fun fact

WTF Fun Fact 12799 – The Migratory Monarch Butterfly Is Endangered

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Migratory monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) are a subspecies of monarchs, and while you may have seen them in your backyard growing up if you’re over 40, chances are you’ve seen a lot less of them lately. Migratory monarchs are now endangered and could go extinct.

The iconic monarch butterfly

These iconic American butterflies are black and orange. Like other monarchs, their larvae feed on only one plant – milkweed. Climate change and fires have destroyed much of the milkweed in America and conservationists are encouraging people to plant more.

The butterflies are also threatened by pesticides, herbicides, deforestation, and urban development. In fact, they’re so threatened that a Switzerland-based conservation organization that monitors the status of wildlife – the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – has added them to the list of threatened species.

They join around 41,000 other species that could become extinct without intervention.

Migratory monarch populations

Migratory monarchs in the American West face the largest extinction risk, having lost 99.9% of their population over the last 40 years, according to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below).

The number of Western migratory monarchs went from ten million in the 1980s to 1,914 by 2021. That may not be enough butterflies to keep the population alive.

But according to Smithsonian Magazine, there’s still hope:

“To help boost monarch numbers, scientists and conservationists recommend planting more milkweed and nectar flowers, maintaining forests and limiting the use of pesticides and herbicides in the butterflies’ range, report CNN’s Madeline Holcombe and Jalen Beckford.

​​“People recognize the monarch,” Anna Walker, an entomologist at the New Mexico BioPark Society who led the assessment, tells the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni. “People love the monarch. So that gives us an opportunity to do the outreach and get people on board.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Migratory Monarch Butterflies Are Listed as an Endangered Species” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12798 – Top Phobias

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What are you afraid of? A surprising number of people admit to having phobias in the U.S. In fact, a recent YouGov survey found that 83% said they had these genuine fears. And the top phobias were snakes and heights.

America’s top fears

Despite the pandemic, disease ranked fifth – after public speaking.

YouGov even broke the phobias down by gender, age, income, and political party! There wasn’t much difference between these categories other than women being more likely to fear snakes, spiders, and crowded spaces.

Men were more likely to say they had no fears. But those who had phobias named heights and public speaking as the things that freak them out most.

Fears vs phobias

Now, the YouGov poll doesn’t use the word “phobia” in the proper psychological way. Phobias can truly affect the way you live your life, and they’re more than just fears.

According to VeryWell Mind:

“The National Institute of Mental Health suggests that phobias affect approximately 10% of U.S. adults each year. These phobias typically emerge during childhood or adolescence and continue into adulthood. They also impact twice as many women as they do men. There are a number of explanations for why phobias develop, including evolutionary and behavioral theories. Whatever the cause, phobias are treatable conditions that can be minimized and even eliminated with cognitive and behavioral therapy techniques and medication.”

In addition, “phobias can lead to marked fear and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, and breathlessness. In some cases, these symptoms escalate into a full-blown panic attack.”

Phobias may not always be logical (most snakes and spiders don’t want to hurt you), but that doesn’t make the fear less real.

Interestingly, exposure therapy is one common treatment for phobias. During exposure therapy, you’re around the thing you fear the most in order to desensitize you to it and prove that it’s not as scary as you might think. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Phobias – 1000 U.S. Adult Citizens” — YouGov

WTF Fun Fact 12796 – Russian Beer Only Recently Considered Alcohol

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Until 2011, any drink with less than 10% alcohol was not really considered alcohol. Instead, it was a “foodstuff.” That made beer more of a soft drink, of sorts. It wasn’t until 2011 that Russian then-President Dmitry Medvedev signed a bill that officially classified beer as alcohol in 2011.

Russian beer becomes alcohol

Now, that doesn’t mean Russian kids were drinking beer and calling it a Coke. It was all about who and how regulated beer could be in Russia. And we know Russians like their vodka, so they’re used to some thing a little bit stronger.

Once the law was signed, it allowed ministers to control the sale of beer in the same way they did spirits.

Overconsumption of alcohol is a problem in many places in the world, but Russian alcohol consumption at the time the bill was signed was twice the critical level set by the World Health Organization.

