random funny fact

WTF Fun Facts 13172 – Drinking Water and Aging

We’ve been given a lot of contradictory advice about drinking water over the decades. Drink eight glasses of water. Don’t drink eight glasses of water. Drink only when you’re thirsty. Drink as much water as possible. However, too much water can kill you. Well, according to a new study from the National Institutes of Health, it turns out drinking water and aging are related.

The “anti-aging” benefits of drinking water

There’s nothing wrong with aging, of course. We should all be so lucky to be able to do it. But in this case, we’re referring to the diseases and bodily degeneration that accompany age. According to CBS News, the study shows that drinking enough water is “associated with a significantly lower risk of developing chronic diseases, dying early, or being biologically older than your chronological age…”

Study author Natalia Dmitrieva from the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute said in a news release.”The results suggest proper hydration may slow down aging and prolong a disease-free life.”

You might be skeptical about that. But when you look at all of the studies on (clean) water consumption, it’s pretty obvious that it can help deliver some health benefits under the right circumstances.

How was the study performed?

Dmitrieva and her lab gathered an impressive amount of data from 11,255 adults over a 30-year period. They compared the subjects’ serum sodium levels (something that reliably goes up when a person doesn’t drink adequate water to meet their body’s needs) to 15 health indicators. These included things like blood pressure, respiratory and immune functioning, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc.

And you can imagine what they found. Adults with high serum sodium levels were more likely to develop chronic diseases. They were also more likely to die younger than those with low serum sodium levels (and therefore, higher water intake).

This helps strengthen the results of a 2022 study that linked poor water intake to heart disease.

How does water affect aging?

Data was gathered from the subjects during five medical visits, two when they were in their 50s and 60s and the last between the age of 70 and 90. They also used relatively healthy subjects who did not already have chronic high serum sodium levels or other factors that could affect results, like obesity. They also adjusted for things like race, sex, and smoking status, since those can affect someone’s overall lifespan.

According to the NIH, they found:

“They found that adults with higher levels of normal serum sodium – with normal ranges falling between 135-146 milliequivalents per liter (mEq/L) – were more likely to show signs of faster biological aging. This was based on indicators like metabolic and cardiovascular health, lung function, and inflammation...Adults with serum sodium levels between 138-140 mEq/L had the lowest risk of developing chronic disease.”

Correlation and causation

Water intake, health, and aging are correlated in these studies. There appears to be a relationship between them. But you know what they say – correlation does not equal causation. That means there can be other factors involved, and that water intake does not immediately affect any of these disease or aging outcomes.

Of course, maybe water intake is the key. But that’s not something the study can prove. For that, we’ll need a lot more evidence and research into how our bodies develop or stave off specific diseases.

But in the meantime, this information can help guide our choices. Since more than half of adults in the U.S. don’t drink enough water, maybe it’s time to incorporate more into your day. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Drinking lots of water can help reduce the effects of aging” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 13171 – Patricia Highsmith’s Snails

Patricia Highsmith was the author of psychological thrillers centered on the duplicity and morality of their main characters. In modern times, her best-known novel is The Talented Mr. Ripley. And while there are many interesting facets of her life one may want to know about, today we’re looking at Patricia Highsmith’s snails and their enduring legacy as a “fun fact” about her.

What’s the story about Patricia Highsmith’s snails?

Highsmith was a complex person and journaled extensively about the highs and lows of her emotions as well as the questioning of gender and sexuality. She was also highly enamored with snails. Highsmith kept them as pets because of their ability to be self-sufficient as well as their lack of sexual dimorphism (any difference between males and females).

She refused to take on any stereotypical female gender role. For example, since women were tied to the home at the height of her career in the 1940s and 50s, she took up traveling.

Highsmith died in 1995, and in 2021 no less than three biographies came out about her life. All of them recount her love of snails and the story of her taking 100 of her pet snails to a cocktail party in Suffolk, England. They were stashed in her handbag, much to the delight of guests. Also shoved inside her bag was a large head of lettuce for them to chew on. It must have been a large bag!

As the New York Times Style magazine T recounts, her love of snails started in the 1940s:

“In 1946, while walking past a New York City fish market, Highsmith spotted two snails locked in a loving embrace. Intrigued, she took them home, placed them in a fishbowl and watched their wriggling copulation, spellbound. As was typical of Highsmith, she was riveted by what others found repulsive or nauseating. ‘They give me a sort of tranquility,’ she said of the gastropods. ‘It is quite impossible to tell which is the male and which is the female, because their behavior and appearance are exactly the same,’ she wrote elsewhere.”

