funny facts

WTF Fun Fact 13079 – Snowflakes Require Dust or Pollen

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Snowflakes are frozen bits of water that form around a “nucleus.” That nucleus is something that must already exist in the air – like a dust or pollen particle.

How are snowflakes made?

All political jokes aside, snowflakes are actually an interesting natural phenomenon.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (cited below): “A snowflake begins to form when an extremely cold water droplet freezes onto a pollen or dust particle in the sky. This creates an ice crystal. As the ice crystal falls to the ground, water vapor freezes onto the primary crystal, building new crystals – the six arms of the snowflake.”

This doesn’t mean the air is dirty or polluted – after all, pollen is completely natural!

Who are snowflakes so unique?

You may be wondering why all snowflakes are unique if they each require the same circumstances in order to form.

NOAA has an answer for that!

Snowflakes are made up of ice crystals. These build up around the nucleus symetrically “because they reflect the internal order of the crystal’s water molecules as they arrange themselves in predetermined spaces (known as “crystallization”) to form a six-sided snowflake.”

A combination of air temperature, humidity, and the speed at which they fall determine precisely how the ice crystals form into different shapes. When it warmer, the crystals have a longer, sharper shape and when it’s cold, they tend to be shorter and flatter.

Snowflakes always have six sides, but those “arms” can branch off in different directions depending on those factors as well.

That’s why no two snowflakes are exactly alike.

Of course, when you get 5 or 6 feet of snow, it’s pretty hard to think about those snowflakes as individuals! They all go in the same shovel! — WTF fun facts

Source: “How do snowflakes form? Get the science behind snow” — NOAA

WTF Fun Fact 13078 – World’s Biggest Snowflake

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We really can’t picture the world’s biggest snowflake. Apparently, it was 15 inches long. But there is no photo since it was spotted by multiple people all the way back in 1887. Nothing has overtaken it in the Guinness Book of World Records because…well, how do you preserve a snowflake long enough to prove it?

According to the Guinness Book of World Records page for the “largest snowflake”: “It is reported that on 28 Jan 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana, USA, ranch owner Matt Coleman measured a snowflake that was 15in 38cm wide and 8in 20cm thick, which he later described as being ‘larger than milk pans’ in Monthly Weather Review Magazine.”

Spotting the world’s biggest snowflake

Experts insist that snowflakes as large as frisbees or basketballs aren’t entirely out of the question – but they’re likely multiple snowflakes attached to one another.

Yet, since the 19th century, there have been multiple recorded sightings of such giant flakes falling from the sky (and really falling since their weight and size would make them fall faster than small snowflakes).

According to the NYT (cited below), there are still questions.

“But the evidence was always sketchy and, because of the fragile nature of snowflakes, fleeting. The giant flakes were not quite in the category of sea monsters or U.F.O.’s. Even so, skeptics noted the human fondness for exaggeration, as well as the lack of convincing photographs. And the organizations that compile weather records never made tracking big flakes an observational requirement. So the giants languished in a twilight world of science, their existence claimed but seldom documented.”

Snowflakes can get BIG

Maybe there really was a 15-inch snowflake. Multiple Army officers reported seeing them, as did a nearby rancher in Montana where they fell. But what other evidence could we reasonably expect?

There’s not much restricting the possible size of snowflakes other than the wind. It’s likely that a truly huge flake would be torn apart before anyone could see it.

Yet, if you look back far (and wide) enough in history, there are multiple mentions of abnormally large flakes. These days, anyone with a ruler and a camera could document the world’s biggest snowflake if they wanted to.

According to the NYT:

“William S. Pike, a British weather observer for the Royal Meteorological Society, found 11 poorly known reports, which he described in The Journal of Meteorology in January 1988. He wrote that reliable observers of big flakes estimated their diameters at anywhere from two to six inches.” —WTF fun facts

Source: “Snowflakes as Big as Frisbees?” — New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 13072 – Elephants Swim

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Despite their size and weight, elephants swim with great skill. They can cross rivers, swim underwater, and even float when they get tired.

How do elephants swim?

The elephant’s trunk is one of its best swimming tools. It acts as a snorkel when they go underwater, helping them breathe.

