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WTF Fun Fact 13157 – First Use of the Word Unfriend

In the Appeal of Injured Innocence, the word “unfriend” was coined in 1659 by Church of England clergyman Thomas Fuller.

What’s the context around the first use of the word unfriend?

Did you think “unfriend” was a word before Facebook? We did, and we were wrong.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first citation of the word “unfriend” (AND “muggle”!) was in a 13th-century epic Middle English poem Brut by Layamon. There are two uses of the word in the poem.

Of course, it’s a little hard to read English from this time, but it may be easier to say it out loud: “We sollen … slean houre onfrendes and King Learwenden after Brenne.” And “Wend to oure onfreondes and drif heom of blonde.”

Ok, that might seem like cheating. But unfriend was a word used throughout the Middle ages to denote one who is not a friend (but not quite an enemy).

Unfriend becomes a verb

Unfriending someone seems very Facebook-specific, but the word was also used for a very long before the 21st century (though still not as a verb). We have Shakespeare to thank for using ‘unfriended’ to refer to someone who has lost their friends. For example, in Twelfth Night, he wrote “Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger, / Unguided and unfriended, often prove / Rough and unhospitable.”

In King Lear: “Sir, will you, with those infirmities she owes—. / Unfriended, new adopted to our hate.”

It was used as a verb in the 17th century when, in 1658, Church of England clergyman Thomas Fuller wrote to Peter Heylin, who had criticized Fuller’s The Church History of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year 1648,

“I hope, Sir, that we are not mutually un-friended by this difference which hath happened betwixt us. And now, as duellers, when they are both out of breath, may stand still and parley, before they have a second pass, let us in cold blood exchange a word, and, mean time, let us depose, at least, suspend, our animosities.
[…] I conceive our time, pains, and parts may be better expended to God’s glory, and the Church’s good, than in these needless contentions. Why should Peter fall out with Thomas, both being disciples to the same Lord and Master? […]
Who knoweth but that God, in his providence, permitted, yea, ordered, this difference to happen betwixt us, not only to occasion a reconciliation, but to consolidate a mutual friendship betwixt us during our lives, and that the survivor (in God’s pleasure only to appoint) may make favourable and respectful mention of him who goeth first to his grave?”

But as Interesting Literature (cited below) points out, Facebook still doesn’t take the cake for the first to use the word for social media purposes. “But even in social media circles, ‘unfriend’ predates Facebook, with which it is not most closely associated.

“Its origin, or at least its first recorded use, was on Usenet in 2003: ‘I have been “unfriended” by somebody in the LJ world today.”

— WTF fun facts

Source: “The Curious Origin of the Word’ Unfriend'” — Interesting Literature

WTF Fun Fact 13155 – The First Item Sold on eBay

The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. It sold for $14.83 in 1995 (when the site was still called Auction Web).

More about the first item sold on eBay

According to eBay, “Mark Fraser purchased the first item that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar listed on the site in 1995: a broken laser pointer.”

All of this was revealed at the eBay Seller Summit fireside chat. Back when the site was still called Auction Web, Omidyar listed the laser pointer over the Labor Day weekend and was shocked when someone purchased it for $14.38.

The buyer’s identity and motivation had long remained a secret.

Fraser finally came forward at the eBay event in 2005. He explained that he had been on the road traveling for work and giving a lot of presentations. He has seen laser pointers in the ’90s and wanted one, but at the time they cost over $100.

Being an electronics “geek,” Fraser assumed he could fix a broken one, making his eBay purchase a potentially wise financial decision. He had already tried to build one from scratch and it needed too many components, so this was a great find for him.

Continued purchases

Fraser said he was still making eBay purchases and his broken laser pointer was the first in a long line of them. In fact, he’s made over 2000 purchases!

When he heard stories from eBay’s 20th anniversary celebration and the strange first purchase, he thought he was being “dissed,” so he contacted the company to explain how it all went down.

Funny enough – he still had the broken laser pointer. And yes, it’s still broken!

