random fact

WTF Fun Fact 12627 – The Face of Resusci Annie

If you ever learned CPR, there’s at least a fair chance that you learned it using a life-sized mannequin called Rescue Annie (aka Resusci Anne, L’Inconnue de la Seine (Unknown Woman of Seine), the Mona Lisa of Seine, and The Most Kissed Girl in the World). We use these large dolls so that we don’t have to practice on each other, which is a good thing since CPR can result in broken ribs.

While we never really thought about how she got her face, 2 dental students in the UK decided to do some research a few years back and find out just how Rescue Annie got made. And the answers are creepier than we could have imagined.

The face of Annie is the death mask of a woman who drowned and was never identified.

In the late 19th century, the body of a girl was pulled out of the River Seine in Paris. An examination of her face led to guesses that she was roughly 16 years old, but no one could identify her.

The body was put on public display in the hopes that someone could identify here, which was common practice at the time (and a popular attraction). People were more than a little curious about the placid-looking teen, who came to be known as “L’Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine).” 

The pathologist who performed the girl’s autopsy had a model maker create a death mask for her. It was a plaster cast tmade by Lorenzi model makers, the same people who eventually decided the mask was too good not to be shared, so they replicated it in bulk and sold copies. You can still purchase “Noyée [Drowned Woman] de la Seine” from them.

So how did a death mask come to be the face of a CPR doll? Well, in the 1950s when Archer Gordon decided to make a CPR dummy for medical students to practice on, he called on toymaker Åsmund Laerdal, who had seen a copy of the mask and decided to use it for the face.

The website calls her Resusci Anne, a name that just somehow stuck. The company estimates that roughly 300 million people have laid their lips on a version of the doll to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Another fun fact? Michael Jackson’s line “Annie are you okay?” in the song “Smooth Criminal“ is an homage to the doll. In CPR training, trainees are told to check for a response in the patient by asking “Annie are you okay.”  – WTF fun facts

Source: “How a girl’s ‘death mask’ from the 1800s became the face of CPR dolls” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12626 – Joseph Ducreux’s “Meme” Paintings

The painting by Joseph Ducreux that you may have seen in memes is a legit 18th-century painting titled Self-Portrait in the Guise of a Mocker. It happens to be a self-portrait and a rather unique style. At the time, paintings took enormous time to make, so goofy “selfies” might have seemed a waste.

However, Ducreux was keenly interested in the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the attempt to assess a person’s character from their facial features and expressions. Hence the interesting poses he struck in his self-portraits.

But Joseph Ducreux was a skilled oil painter. A miniature of Marie Antoinette he made in 1789 won him a baronetcy and the title of “First Painter to the Queen” of France.

Of course, his place in high society made him unpopular during the French Revolution, so he hid out in London for a bit. That’s where he created the last portrait of Kind Louis XVI before the royal was beheaded.

He returned to France after the revolution and continued his career as a painter, indulging in the self-portrait series at the time.

They may look silly, but to Ducreux, they served a scientific purpose. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Quirky Self-Portraits of 18th Century Painter Joseph Ducreux” — Open Culture

WTF Fun Fact 12625 – The Hall of Records

We’ve all seen pictures of Mount Rushmore National Memorial. There aren’t many places in the U.S. to see giant sculptures carved into the side of mountains.

This sculpture happens to be in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The 60-foot-high monument depicts U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. It was completed in 1941, planned and executed by a man named Gutzon Borglum (his son, Lincoln, helped oversee the site).

You might not know that Borglum thought it needed a little something extra in the form of a written description. Specifically, he wanted to carve an inscription of the nine most important events in U.S. history from 1776 to 1906, roughly 80 by 120 feet in size. And he wanted it to be in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase.

His plan to add some extra flair failed since the text could not be made legible. Also, they needed the planned space for Lincoln’s head.

Borglum then developed a plan to build a room inside the mountain to hold documents and other artifacts that were important to American history. It was to be drilled into a small canyon behind Lincoln’s mouth and accessible by an 800-foot granite stairway.

This “Great Hall” was designed to have bronze and glass cabinets inside, containing documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And, of course, it wouldn’t be complete without the planned bronze eagle with a 38-foot wingspan with the words “America’s Onward March” and “The Hall of Records” engraved above it.