Beer becomes alcohol

The 2011 bill likely came in response to a soaring interest in beer in Russia. And it didn’t seem to be for the same reasons we saw a beer Renaissance in the states. In Russia, it was seen a healthier alternative to spirits. So perhaps people just needed reminding that it was, in fact, still booze.

According to a BBC News story at the time (cited below): “Over the past decade, beer sales in Russia have risen more than 40% while vodka sales have fallen by nearly 30%. Correspondents say it is common to see people swigging beer in the street and in parks as if they are drinking soft drinks. It is not restricted to certain stores and is sold around the clock.”

To bring the consumption of beer under control, the Russian beer industry saw a 200% tax hike by ministers. That would probably discourage our drinking habits too!

While the new law was signed in 2011, it did not go into effect until 2013 and was set to “stop alcohol being sold in unlicensed kiosks, ban its sale from stores between certain hours and restrict its advertising.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Russia classifies beer as alcoholic” — BBC News

WTF Fun Fact 12795 – NYC Buildings With Their Own Zip Codes

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At least 41 buildings in NYC have their own zip codes.

This is most common with skyscrapers, although a unique zip code isn’t about how tall a building is. In fact, it’s more about how many businesses it contains. But there are other reasons a building could have its own ZIP code.

Why do some buildings get a special zip code?

According to AMNY, cited below: “Unique ZIP codes are sometimes assigned based on the volume of mail at a particular address – and only when a ZIP+4 will not satisfy delivery, distribution, and customer requirements,” said U.S.Postal Service spokesman Xavier Hernandez, referring to the add-on code that further segments a geographic area.”

Again, size isn’t everything. The tallest building in the country, 1 World Trade Center, doesn’t have its own zip code. However, entities such as government agencies and universities do.

There are the 41 buildings that had their own zip codes in Manhattan in 2019, according to UPS:

  • 55 Water St. (10041)
  • Park Avenue Plaza, 55 E. 52nd St. (10055)
  • 666 Fifth Ave. (10103)
  • 1290 Avenue of the Americas (10104)
  • Alliance Bernstein Building, 1345 Avenue of the Americas (10105)
  • 888 Seventh Ave. (10106)
  • 250 W. 57th St. (10107)
  • 500 Fifth Ave. (10110)
  • 45 Rockefeller Center (10111)
  • 30 Rockefeller Center (10112)
  • 475 Riverside Dr. (10115)
  • Empire State Building, 350 Fifth Ave. (10118)
  • 1 Penn Plaza (10119)
  • 112 W. 34th St. (10120)
  • 2 Penn Plaza (10121)
  • 225 W. 34th St. (10122)
  • 745 Fifth Ave. (10151)
  • Seagram Building, 375 Park Ave. (10152)
  • General Motors Building, 767 Fifth Ave. (10153)
  • 345 Park Ave. (10154)
  • 964 Third Ave. (10155)
  • 605 Third Ave. (10158)
  • 500 E. 77th St. (10162)
  • One Grand Central Place, 60 E. 42nd St. (10165)
  • Metlife Building, 200 Park Ave. (10166)
  • 245 Park Ave. (10167)
  • Chanin Building, 122 E. 42nd St. (10168)
  • Helmsley Building 230 Park Ave. (10169)
  • 420 Lexington Ave. (10170)
  • 299 Park Ave. (10171)
  • 277 Park Ave. (10172)
  • 355 Madison Ave. (10173)
  • Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Ave. (10174)
  • 521 Fifth Ave. (10175)
  • Fred F. French Building, 551 Fifth Ave. (10176)
  • 250 Park Ave. (10177)
  • 101 Park Ave. (10178)
  • Equitable Life Building, 120 Broadway (10271)
  • 26 Federal Plaza (10278)
  • Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway (10279)

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Why do some buildings have their own ZIP codes?” — AMNY

WTF Fun Fact 12793 – Angry People Overestimate Their Intelligence

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Just because things like swearing are common among intelligent people doesn’t mean that extends to actual anger. In fact, angry people tend to overestimate their intelligence.