We assume that’ll end up in a museum someday – or at least at eBay headquarters somewhere! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Meet the Buyer of the Broken Laser Pointer” — eBay

WTF Fun Fact 13132 – The Super Bowl Shuffle

In 1985, the Chicago Bears recorded a hit rap song called “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” The song was even nominated for a Grammy award for Best Rhythm and Blues Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal. However, they lost to the late singer Prince’s song “Kiss.”

The Bears’ Super Bowl Shuffle

We never expected to see the Chicago Bears nominated for a Grammy. But that’s precisely what happened after the team members known as the “Chicago Bears Shufflin’ Crew” released The Supe rBowl Shuffle in 1985.

The song was distributed through Capitol Records – and notable, it was released two months BEFORE their win in Super Bowl XX. How embarrassing would it have been if they lost?!

The song was popular, but it peaked at number 41 on the charts (hey, not everyone is a Bears fan).

The son’s Grammy nomination came in 1987. And that’s where the Bears lost.

The song’s legacy

The Super Bowl Shuffle made about $300,000, which went to the Chicago Community Trust to help struggling city families with housing (hence Walter Payton’s line “Now we’re not doing this because we’re greedy / The Bears are doing it to feed the needy.”)

Singers included Walter Payton, Willie Gault, Mike Singletary, Jim McMahon, Otis Wilson, Steve Fuller, Mike Richardson, Richard Dent, Gary Fencik, and William Perry. Meanwhile, the “Shufflin’ Crew” was on instrumentals and included some less well-known players like punter Maury Buford on cowbell and defensive back Ken Taylor on the tambourine. A “Shufflin’ Crew” chorus included players like Leslie Frazier. Few players declined to be involved.

The Bears weren’t the first or last team to try and make music history. The 1984 San Francisco 49ers recorded “We Are the 49ers” before winning the Super Bowl champs, but the disco-pop hit wasn’t all that successful (neither was their do-over “49ers Rap”). They were no “Super Bowl Shuffle,” cringey as it may have been.

And who could forget (except everyone) the Green Bay Packers’ attempt to spoof the “Macarena”, by recording “Packarena” in 1996? — WTF fun facts

Source: “Throwback Thursday: When the Chicago Bears Sang ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle” — Hollywood Reporter

WTF Fun Fact 13126 – RL Stine and Bazooka Joe

You have to straddle two older generations to appreciate the fun fact (or be a keen observer of the 1990s) that there’s a connection between RL Stine and Bazooka Joe.

What’s the connection between RL Stine and Bazooka Joe?

For those who don’t know, Robert Lawerence (RL) Stine is often referred to as “the Stephen King of children’s literature.” He wrote the Goosebumps series of children’s scary novels (it seems a little weird to call it children’s horror, doesn’t it?). He also wrote the Fear Street series. In other words, his books have scared the bejeezus out of multiple generations of children. He says he was inspired by his own generation’s love of horror in the form of the Tales from the Crypt series.

Before he became a young adult author for the ages, Stine had many different jobs. He wrote joke books. He even made coloring books!

And he also wrote Bazooka Joe comics. You know the ones – they came inside packs of bubble gum.

Who knew that the guys responsible for so many Gen X and Millennial nightmares also write those silly comics that came inside gum wrappers?

From bubble gum to horror writer

Bazooka Joe was just one of RL Stine’s many odd jobs as a writer. He was quite prolific and worked on television shows as well (seriously, check out his Wikipedia entry!). He even holds the Guinness Book of World Records award for being the best-selling children’s book series author of all time. It turns out kids like to be scared.

According to Mental Floss (cited below), Stephen King once told Stine, “You’ve taken every single amusement park plot and haven’t left any for anyone else.”

Stine himself isn’t really scared by horror. He’s a fan of a few of King’s books (like Misery and Pet Sematary) but often finds himself laughing at horror films. — WTF fun facts

Source: “21 Bone-Chilling Secrets About R.L. Stine” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 13116 – Pigeons Can Tell the Difference Between Monet and Picasso

If you try hard enough, anything is possible. But it turns out training pigeons to discriminate between a Picasso and a Monet isn’t actually all that hard. Pigeons can tell the difference between the two artists with relatively little effort (at least relative to what we would have imagined).

