random funny fact

WTF Fun Fact 13129 – Dorothy Parker and MLK Jr.

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Writer, poet, and satirist Dorothy Parker is known for her wit. But she was also a civil rights advocate who, in her will, arranged for her entire estate to go to Martin Luther King Jr. – and then to the NAACP after his death. The NAACP still owns the rights to Parker’s oeuvre today.

Parker’s death and legacy

Dorothy Parker became famous for her writing as well as her founding membership in a group of elite writers known as the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. In the 1930s, she also worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, receiving two Academy Award nominations.

In 1967, Parker died of a heart attack. By then, she had already alienated many of her peers. So when her ashes were never claimed, they were sent to her lawyer. However, he had already retired, so a colleague took charge of the ashes, and they sat in an office cabinet for 17 years.

Eventually, the NAACP took the ashes, where they were on display at the national headquarters in Baltimore for 32 years until she had a formal, private burial in 2020.

It made sense for the NAACP to take Dorothy Parker’s remains since she had been such a notable civil rights advocate. In fact, the organization still benefits from owning the rights to her work.

According to the NAACP website (cited below):

“Preserving the legacy of Dorothy Parker has been an essential part of the NAACP’s history…Dorothy Parker will always be part of the NAACP story as the NAACP was part of hers. Her life and legacy will continue to be remembered throughout NAACP history.”

While many of us own a copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker, much of her life after her heyday in NYC remains unknown. But it’s more interesting than we could have imagined. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Dorothy Parker, An Unwavering Legacy ” — NAACP

WTF Fun Fact 13125 – NFL Referees Get Superbowl Rings

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NFL referees don’t get a lot of love, But the refs chosen to work the Superbowl do get their own Superbowl rings.

Receiving a Superbowl ring

A Superbowl ring is obviously a valuable object. Only the winning team gets them, but so do all the referees. The tradition goes all the way back to the first NFL-AFL Championship Game in 1967, which is retroactively called Superbowl I.

Only referees with the best reputations and records are chosen to officiate the Superbowl. They do receive compensation above and beyond their salaries for the work. But the ring serves as an extra reward and moment.

In fact, the refs are the only people guaranteed to get Superbowl rings regardless of the outcome of the game.

But rest assured, they’re nowhere near as large or as valuable as the massive diamond-encrusted rings the players get.

Who else gets a ring?

According to NBC 6 News (cited below):

“While there isn’t a hard-and-fast number to how much a Super Bowl ring is worth, depending on the circumstances and details of the ring, experts generally appraise them between$30,000 and $50,000based on the jewels and features alone.”

As of 2020, all 53 players on a winning NFL team, as well as coaches, team executives, and the practice squad get Superbowl rings. But they’re not all worth the same amount of money. The bling that goes to non-players is up to the discretion of team owners. And they have so much discretion that they can even choose to bestow some type of ring on cheerleaders and trainers.

While the losing team members do not get Superbowl rings, they do get conference championship rings. But it’s a lot rarer for someone to show one of those off, so we don’t hear much about them.

Who makes and pays for Superbowl rings?

Ever wonder who makes Superbowl rings? It’s typically Jostens – the same company that makes most yearbooks and class rings! However, they have to bid on the job each year. In the past, they’ve been outbid a few times by Balfour and even Tiffany’s & Co.

Wondering who pays for all this bling?

The cost of team rings is split between the NFL (which contributes roughly $5k to $7k per ring for up to 150 rings per team) and team owners. —WTF fun facts

Source: “Here’s How Much a Super Bowl Ring Costs and How It’s Made” — NBC 6

WTF Fun Fact 13124 – Signalman Jack

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Signalmen play integral roles in the rail industry, installing, repairing, and maintaining the signal systems used to direct trains. It’s a hard job, but in the 1880s, a signalman named James Edwin Wide taught a chacma baboon from South Africa to assist him. The baboon became known as Signalman Jack.

Training Signalman Jack

Wide had lost both legs in a work accident and needed an assistant to help him get to his job at the railroad. And apparently, he saw a baboon driving an oxcart one day on a trip to South Africa and decided he’d made a fine sidekick.