Construction on the Hall of Records actually began in July of 1938. It got to the point where a 70-foot tunnel was blasted into the side of the mountain. But Congress shut down the plan. Borglum died in 1941, and then the U.S. was preoccupied with WWII, so all work on the monument shut down.

According to the National Park Service:

“Although Borglum’s grand scheme for the Hall of Records had to be abandoned, the idea remained. On August 9, 1998, Gutzon Borglum’s dream was completed when a repository of records was placed in the floor of the hall entry. This repository consists of a teakwood box, inside a titanium vault, covered by a granite capstone. Etched on the capstone is the following quote by Gutzon Borglum:

‘..let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.‘

The repository contains sixteen porcelain enamel panels. Inscribed on the panels is the story of how Mount Rushmore came to be carved, who carved it, the reasons for selecting the four presidents depicted on the mountain and a short history of the United States. This repository is not accessible to visitors but is left as a record for people thousands of years from now who may wonder how and why Mount Rushmore was carved.” – WTF fun facts

Source: “Hall of Records” — U.S. National Park Service

WTF Fun Fact 12624 – The Night Mower

Edwin Bearn Budding is the inventor of the lawnmower. It’s a bit hard to imagine a world without lawns (though we’ve heard they’re not so great for the environment) and the people who take pride in them. In fact, the average American spends 4 hours a week taking care of their lawn.

But at first, Budding wasn’t so sure about his contraption. The year was 1830, and no one technically had a lawn to be mowed. Naturally, he figured people would make fun of him for the invention. And perhaps they would have.

Budding was so self-conscious about the invention that he would only test out his lawnmower prototypes at night, under cover of darkness, so his neighbors couldn’t see him. Of course, these were manual mowers, so they didn’t have the tell-tale engines that let us know when our neighbor is mowing today, though his machine was reportedly pretty noisy.

Most inventors seem pretty stoked about their creations, but perhaps Budding was just humble. While he was born the illegitimate son of a farmer, he got an education that led him to an interest in technical matters. He became a pattern maker at an iron foundry, then a machinist at a cotton mill.

Before his lawnmower, he also invented a pistol more sophisticated than a Colt, but it appears Colt’s 1836 patent won out in the end.

Budding’s lawnmower was conceived of during his time in the cotton mills, and in many ways, it mimics the movements of a napping machine, which uses blades to trim off long fibers from cloth evenly and efficiently.

The wrought iron machine had adjustable blades and was pushed from behind while a tray collected clippings at the front. (Frankly, it sounds better than some of the manual push mowers around today.)

After the patent, Budding went into business with John Ferrabee, who owned Phoenix Iron Works, so the machine could be mass-produced and sold (after all, you don’t get anything from just inventing something). Things went well for the pair, and a few years later, they were attracting buyers across England, selling 1000 machines by 1840.

Budding died of a stroke in 1846, so he never got to see how his invention changed people’s lives. It was used to care for sports fields and public parks, improve gardens, and cut down on manual labor on farms (a scythe or a grazing animal was your only choice before the lawnmower).

It also created a whole new class of gardeners and groundsmen who used it to create gardens as status symbols. A bit later, they were explicitly marketed to women as a fashionable way to get exercise.

We’ve come a long way since then (for better or worse), but it’s incredible to think it all started with one man mowing his lawn in the dark. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Budding Lawn Mowers” — The Daily Gardener

WTF Fun Fact 12623 – Is There A Doctor In The House?

We’re not sure whether to call Dorothy Fletcher lucky or not. After all, she suffered a heart attack in the middle of a transatlantic flight from Manchester to Florida on November 7, 2009. That’s unfortunate. But, on the other hand, there were 15 cardiologists on board when it happened.

When the stewardess asked if there were any doctors on board, the 15 experts volunteered their service.

Well, they didn’t just wait around to be called on, rather the story seems to claim they all ran to her side to try and help. Using an onboard medical kit, they were able to control the heart attack, save her life, and get a drip into her arm.

Later, she said:

“I couldn’t believe what happened. All these people came rushing down the aircraft towards me. The doctors were wonderful. They saved my life. My daughter was with me and you can imagine how she felt when all these doctors stood up. I wish I could thank them but I have no idea who they were, other than that they were going to a conference in Orlando.”