Not all elephants get the chance to swim unless they live in swampy areas or near deep enough rivers. But they’re built to do it. Even their feet have webbing that helps them glide through the water. Their ears help them keep water out of their ear canals, and their tails can even act as rudders.

Learning to swim

Elephants aren’t born knowing how to swim. They typically learn how to use their trunk as a snorkel at a few months old. That’s when their mother brings them to a nearby body of water and watches over them while they learn.

Despite looking like they’d immediately sink to the bottom of the water, elephants are also naturally buoyant. That makes it very difficult for them to drown (unless they get caught up in rapids).

According to the Elephant Guide website (cited below):

“Elephants typically swim using somewhat of a breaststroke. For us humans, this will be comparable to a “doggy swim” type of stroke rather than a clean human breaststroke.
The elephants’ four legs are used to propel them through the water. Their legs are so powerful that they can swim continuously for as long as six hours! An elephant’s head and torso are generally kept just below the surface of the water as it paddles its massive limbs back and forth on a typical swim.”

Swimming for distance

The longest recorded elephant swim was 22 miles and 6 meters deep!

But typically they go for short swims to cool off. Distance swimming only occurs when they need to cross a body of water. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Can Elephants swim? They even swim underwater!” — Elephant Guide

WTF Fun Fact 13071 – The Man Who Invented Pop-Up Ads

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Ethan Zuckerman is the man who invented pop-up ads. And he’s very sorry he did.

Pop-ups pay the bills

Zuckerman wrote a long apology to the world in The Atlantic in 2014 (cited below). In it, he explained that from 1994-7 he worked for a website that needed a creative new revenue stream:

“At the end of the day, the business model that got us funded was advertising. The model that got us acquired was analyzing users’ personal homepages so we could better target ads to them. Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad. It was a way to associate an ad with a user’s page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page’s content.”

Of pop-up ads, Zuckerman admits “I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”

The best intentions of the man who invented pop-up ads

Creating better, more targeted ads required better surveillance of web users’ behaviors. Specifically, “tracking users’ mobile devices as they move through the physical world, assembling more complex user profiles by trading information between data brokers.”

The more a business relies on ads for income, the more they need people to see those ads. The ads become more invasive as a result. Enter pop-ups.

While the man who invented pop-up ads regrets his creation, he also notes that there’s no other way to offer the free services of the Internet without some sort of advertising.

People aren’t willing to pay for services like social media, for example. As a result, the ads we see have to be visible and valuable – and that means targeting us with things the algorithm knows we’re interested in and making sure we see the ads by forcing us to click through them in order to get to the content we want to see at the moment. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Internet’s Original Sin” — The Atlantic

WTF Fun Fact 13069 – Enoteca Maria’s Nonnas of the World

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A restaurant on Staten Island has two kitchens – and both are run by grandmothers with cooking skills. Enoteca Maria’s Nonnas of the World program provides customers with a rotating series of international grandmothers who offer their own menu each night based on their homeland’s regional cuisine. The main kitchen is always staffed by an Italian nonna.

Nonnas in the kitchen

According to the restaurant website: “Our two kitchens at Enoteca Maria will continue to serve regional Italian cuisine from the nonne of Italy, while offering a second menu of a different nonna every night from any and every country in the world.” Start following the online book that is being generated at www.nonnasoftheworld.com“

The restaurant’s unique angle was born out of tragedy. According to Atlas Obscura (cited below): “The project came about after owner Joe Scaravella lost his mother in the early 2000s. When he opened Enoteca Maria two years later, Scaravella staffed his kitchen with Italian grandmothers (“nonnas”) to create a feeling of homey comfort in his restaurant.”

Enoteca Maria’s nonnas go international

Once the restaurant was up and running, Scaravella tried an experiment. In 2015, he invited a Pakistani grandmother to cook for a night. It was such a success that he opened up a second kitchen in the restaurant with its own rotating menu of international cuisine. Patrons can choose from the Italian nonna or the international nonna menu.