Anger and intelligence

Some negative emotions are more common among intelligent people, but anger seems to make folks a bit overconfident. A study showed that those who are quick to anger tend to think they’re smart (and the rest of the world needs to catch up).

The study

According to LiveScience (cited below): “To test this, the researchers surveyed more than 520 undergraduate students attending schools in Warsaw. The students answered survey questions to gauge how easily and how often they get angry. Then, the students took a survey to assess their own intelligence before taking an objective intelligence test.”

People in the study who were quick to anger had a higher opinion of their own cognitive abilities. Those who were more neurotic, on the other hand (who reacted to events with anxiety and distress), tended to see themselves as less intelligent.

In the end, it seems to come down to narcissism. Ill-tempered people tended to be more narcissistic and therefore think they’re smart. Of course, there’s no real, true test of intelligence, so we don’t know if that’s true or not; we just know that they seem to think they’re the real deal when it comes to brains.

Perceived intelligence

The study looked at anger as an overall personality trait, asking people to judge their own general tendencies towards anger. It didn’t try to test how angry they got in the moment.

It’s also important to note that “although the researchers found an association between the two traits, it’s unclear if there’s a cause and effect relationship between anger and overestimating intelligence. More research is needed to explore that link.”

The study was published in the journal Intelligence. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Angry People Think They’re Smarter Than They Are” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12791 – When Were Doritos Invented

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Actually, the interesting question isn’t when were Doritos invented but where. And those answers are: in 1960s, and at Disneyland of all places!

The invention of Doritos

Not only were Doritos invented at Disneyland, but they also started off as trash.

Doritos is a Spanish word meaning “little pieces of gold.” And these valuable little things started out their lives as pieces of tortilla thrown out at Disneyland’s Mexican restaurant in Frontierland, called Casa de Fritos. (The restaurant is now called Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante).

As you may have guessed, that early restaurant was owned by one of Disney’s corporate sponsors, Fritos (another delicious snack).

From trash to treasure

According to the Disney blog Walt’s Disneyland (cited below: “All non-Fritos ingredients served at Casa de Fritos, such as the tortillas, meat, beans, and fresh produce, were supplied by Alex Foods…

And it was a salesman for Alex foods who “noticed that Casa de Fritos was tossing unused tortillas in the trash at the end of each day” in the 1960s. “He suggested that the cook cut the surplus tortillas into triangles, deep fry them, and season them in the style of a Zapotec Mexican snack called totopos. The cook took the salesman’s advice and fried up the first batch of what we now know as Doritos.”

Once the chips became popular at Disneyland, Fritos realized they might have greater commercial success.

The invention of mass Dorito production

When a Frito executive tasted the new treat in 1964, he asked Alex Foods if Fritos could mass produce the snack. And they were so popular that Alex Foods could not keep u with demand.

That’s when Frito-Lay took over Doritos production at its Tulsa, Oklahoma plant for nationwide distribution in 1967. And the rest, as they say, is history! – WTF fun facts

Source: “Disneyland: The Birthplace of Doritos?” — Walt’s Disneyland

WTF Fun Fact 12790 – Dog Branded a Fake Hero By NYT

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In 1908, the New York Times ran a story calling a dog in Paris a fake hero. But before you jump to the canine’s defense, you might want to hear why. It turns out he was a bit of a bad boy.

Dog Saves Child

As the story is told, a heard a child screaming for help one day by the Seine river in Paris. And like a proper hero, he jumped in to rescue the poor kiddo.

Of course, he was greatly rewarded.

It turns out that the slab of meat he received as a reward was something he didn’t want to give up. So he presumably figured he’d just wait by the Seine to see if his heroics could be of service again. And it didn’t take long for another child to fall in.

Once again, the dog saved the child and was rewarded.

Now, remember the story of Pavlov’s dogs.

“Fake hero” dog pushes children

Eventually, someone noticed that a suspicious number of children were falling into the Seine, and always nearby a certain meat-loving canine. At first, people thought there was some sort of child-drowning criminal wandering about the neighborhood.

It didn’t take long for people to figure out that the dog eventually started pushing kids in if he had to wait too long for a rescue and reward scenario to present itself.