The plane had to be diverted to North Carolina so that the 67-year-old could get immediate hospital care

Mrs. Fletcher was treated in the intensive care unit at Charlotte Medical Centre and stayed for two days. She had been traveling to attend her daughter’s wedding. And she did make it to the nuptials on time the following week in Lake Berkeley, Kissimmee. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Heart Attack Woman On Plane – 15 Cardiologists On Board” — Medical News Today

WTF Fun Fact 12622 – Air Conditioning Trees

There’s no arguing with the fact that trees keep the planet alive. And we all know they help keep the Earth cool, though we may not know the exact mechanism by which they do it.

But the amount of influence trees can have over the climates in their immediate areas is still pretty stunning.

Even when trees grow in cities (relatively far apart and under conditions that are probably less ideal than, say, a forest), they can have a large cooling impact.

According to the EPA, cities sometimes create “heat islands”:

“An urban heat island (UHI) is an urban area or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak.”

Tl; dr – Cities are hotter because of all the stuff we do there.

But what’s cool about trees (see what we did there?) is that they can lower both surface and air temperatures. We all know it’s cooler in the shade (sometimes by as much as 20-45 degrees F!), so that’s part of it. But there’s also something called evapotranspiration that plays a role. That’s the method by which water moves from the earth’s surface (the soil) up into the atmosphere. So, later, when we get precipitation, it can cool off our buildings and sidewalks.

Evapotranspiration (along with shading, in most cases) can reduce peak temperatures on a summer day by 2-9 degrees F.

And chances are that if you have a thoughtful city planning department, the trees planted around your nearest city are planted in very strategic locations to take advantage of this process. (For example, you may find more trees planted to the west of buildings to take advantage of maximum shade.)

There’s a very long list of the benefits of trees, but we’ll add a few that are less obvious about city trees:

  • They reduce energy usage by lowering the demand for air conditioning
  • They help with stormwater management after big storms by absorbing and filtering rainwater
  • They can reduce the need for constant pavement maintenance by keeping sidewalks, roads, and parking lots cool
  • They improve our quality of life, in part, by reducing noise pollution in cities.

Sometimes trees get in the way, but it’s critical to have them around (or replant them when we need to remove them). – WTF fun facts

Source: “Using Trees and Vegetation to Reduce Heat Islands” — US EPA

WTF Fun Fact 12621 – No Two Sunsets Are Ever the Same

It sounds like a cliche, and some people use this fact that way, but it’s true. It would be impossible for any two sunsets to look exactly alike.

Between the tilt of the Earth and changes in the atmosphere, the conditions between us and the sun are slightly different each day and can result in major changes.

If you’ve seen some beautiful sunsets, you probably understand. Heck, even if you’ve seen two amazing, blazing, pink and blue sunsets, you’ve probably noticed that they’re still a bit different. Even the clouds are in different places.

But the biggest difference is the particles and molecules in the air. That’s what gives sunsets their color. After all, the sun doesn’t emit pink, orange, or blue light. It doesn’t even emit yellow light!

In space, the sun’s light is white.

The colors we see are the sun’s rays are just the light refracting off molecules and particles. And sometimes those particles are pollutants that we add to the air (not for sunset purposes, of course).

So if you share a sunset with someone, it’ll be special no matter what, because you’re never going to see the same thing again. While that makes us want to put down the phone and appreciate it, we’d probably be tempted to snap at least one moment real quick as well.

– WTF fun facts

Source: The Weather Channel – via Twitter

WTF Fun Fact 12620 – Home Alone’s Spider Guest Star

There have been some famous and controversial guest stars in the Home Alone movies, but this one takes the cake.

We know it came out a long time ago (1990, to be exact), but perhaps you’ve seen the original Home Alone movie recently. And if you have, you likely remember the scene when bad-guy Marv, played by Daniel Stern, gets caught up in Kevin McAllister’s (Macauley Caulkin) set of booby traps. In one particularly cringe-worthy scene, he ends up with a tarantula on his face.

Now, tarantulas are venomous, but that venom doesn’t do humans any real harm. The worst that can happen is that they bite you and it hurts. Still, most of us want to avoid that.

Normally, a life-like tarantula would be created by a props department for use in a movie. And Home Alone’s propmasters did, indeed, make a spider for the scene. It’s just not the one that ended up on David Stern’s face. That one was real. And his name was Barry.

Stern told the story in a long Facebook post that read:

“I’ve talked about the stunt guys doing crazy things, I’ve talked about my love of doing physical comedy, but one of the most surreal moments of the film was the scene with the tarantula crawling across my face. People who meet me are always curious if the tarantula was real, if my scream was real, and if I was scared, crazy or both. The answer to all three of those questions is “Yes.”