While the nonnas are all skilled in regional cuisine, these days they live in and around Brooklyn. Atlas Obscura notes that “To date, Nonnas of the World has featured cooks from Japan, Syria, France, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Liberia, Kazakhstan, the Dominican Republic, Czechia, Belarus, Pakistan, and of course, Italy, just to name a few.”

How does it work?

“Two nonnas work in the kitchen at any given time, one as the head chef, the other as her sous chef. This means a South American nonna and a Middle Eastern nonna could be working side by side in the kitchen, learning from each other’s recipes. Cooking classes are offered as well—for women only, many of whom are grandmothers themselves—and get booked months in advance. It’s another opportunity for cross-cultural recipe sharing, as well as a chance to eat food made with love.”

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Nonnas of the World” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 13066 – Video Games and Surgeons

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Surgeons who play video games for at least a few hours a week make fewer errors during surgery. This specifically relates to non-invasive and very precise laparoscopic surgery.

Surgeons who play video games

In an article titled The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century (cited below), researchers from Beth Israel Medical Center, New York University Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, Iowa State University, and Virginia Commonwealth University found that video games are correlated with better surgical outcomes.

According to the authors:

“Past video game play in excess of 3 h/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors…and 27% faster completion…Current video game players made 32% fewer errors…performed 24% faster…and scored 26% better overall…than their nonplaying colleagues…Regression analysis also indicated that video game skill and past video game experience are significant predictors of demonstrated laparoscopic skills.”

Videos games for surgical success

The researchers set out to measure the relationship between “laparoscopic skills and suturing capability, video game scores, and video game experience.”

Because they found a correlation between video game skills and positive laparoscopic surgical skills, the researchers suggest that medical training curricula might video games in the future. But this applied to surgery that didn’t require a large incision. Instead, laparoscopic surgery uses a small incision or hole and is largely computer-guided. It’s a more popular kind of surgery because there are typically fewer risks involved for the patient and less down-time.

While the authors acknowledged the drawbacks of playing video games excessively (such as poor grades and possible heightened aggressiveness), they also highlighted the benefits.

More specifically:

“Disturbing negative correlations with video game play include lower grades in school; aggressive thoughts, emotions, and actions (including physical fights); and decreasing positive prosocial behaviors. Excessive game playing has also been linked to childhood obesity, muscular and skeletal disorders, and even epileptic seizures. Other physical findings have included increases in blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormones (norepinephrine and epinephrine)… However, positive benefits of video game play include increased performance on eye-hand coordination tasks and neuropsychological tests and better reaction time, spatial visualization, and mental rotation.”

The benefits of gaming

The authors cited other studies that found correlations between playing video games and the ability of gamers to process visual information, improve their spacial awareness skills, and develop better visual attention processing.

These are all crucial skills for surgeons. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century” — JAMA Surgery

WTF Fun Fact 13064 – Australia’s Pink Lake Hillier

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Australia’s pink Lake Hillier is located in Western Australia. It lies near the Pacific Ocean, so when viewed from above the fact that the lake is bright pink is even more striking.

Australia’s pink lake

It’s less than a half mile across (600 meters x 250 meters, more specifically), but Australia’s pink Lake Hillier is truly a sight to behold. Unfortunately, you can no longer access it from land.

The good news is that while it’s Australia’s most famous pink lake, it’s not the only one. And there are others in the world as well. Senegal, Mexico, Spain, and Azerbaijan all have pink lakes too.

According to Lake Hillier’s website (cited below):

“The reason of its unique colour is still a topic that is not fully understood by scientists, although most suspect it has to do with the presence of the Dunaliella salina microalgae. The Dunaliella produces carotenoids, a pigment found in carrots as well. But the presence of halophilic bacteria in the salt crusts could be another explanation. A reaction between the salt and the sodium bicarbonate that is found in the water may cause it as well.”

More facts about Lake Hillier

Discovered in 1802 by cartographer Matthew Flinders, the lake is located on Australia’s Middle Island in the Recherche Archipelago. It’s most pink when viewed from above. And, unlike other pink lakes, its water samples appear pink in a glass as well.

While it’s safe to swim in, you can’t actually get near its surface.

“There are Scenic Flight Services departing Esperance Airport several times a day but you cannot land on Middle Island…There are no regular services to set foot on any of the Islands in the Recherche Archipelago with the exception of Woody Island.”