Pigeons and Picasso and Monet

In 1995, researchers Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita published a paper called “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. In it, they showed:

“Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso. Following this training, they discriminated novel paintings by Monet and Picasso that had never been presented during the discrimination training. Furthermore, they showed generalization from Monet’s to Cezanne’s and Renoir’s paintings or from Picasso’s to Braque’s and Matisse’s paintings. These results suggest that pigeons’ behavior can be controlled by complex visual stimuli in ways that suggest categorization. Upside-down images of Monet’s paintings disrupted the discrimination, whereas inverted images of Picasso’s did not. This result may indicate that the pigeons’ behavior was controlled by objects depicted in impressionists’ paintings but was not controlled by objects in cubists’ paintings.”

Birds and bees

Later on, in 2013, behavioral scientists showed that honeybees could also discriminate between paintings by the two artists.

Perhaps more hilariously, a 2010 article in the journal Animal Cognition showed that “Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children.” Imagine a pigeon letting your child know their art is “bad.”

Wonder how it was done? In the words of the researcher:

“In this study, I investigated whether pigeons could be trained to discriminate between paintings that had been judged by humans as either ‘bad’ or ‘good’. To do this, adult human observers first classified several children’s paintings as either ‘good’ (beautiful) or ‘bad’ (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at ‘good’ paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ children’s paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories. The results showed that pigeons could discriminate novel ‘good’ and ‘bad’ paintings.”

Who knew nature had such art critics?! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” — Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

WTF Fun Fact 13110 – Jonathan the Tortoise’s Birthday

Jonathan the Tortoise has seen some things. More than any of us. And that’s because the big guy just celebrated his 190th birthday!

Jonathan the Tortoise’s birthday

A while back we told you about Jonathan, and at that time, no one really seemed to know precisely how old he was since he was brought to – a sanctuary in Saint Helena, a British territory in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Angola and Namibia – at an unverifiable age.

Take a look:

WTF Fun Fact 12819 – Jonathan the Tortoise

Since then, it looks like it’s been decided that Jonathan is 190 as of this year. We can’t begrudge the guy a party, so we’ll go with it.

Jonathan’s party

CBS News reports that Jonathan the tortoise’s birthday party was quite a bash when it was held in early December 2022.

“The island held an official birthday bash over the weekend, celebrating the longest-living chelonian at the island’s governor’s residence. Along with hosting broadcasts about Jonathan’s significance, the island also held a ‘main event’ in his honor on Sunday [the 4th], where people could get Jonathan stamps and other Jonathan-themed souvenirs.”

Throughout the weekend, the world’s oldest land creature was hailed as a “national treasure” and indulged in a cake made of his favorite vegetables.

According to CBS News (cited below) “Jonathan’s long life has earned him two Guinness World Records – one in 2019 for becoming the world’s oldest land animal and another this January for becoming the oldest living chelonian, a term encompassing turtles, terrapins and tortoises.”

While the sanctuary where he lives lists his birth year as 1832, Guinness believes he could be older. That’s because he wasn’t discovered until 1882, when he was already fully mature. Clearly, some significant years had already passed. We just don’t know how many.

Regardless, Jonathan has survived two World Wars and was even alive when the first telephone call was made in 1876. We feel wiser just looking at him. — WTF fun facts

Source: “World’s oldest land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, celebrates 190th birthday” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 13107 – Google Backrub

You may know part of the the story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. They met on a tour of Stanford, when Brin was showing prospective grad student Page around. While they didn’t agree on anything at first, they eventually became friends and business partners and invented Google. Except there was a step before Google – Backrub.

From Backrub to Google

According to Google’s own page on their history, the men wanted to build “a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.”

So…eww. Can you imagine saying, “I don’t know, I’ll need to backrub that information?”

We don’t know the precise details about why they changed the name. But we know how the word Google came to be.

“The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey’s mission ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.'”

Google was a big deal in the academic community at first. Then it caught the eye of Silicon Valley investors in the late 90s.

“In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and now CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights.”

Google grows

Keeping things useful but unconventional was the duos brand style. Do you remember the first Google Doodle in 1998? It was a stick figure inside the logo telling everyone the staff was off-site attending Burning Man.

How about their motto? “Don’t be evil.”