My memory might be off and I will happily stand corrected if anybody has better info but here is how I remember it:

When I first read the script and talked to Chris Columbus, I thought the tarantula in the scene was going to be a mechanical one and when I showed up on set, sure enough the incredible crew in the prop department had made a very life-like spider replica which could move a bit, as well as a version that didn’t move. I told them I thought I could help sell it, with my great acting abilities and all… They were polite but not convinced. To insure that the “gag” was going to work, they brought in a different crew member, this one from the animal wrangling department. He had a cage and in this cage was an exact replica of the replica that the prop department had made. But you could definitely see by the way it moved that this was no fake, but a creature of royalty in the natural world. I was a little intimidated for the first time in the movie. The wrangler introduced me to “Barry the Tarantula” (possibly mis-remembering his name, apologies). They had Barry crawl around on my hand and head. I asked if Barry was trained and was told they had been working with him for a few days but tarantulas are kind of tough to train. I asked if his poison had been removed, and was told that if the poison was removed, Barry would die. I said, “Right, but if the poison isn’t removed, then I’m gonna die. See where I’m going here?!” “Just don’t make any sudden, threatening moves and you’ll be fine.” “But I’m going to be screaming in Barry’s face. Do you think he’ll feel threatened by that?!” “Barry doesn’t have ears. He can’t hear. Relax. “

I think I made one last feeble attempt to honor the hard work of the prop department and use the replica, but once the director saw Barry in action, the Barry Action Figure was put on the sidelines. I remember Barry crawling around my face. I remember trying not to piss off Barry. Once I got used to him and what he was doing, he turned out to be a great scene partner. I think I felt comfortable enough to have let out that scream right at him in the scene, but there’s another legend that says I only mimed it and added in the scream later. (I would love for the powers-that-be at 20th Century Fox to release the original footage to see if I screamed or mimed, so we can settle this “controversy” once and for all – and the world can finally be at peace.) Either way, the scream came out pretty good and was an homage to the shower scene in “Psycho”. I then had to beat Joe Pesci with a crowbar. And we all know that even though it was pretend and funny and a fake crowbar, it’s a thousand times more dangerous pissing off Joe Pesci than pissing off a venomous spider that’s crawling on your face.

Here’s to Barry! The greatest tarantula I have ever acted with!”

Want to revisit the scene now that you know that’s a real spider? Here you go:

– WTF fun facts

Source: “The Famous ‘Home Alone’ Tarantula Scene Included a Real, Venomous Spider Named Barry, Says Daniel Stern” — CheatSheet

WTF Fun Fact 12619 – The Official Bird of Madison

It all started off with a college prank.

Back in 1979, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to prank their dean. We’re guessing they had seen Animal House with John Belushi a few too many times.

It was a relatively innocent prank concocted and executed by a group of students known as the Pail & Shovel Party, who already had a reputation for their campus antics involving $10,000 toga parties and buying toys for students waiting to register for classes. Then there was that time they stuck a Statue of Liberty replica in a lake, but we digress.

To welcome back students in 1979, they decided to go as tacky as possible and decorate a lawn near the dean’s residence with pink plastic flamingos. One thousand and eight of them, to be exact.

It wasn’t until years later, when a newspaper columnist named Doug Moe wanted to commemorate the incident, that the idea of having an official bird came about. He lobbied to make it happen, despite the plastic flamingo not being an actual animal. In his defense, he said the city already had 5 “official” songs, so the bar seemed pretty low for making things official in the city. The move would be just another way for Madison to show it had a sense of humor about itself.

The city council agreed. Councilwoman Marsha Rummel, who voted in favor of the motion to adopt the plastic flamingo as the city’s official bird, said: “If you don’t have a little fun, [life]’s not worth living.” Fourteen other council members agreed, and only 4 opposed the motion.

Of course, not every city has an official bird.

According to Mental Floss,

“Most states have an official state bird, but it’s less common for a city to declare an official bird. About 28 American cities have proclaimed a fowl of choice: Chicago’s is the peregrine falcon and Key West, Florida’s is the chicken—and then there’s Madison, Wisconsin.”

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Why the Plastic Flamingo is the Official Bird of Madison, Wisconsin” — Mental Floss