Wide named the baboon Jack and first taught him to push a small trolly to get him to his job each day a half-mile from his home. The baboon even helped with chores around the house, including sweeping and taking out the trash.

But it was when Jack followed Wide to work that he seemed to find his calling. The baboon learned to recognize the train whistles used to indicate the vehicle was about to change tracks. After watching Wide operate the signals to indicate which tracks they should take, Signalman Jack was eager to start pulling the levers himself.

Wide had no qualms about letting a baboon do his job.

Kicking back

Wide was eventually able to train Signalman Jack so well that he could sit back and pursue some hobbies while at work.

According to Mental Floss, “As the story goes, one day a posh train passenger staring out the window saw that a baboon, and not a human, was manning the gears and complained to railway authorities. Rather than fire Wide, the railway managers decided to resolve the complaint by testing the baboon’s abilities. They came away astounded.”

Eventually, the railway superintendent decided to formally hire the talented baboon. Signalman Jack was given his own employment number. He even got a salary of 20 cents a day (plus half a bottle of beer per week).

Signalman Jack worked in his job for 9 years without ever making a single error. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis in 1890. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Signalman Jack: The Baboon Who Worked for the Railroad—and Never Made a Mistake” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 13122 – The Benefits of Recreational Fear

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It turns out fear isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, recreational fear – the kind of fear you experience on purpose by going to haunted houses or watching horror flicks – can be good for your brain.

Seeking out recreational fear

We know some fear can create a stress response in the body that can be harmful. But our body’s ability to feel fear is, overall, a good thing. It tells us to get away from danger and keeps us alive.

But what about the people who seek out fear?

Even a game of peek-a-boo as a baby starts to prime our bodies for being caught off guard. And it can be exhilarating. When we get a little older, we may tell ghost stories around the campfire. In many ways, we seek out fear. As adults, we may go on roller coasters, see slasher or suspense films, or participate in risky activities like mountain biking or skydiving.

But why do we go after this feeling?

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), “One hypothesis is that recreational fear is a form of play behavior, which is widespread in the animal kingdom and ubiquitous among humans. When an organism plays, it learns important skills and develops strategies for survival.”

The benefits of fear

By seeking out recreational fear, we put ourselves in a situation that has little risk. And perhaps scaring ourselves in a controlled situation can help us cope with real fear later on.

You can learn a lot about yourself by the way you react to fear. It’s just that not many of us like to acknowledge that feeling or explore it.

Researchers at the Recreational Fear Lab, a research center at Aarhus University, Denmark are looking into the science of fear and trying to learn more about our responses to stress. One thing they’re looking at is the relationship between fear and enjoyment. After all, some people really seem to go after scary experiences in order to hit a “sweet spot” between boring and terrifying.

The question of what makes recreational fear appealing to some is still up for debate. But researchers suspect that “even though fear itself may be unpleasant, recreational fear is not only fun—it may be good for us.”

One suggestion is to not be so afraid of fear, especially when you can control the parameters.

“With research findings such as these in mind, we should maybe think twice about shielding kids and young people too zealously from playful forms of fear.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Can Experiencing Horror Help Your Brain?” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 13119 – Greenland’s Ecosystem Surprise

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Evidence from the oldest DNA ever analyzed indicates that northern Greenland used to be a lush wonderland where mastodons, reindeer, geese, and hares once lived among a wide array of trees and other greenery. Greenland’s ecosystem surprise was reported in the journal Science in December 2022.

Why is ancient Greenland’s ecosystem such a surprise?

Today, Greenland’s ecosystem is far less varied thanks to its extreme Arctic climate. While you will find moss, lichen, small trees, and bushes in the tundra, it’s still largely considered an Arctic desert.

According to Eske Willerslev, a paleogeneticist at the University of Cambridge and a co-author of the study,

“No one would have predicted an ecosystem like this. Some species you find further south in Greenland, but a number you don’t find in the Arctic at all. It’s an ecosystem with no analog in the present day.”