If you try to get to the lake, don’t be fooled by the nearby Pink Lake (aka Lake Spencer) in the town of Esperance. That lake used to be pink but has lost all its color and is now a milky white.

You’ll just have to enjoy Australia’s pink Lake Hillier from above, which is the best way to see its color anyway. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Lake Hillier” — Lake Hillier Official Website

WTF Fun Fact 13063 – MIT Pirate Certificate

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It’s hard to get into MIT. But if you do, you not only have a chance to earn a great education and get plugged into an enviable alumni network, you also have the chance to earn the MIT Pirate Certificate.

What’s the MIT Pirate Certificate?

According to the MIT Alumni webpage (cited below), the school made a piece of underground culture a formal certification program in 2011.

“…in 2011 the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER) began issuingMIT pirate certificatesto students who completed specific requirements. Six students earned the inaugural certificates and, today, 354 MIT students and alumni have received certificates at a spring ritual—Pirate Induction Day.”

Studying swashbuckling

While actor Matt Damon received an honorary pirate certificate from the university, “Only MIT students and alumni can earn the genuine article.”

The biggest part of the pirate challenge is getting into the appropriate courses. They fill up in minutes. That means MIT gives the “distinction” to only around 50 students a year.

The courses you need to pass as an MIT student to get a pirate certificate are: pistol (or rifle), archery, sailing, and fencing.

“Since sailing requirespassing the swim test, successful pirates have wrapped up their PE requirements with a hearty arrr, arrr, arrr,” jokes the website.

Of course, life as an MIT pirate doesn’t mean sailing the high seas in search of booty. The certificate is for entertainment purposes only.

According to the website:

“The certificates, authorized by the ‘swashbuckling’ Institute, are printed on faux parchment and affirm that the named “’salty dog’’ is entitled to a pirate certificate ‘with all its privileges and obligations thereof.'”

So not only can you get a great education at MIT, but you can also put “pirate” on your resume. —WTF fun facts

Source: “Arrrr! MIT Pirates—and Matt Damon—Certified” — MIT Alumni Association

WTF Fun Fact 13059 – The Minionese “Language”

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Have you seen “Minions,” “Despicable Me,” or “Despicable Me 2”? If so, you may have heard the Minion characters speaking their own language. All Minions are voiced by Pierre Coffin, who also created the language called Minionese.

Minionese and other made-up languages

From Klingon to Elvish, storytellers have been making up their own languages for years. And some fans have ever learned how to speak them.

According to the Motion Picture Association, Minionese is “the lexical version of a hearty stew, made up of words from multiple languages, expressed not only vocally, but through the Minions’ physical comedy. While the creation of Minionese makes narrative sense now that the Minions have a rich backstory…Coffin’s goal was for the audience to understand Minionese without actually knowing the exact verbiage through the Minions huge range of vocal melodies and inflections, as well as their physical actions.”

It takes an interesting mind to create such a dynamic method of communication!

Creating language

Coffin’s first task was creating a backstory for Minions Kevin, Stuart, and Bob. The characters are part of a nomadic tribe in search of a master. In the course of their journey, they’ve taken on bits of different languages they’ve come across. In fact, there are elements of Egyptian, French, and even Transylvanian.

But each character’s intonation means a lot to the language as well. All three Minions have different ways of vocalizing.

According to Coffin:

“You don’t understand their words, you don’t understand their grammar, but you do understand when they’re in a position of conflict, if they’re sad or if they’re happy.”

He actually started building the language while watching silent films. That helped him understand how visual communication would play an integral role in having characters speak something no one had ever heard (but needed to understand if they were going to follow the plot).

When Coffin gets stuck on a line of Minion dialog, he just turns to other languages:

“Every time I got stuck in a sequence or in a shot where I need to express something, I have my Indian or Chinese menu handy. I also know a little bit of Spanish, Italian, Indonesian and Japanese. So I have all these sources of inspiration for their words. I just pick one that doesn’t express something by the meaning, but rather the melody of the words.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Here’s How They Created Minionese, the Language of the Minions” — Motion Picture Association