Stowaway snails

Highsmith wanted to make it big in America, but never quite broke through during her lifetime, even though Alfred Hitchcock adapted her novel Strangers on a Train for the screen. She spent most of her career in Europe.

When moving from England to France, Highsmith insisted on bringing her pet snails along (at one point she had 300). But the law prohibited her from bringing them into the country. As a result, she stowed them away by tucking them under her breasts. As the story goes, she could get around 10 under each.

In 1947, she began including snails in her writing. In a short story titled “The Snail-Watcher,” “a snail enthusiast named Peter Knoppert finds his study has been overwhelmed by the creatures due to their copious breeding, and he is grimly smothered and consumed by them.”

Highsmith’s agent refused to show it to editors because the main character chokes on a snail in a graphic way that he deemed “too repellant.” But her friends got a kick out of it.

There’s no telling what influenced her love of snails or her desire to bring them wherever she went. But it does make a good cocktail party story. — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Many Faces of Patricia Highsmith” — T – The New York Times Style Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13170 – The Baarle Border

On the borders of the Netherlands and Belgium is the town of Baarle. But the Baarle border is anything but straightforward. In fact, the official borderline cuts through houses and cafes in some areas, allowing residents to jump back and forth between countries or even stand with one foot in each.

The Baarle Border

Culture Trip (cited below) describes the border as “erratically shaped” and zigzagging through the town, “creating an erratically-shaped Belgian enclave that somehow contains even smaller parcels of Dutch land.”

While you can see it from above, when you’re on the ground near this Dutch-Belgian border, you’ll see crosses on the ground and the letters “B” and NL” on each side, designating the country it belongs to.

In some cases, the lines divide private property. We don’t even want to know what that tax situation looks like!

How do you live in two countries?

Culture Trip explains that this isn’t quite as complex as one might imagine.

“Thankfully, the Netherlands and Belgium are both located in the Schengen Area, which means that their borders are completely seamless, making it possible for travelers (and residents) to walk through Baarle without stopping for passport checks.”

Both countries administer the town. The Netherlands administers Baarle-Nassau, and Belgium is in charge of Baarle-Hertog.

Another interesting fact is that the Belgian sections are not all connected to the Belgian border. These sections are enclaves. And Culture Trip notes that: “To make matters even more confusing, several stretches of Belgian land in Baarle encircle plots that are claimed by the Netherlands, creating enclaves within enclaves.”

Who divided Baarle?

The confusion with the Baarle border dates back to the Middle Ages when a wealthy duke traded pieces of territory. Local wealthy aristocrats created these bizarre borders in the Middle Ages.

“Essentially, one duke from what would become Belgium handed over territory to another noble who controlled the lands around the Dutch city of Breda. However, the aforementioned duke retained some smaller plots in Baarle, leading to border disputes in the 19th century, when Belgium and the Netherlands split into two different nation states. It took another century for the two countries to resolve the borders that pass through Baarle, leading to the town’s current patchwork-like cartography.”

The controlling country’s legal system applies to each part of the town. This makes for some clever workarounds and loopholes. For example, “bars in Baarle (at some point in recent history) would continue serving alcohol after licensing hours were over in the Netherlands by simply moving their tables and chairs across the border to Belgium.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “This Is the Most Complicated Border Town in the World” — Culture Trip

WTF Fun Fact 13169 – Aretha Franklin’s Voice a Natural Resource

If you’ve ever heard Aretha Franklin’s voice (and there’s an excellent chance you have), you know it’s hard not to be impressed. There’s a reason they call her the “Queen of Soul.” But did you know that in 1985, the state of Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources also declared Aretha Franklin’s voice a natural resource?

How is Aretha Franklin’s voice a natural resource?

Not only was Franklin a Michigan native, but she eschewed Hollywood and New York to move back to her hometown of Detroit. As a result, lawmakers in Michigan’s state House and Senate saw fit to recognize her connections to the city (and state) she loved. In 1968, Michigan declared February 16th Aretha Franklin Day.

Franklin’s career was already two decades old when her home state started finding even more permanent ways to recognize her achievements. For example, they specifically drew attention to her vocals by declaring them a natural resource.

At her funeral in 2018, Michigan then-governor Rick Snyder spoke about the impact she had on the state of Michigan. He noted her designation as a natural resource, saying: “That’s something special, folks. That strikes out right in the heart…She had a God-given voice, a talent, a musical skill that people only dream of. But she did more than that. She took not just the triumphs of her life, she took the challenges and the tragedies and brought a special humanity to her words, to her voice, to her music, that most musicians would only dream to have.”

