinese borders, so we’ll likely see two Dalai Lamas when Tenzin Gyatso passes away – one recognized by China and one recognized by most of the rest of the world.

The reaction to the reincarnation law

In 2011, the Dalai Lama called the country’s reincarnation laws “outrageous” and “disgraceful,” saying “The enforcement of various inappropriate methods for recognizing reincarnations to eradicate our unique Tibetan cultural traditions is doing damage that will be difficult to repair.”

The Dalai Lama currently can’t return to Tibet or China and monks have protested this for decades. According to the LA Times (cited below): “More than 140 people in Tibet and neighboring provinces have burned themselves to death since 2009 as a grim protest against Chinese rule; many have called for the Dalai Lama’s return as they went up in flames.”

The newspaper also noted that, in 2016, “Baima Chilin, deputy Communist Party chief of the region, said that the Dalai Lama was ‘no longer a religious leader’ after he left Tibet in 1959. ‘If the Dalai Lama wants to return to China, he must give up ‘Tibet independence,’ and must publicly acknowledge Tibet and Taiwan are inseparable parts of China and that the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government.'”

There’s no chance of that happening. — WTF fun facts

Source: “In China, the state decides who can come back from the dead” — LA Times