In any case, things are now a far cry from the days of Backrub. — WTF fun facts

Source: “From the garage to the Googleplex” — Google

WTF Fun Fact 13087 – The WLCoWSVoWLT

The WLCoWSVoWLT stands for the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things. It was created by a woman named Erika Nelson who travels the country looking for roadside marvels that have set a record for “world’s largest.” Then she photographs them and builds her own miniature version.

The marvels of the WLCoWSVoWLT

It’s unclear if creating the world’s smallest version of any world’s largest thing is a full-time job, but her collection has become a museum that she runs. You can visit it in Lucas, Kansas. What you’ll find on the walls are photos of Nelson’s replicas next to their giant inspirations. Often, she’ll have the miniatures displayed as well.

According to Atlas Obscura, “Nelson is an artist, educator, and one of America’s foremost experts and speakers on the World’s Largest Things. In addition to visiting communities with her own unique traveling museum, which acquired a permanent base in 2017, Nelson is a consultant to cities seeking to create their own ‘World’s Largest Thing’ or roadside attraction to increase tourism, marketing, and economic development for their community.”

This is just another testament to how incomplete Career Day at school really is. Just think of the jobs people create for themselves that no one ever dreamed of!

Making the world’s smallest versions of the largest things

Nelson makes the World’s Smallest Versions of The World’s Largest Things from a medley of materials. For example, when replicating the world’s largest ball of rubber bands, she used the miniature rubber bands you’d find at an orthodontist’s office.

Nelson spends most of her time on the road. The museum itself is stationary since it’s found a new building in Lucas, Kansas. It used to be housed in a van. — WTF fun facts

Source: “World’s Largest Collection of Smallest Versions of Largest Things” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 13086 – Newborn Panda Size

Newborns are tiny. That certainly doesn’t come as a surprise. But the relative tininess of some creatures is truly stunning. For example, newborn panda size really made us think about the logistics of things like feeding. These teeny creatures are about the size of a mouse – between three and five OUNCES.

Newborn panda size

For further information on this fun fact and other questions we had about baby pandas, we turned to National Geographic, a trusted source for all things nature (and cited down below).

In 2020, NatGeo wrote about newborn panda size after the birth of a new cub at the zoo in Washington DC. The reason? People wanted to know its sex. But panda cubs are so small that only a genetic test can determine their sex. (It was a boy.)

“That’s not all they’re missing at birth. Newborn giant pandas are almost completely unrecognizable. Rather than sporting their iconic black-and-white markings, pandas emerge from their mothers as pink, wrinkly, blind, squealing creatures roughly the size of a stick of butter,” noted the magazine.

Conservationists who want to save pandas have always had questions about how their size at birth might work for the species, especially since they’re so fragile:

“Pandas are born fragile and underdeveloped. Weighing between three and five ounces, newborn pandas are 1/900th the weight of their mother. This places them among the smallest newborns compared to their mother of any mammal: Human mothers are only about 20 times heavier than their babies, and killer whales are 50 times heavier. Only marsupials emerge smaller‚ and that’s because their babies get to hole up in their mothers’ pouches to finish developing. Red kangaroos, for example, are born at 1/100,000th the weight of their mothers.”

Why are baby pandas so tiny?

We’re still trying to figure out what makes a newborn panda size any kind of advantage. (Then again, pandas are notorious for not doing much to keep their species going on their own.)

Researchers have found that the bears gestate for just 1 month! They don’t even have fully developed skeletons. Even their bear relatives that are born very tiny emerge with skeletons, whereas pandas are born a bit “undercooked” (that’s the word used by the authors of a study in the Journal of Anatomy).

Our best guess is related to just how poorly suited panda bears are to…well, life.

“The short gestation likely has to do with the bamboo that makes up most of the bear’s diet, says Laurie Thompson, assistant curator of giant pandas at the National Zoo. Bamboo doesn’t have many nutrients. Rather than expend the enormous amounts of energy needed to grow a fetus, female pandas can focus on developing the high-fat milk that will help their cubs grow outside of the womb.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Born blind, pink, and entirely helpless, here’s how giant pandas grow up” — National Geographic