More tributes to Franklin

You can find homages to Franklin throughout her native Detroit specifically. For example, in 2017, the city council named a street Aretha Franklin Way. At age 75, she vowed to dance down the street every time she used it.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Was Aretha Franklin’s Voice Declared a ‘Natural Resource’ in Michigan?” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 13168 – The Dot Over the i

We’ll be honest, we’ve never actually wondered what the dot over the i or j (in lowercase, of course) was called. But if you’ve been curious, kudos to you for noticing the small things! And to answer your question, it’s called a “tittle.”

Why do we have marks over letters and characters?

Many languages have what we call diacritic marks over a character in order to change its sound or meaning. But English only has two letters with a diacritic – lowercase i and j. They’re always there and don’t change anything about the sound or meaning of the letter (in English, at least).

According to Dictionary.com: “The small distinguishing mark you see over a lowercase i and a lowercase j is called a tittle—an interesting name that looks like a portmanteau (combination) of tiny and little, and refers to a small point or stroke in writing and printing. Generally, a diacritic dot such as a tittle is also referred to as a glyph, a mark that adds meaning to the written letter. However, in regards to i and j, the removal of the mark is still likely to be read as I or J; as such, these are not true examples of a glyph.”

Why is the dot over the i and j called a tittle?

Who comes up with these things anyway?

Well, tittle comes from the Latin word “titulus.” A titulus is an inscription or heading. The word appeared for the first time in the 11th century as monks were copying manuscripts from the ancient world. Back in that day, handwriting was very different, and letters could easily get confused or blend together. As you may have guessed, i and j posed particular problem. That’s why copiers needed to come up with a diacritic to distinguish them from other letters.

It wasn’t until the 1400s when the printing press and typefaces were invented that the diacritical mark turned into just a small dot above each letter.

In other words, they’re simply a relic of a time when everything was handwritten. — WTF fun facts

Source: “What’s The Name For The Dot Over “i” And “j”?” — Dictionary.com

WTF Fun Fact 13167 – North Korea’s Hotel of Doom

The Ryugyong Hotel (also known as the Ryu-Gyong Hotel, Yu-Kyung Hotel, 105 Building, and Hotel of Doom is a 105-story 1000+-foot-tall pyramidal skyscraper in Pyongyang, North Korea. Architects designed it to be a mixed-use building with a hotel. But it is unfinished, making it the second-largest unoccupied building in the world. (First place goes to China’s Goldin Finance 117.)

Why is the Ryugyong Hotel unfinished?

Construction on the building began in 1987. But the dissolution of the Soviet Union and North Korea’s subsequent economic crisis brought it to a halt in 1992.

According to CNN Travel (cited below), “The Ryugyong Hotel was a product of the Cold War rivalry between US-supported South Korea and the Soviet-backed North.” And as the North watched South Korea transition to a capitalist democracy, they needed a symbol to show their achievements. Part of the North Korean government’s response was to hold a socialist pseudo-Olympics called the World Festival of Youth and Students, planned for 1989. The North Korean government hoped the hotel would house visitors and embarrass South Korea before they hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics.

CNN Travel continues: “The government had already poured billions into the event, building a new stadium, expanding Pyongyang’s airport and paving new roads. That put a strain on the hermit state’s frail economy, while the Soviet Union’s collapse left it deprived of vital aid and investment.”

If it were complete today, it would be the 4th tallest hotel in the world. If completed on schedule, it would have been the tallest.

Construction commenced again in 2008 in the hopes of opening it on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung. But that was canceled. In 2019, a sign bearing the hotel’s name in Korean and English was installed. And while rumors constantly swirl over its “imminent” opening, it’s not finished.

One tour company gives foreign visitors a peek inside the so-called “Hotel of Doom.” But the North Korean government does not allow its citizens to enter.

Ok, but why do some call it the Hotel of Doom?

The building didn’t get its nickname based on any danger it poses to those who step inside. It’s not haunted or anything.

According to CNN Travel: “While the structure reached its planned height in 1992, it stood windowless and hollow for another 16 years, its naked concrete exposed, like a menacing monster overlooking the city. During that time the building, which dwarfs everything around it, earned itself the nickname ‘Hotel of Doom.'”

The Hotel of Doom appears doomed to stay unfinished despite the start and stop of construction over the decades. (At this point, it likely needs an investor to completely retrofit it with modern amenities, like Wifi.)

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Ryugyong Hotel: The story of North Korea’s ‘Hotel of Doom'” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 13166 – Most Misspelled Word

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the most commonly misspelled word is “publicly.”