That’s what landed him on the front page of the NYT in a story titled “DOG A FAKE HERO.”

Now, whether the story is true or not, we can’t say. We only know what the NYT reported. Sadly, they didn’t follow up on what may have happened to the dog nor did they mention whether or not any of the children noticed that they took a swim courtesy of the canine.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “The Dog Who Kept Pushing Kids Into A River To Acquire Steak Rewards” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12789 – Volvo’s Seat Belt Patent

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Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin saved countless lives by inventing the V-type three-point safety belt in 1959. And while the Swedish car company could have made millions by licensing the design to their competitors, they decided to gift the design to the world instead of patenting it for themselves.

The story of the seat belt

The two-point (over the waist) seat belt already existed at the time, but for those of us who remember them, they could manage to do harm even at a hard stop. And those weren’t even a standard feature in most cars!

Volvo’s president at the time, Gunnar Engellau, lost a relative to a traffic accident in which the seat belt was part of the problem. It was his loss that inspired him to find the best engineer possible to build a better seat belt.

Interestingly, that engineer happened to work for rival car company Saab. But Engellau managed to hire away Nils Bohlin and tapped him to work exclusively on the new design.

The story of the patent

Car companies patent all of their designs. If they’re good, other car companies have to pay to license them for their own vehicles. If other companies try to copy patented designs, they get sued. A U.S. patent, for example, gives you a 20-year monopoly right over a design.

But the engineers knew that this wasn’t the right thing to do. They had invented something to protect human welfare and retaining exclusivity meant everyone would have to buy a Volvo to be safe.

Engellau knew that wouldn’t happen.

Yes, they took out a patent on the design to give credit where credit was due, but Volvo then gifted the design to all other rival car companies.

As Forbes (cited below) put it: “Having sponsored the R&D, they gifted their designs to competitors, to encourage mass adoption and to save lives.”

Imagine that.

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Volvo’s Gift To The World, Modern Seat Belts Have Saved Millions Of Lives” — Forbes

WTF Fun Fact 12788 – Monopoly, The Landlord’s Game

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Charles Darrow is credited with inventing the board game Monopoly, but even he wasn’t aware of the real inventor of the game. Lizzie Magie invented Monopoly, only she called it “The Landlord’s Game.”

The Landlord’s Game becomes Monopoly

In 1932, Charles Darrow was playing a real-estate board game with friends. It wasn’t a game you could buy in a box, but one that was passed between friends who made their own boards. Darrow presumably had no clue it had been invented by a progressive feminist writer named Lizzie Magie nearly three decades earlier. She had called it The Landlord’s Game, but it was colloquially known as “the monopoly game.”

Darrow was so taken with it that he asked for a set of rules and took the idea to Parker Brothers. Then he seems to have taken credit for inventing it altogether, which helped him make millions in royalties.

According to The Guardian (cited below), “one journalist after another asked him how he had managed to invent Monopoly out of thin air – a seeming sleight of hand that had brought joy into so many households. ‘It’s a freak,’ Darrow told the Germantown Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper. ‘Entirely unexpected and illogical.'”

The Real “Monopoly”

Magie wrote about her game in a political magazine in the early 20th century, noting: “It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences. It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth.”

She created two sets of rules – “an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents,” according to The Guardian’s story about a book on the history of the game titled, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon.

Magie had even patented the game and published a version through the Economic Game Company. It was popular among progressive intellectuals, but interestingly enough, the monopolist’s rules became far more popular.

The real Monopoly

Magie wasn’t sure what to think when Parker Brothers approached her about buying the rights to the game for $500 after they were approached by Darrow, but she did sell them. Only later did she find out why they wanted to buy them. And she never received any of the millions in royalties that Darrow did. Nor did she receive any of the credit until recently.

According to The Guardian, “She died in 1948, a widow with no children, whose obituary and headstone made no mention of her game invention. One of her last jobs was at the US Office of Education, where her colleagues knew her only as an elderly typist who talked about inventing games.”

Today, Parker Brothers is owned by Hasbro, which still credits Darrow with inventing the game in 1935. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins” — The Guardian