The most misspelled word

Publicly may be the most commonly misspelled word because it violates a spelling rule in English. Words that end in “ic” get “ally” added to the end (like magic and magically). But public only gets an “ly.” This causes people to often misspell it as “publically.”

It seems like an unlikely word to misspell – or at least misspell most often. But other sources have other words that they believe are the most misspelled.

Other commonly misspelled words

Misspelling words can be hazardous to your success. According to CNBC, “According to one survey, 43% of hiring managers automatically chuck a candidate’s resume if it has spelling errors. Another showed that 79% of recruiters and human resource managers said spelling and grammatical mistakes were the biggest ‘deal breakers’ in job hunting.”

They also gathered grammar experts to alert us to some of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. These include:

  • Accommodate (it’s hard to remember that there are two sets of double letters — “cc” and “mm”)
  • Acknowledgment
  • Acquire (people often forget the “c”)
  • Apparent
  • Calendar (really? c’mon, folks!)
  • Colleague
  • Conscientious
  • Consensus
  • Entrepreneur
  • Experience (people often assume it ends in “ance”)
  • Indispensable
  • Liaison
  • License
  • Occurred
  • Recommend
  • Successful
  • Until (seriously?)

Clearly, folks missed a lot of spelling classes in elementary school!

Depending on which source you’re asking, there may be a whole different list of “most commonly misspelled words.”

We all have some easy words we misspell by transposing letters or forgetting a vowel. Maybe we’ve become too reliant on spell checkers (or simply don’t care to get it right). But one thing is for sure, most of us could use a refresher of our 3rd-grade spelling class. — WTF fun facts

Source: “These are the 32 most commonly misspelled words, say grammar experts. How many can you get right?” — CNBC

WTF Fun Fact 13165 – The Power of Trees

Behold the power of trees! In 2015, a study found that having more than 10 trees on their block made people feel as healthy as if they were seven years younger or made an additional $10,000 a year.

The healing power of trees

According to the Washington Post (cited below): “After analyzing two sets of data from Toronto, researchers report that adding just 10 trees to a single city block could improve how healthy a person feels as much as if that person made an additional $10,000 a year or were seven years younger.”

The study also found that people who lived in neighborhoods with more trees were less likely to have hypertension, be obese, or have diabetes. This was true across all demographic and socioeconomic groups, so even trees in a less affluent neighborhood seemed to work their magic on residents.

Of course, this doesn’t mean there’s a causal link between trees and health. This could just be a correlation. But trees not only affected people’s objective health measures but their perceptions of their well-being as well. We feel better around trees.

Perhaps this is why the Japanese art of “forest bathing” is being explored in relation to cancer treatment.

The study looked at 30,000 people in Toronto, which has universal healthcare. That’s important because access to healthcare is not as reliant on one’s socioeconomic status, so it controls for that factor.

Why are trees good for us?

While the correlation found in the study was strong, the researchers still don’t know why trees make us healthier. One possibility is their ability to remove pollutants from the air.

And the more we learn about the effects of air pollution on our overall health, the more sense that makes. However, there are other studies that show even a short time spent among trees can have beneficial effects on our health. — WTF fun facts

Source: “10 more trees on your street could make you feel 7 years younger, study shows” — Washington Post

WTF Fun Fact 13164 – Dolly Parton Books For Children

Dolly Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995. Since then, she has used the organization to donate over 182 million books to children.

Dolly Parton’s philanthropy

If you only know Dolly Parton as a country singer, you’re missing out on some of her most amazing work. Born into poverty in Tennessee, Parton has long helped kids and teens in her hometown of Pigeon Forge in the Smoky Mountains learn to read and graduate high school.

She even donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University’s coronavirus research lab – the one that helped created the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine!

Now in her late 70s, Parton has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help people, but her literacy efforts may be among the most meaningful since she’s changed so many lives.

In 1988, she created the Dollywood Foundation to inspire children in her home region to “achieve educational success.” The foundation gives out scholarships to high school students that want to go on to (an accredited) university but can’t afford it.

The expansion of Dolly Parton’s books for children

Since 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (which is part of the foundation) has been sending high-quality books (not religious tracts or cheaply-printed donations) to children up to age 5 each month. The goal is to get parents to read to kids and get kids reading early (at least until they enter school and have access to books there). As of May 2022, she’s given out over 182 million free books. A family’s income doesn’t matter – no matter how rich or poor, children can receive books if they’re under the age of 5.

Even Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos understands that Parton knows how to do good with money. That’s why in 2022 he gave her $100 million to keep going. Parton herself is the author of many books aimed at children 4 – 7 years old. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Dolly Parton receives $100 million award from Jeff Bezos: ‘I will do my best to do good things with this money” — CNBC