Ancient DNA

According to Science (cited below), the insights into Greenland’s ancient past “come from the oldest DNA ever recovered: 2-million-year-old snippets of genetic material from more than 100 kinds of animals and plants, extracted from buried sediments.”

So not only is the information about Greenland’s ecosystem special, but the ability to use short and partially decayed DNA from millions of years ago is an exciting development.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, “Beyond evidence of reindeer, geese and one mastodon, [the researchers] also found signs of marine species, including horseshoe crabs and green algae. In this era of the island’s geologic history, temperatures were around 18 to 31 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are in Greenland today.”

Needless to say, scientists are excited about the finds.

“I wouldn’t have, in a million years, expected to find mastodons in northern Greenland,” said Love Dalen, a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University in Sweden.

“It feels almost magical to be able to infer such a complete picture of an ancient ecosystem from tiny fragments of preserved DNA,” said Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Lost world in northern Greenland conjured from DNA in ancient soil” — Science

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

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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 13115 – Antarctica Tinder Match

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Online dating is old hat by now. And it’s a good thing too, because where else are you supposed to meet people in Antarctica? It turns out that in 2014, the first Antarctica Tinder match took place.

The Antarctic Tinder match-up

Picture it – a December evening at the McMurdo Station. You’re an American scientist wondering what to do that night in 2014. Do you watch the rebooted Hawaii Five 0 just to think about what might have been if you had just picked your research topic a little more strategically? Or do you hop on Tinder, and wonder what on Earth might show up?

If you’re an unnamed scientist who agreed to be interviewed on the match but refused to reveal his name because of the trouble you might get in for using the rare broadband access to access a booty call, then the answer is the latter.

And you’d have gotten a match!

Who’s on Tinder in Antarctica?

The scientists told The Cut that he matched with a female traveling somewhere in the area.

“She was actually in her tent in the Dry Valleys when we matched,” said the scientist…“She was quite literally camping in Antarctica, went on Tinder, and found me. It’s mind-blowing.”

What’s the chance of two people trying to find love on Tinder in the tundra of Antarctica on the same December night?

Slim. But not none.

No profiles showed up for the scientist at first, but he wasn’t deterred. After all, he worked in a field camp that was a 45-minute helicopter ride away from any base station. When he expanded his radius, he got the hit. It seems they both swiped right.

Was this the first-ever Tinder hit in Antarctica? Well, it may sound ridiculous, but no one knows. The company doesn’t keep statistics on that particular area. However, according to The Cut, “the company agreed that this was probably the first match on the continent.”

How does it all end?

While we’ll likely never know anything else about the couple, the scientist told The Cut that the paid did meet briefly on the day the woman was leaving Antarctica.

“I have yet to become the first Tinder hookup in Antarctic history,” he said at the time. “But she is actually coming back, and we may overlap. There’s still hope.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Tinder Makes Its First Match in Antarctica” — The Cut

WTF Fun Fact 13113 – The Island in a Lake in an Island in a Lake

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Vulcan Point has an interesting factoid that few pieces of land that share this distinction. It’s an island in a lake in an island in a lake in an island. These are called “recursive islands.”

How do you get an island in a Lake in an Island in a Lake?

How does this make sense?

Well, Vulcan Point is a tiny piece of land inside a crater lake on Volcano island in Lake Taal, which sits in the island of Luzon in The Philippines. Luzon is in the Batangas province. You can see it all here on Google.

Vulcan Point isn’t a tourist destination so much as it’s just a curiosity. Lake Taal is believed to have been formed by rainwater, and it was covered in vegetation until recently when the Taal Volcano erupted in 2020, and it evaporated. However, typhoon water brought back the lake, and its island is now a bit bigger (and Vulcan Point is on its peninsula).

Trust us, looking at a map will help.

Recursive islands

A recursive island is merely an island in a lake. But there are 12 other islands in lakes in islands in lakes in islands in the world. Canada has the most. Indonesia has a pair as well. The rest are in the UK and Cuba.

There’s only one island in a lake on island in a lake on an island in a lake in the world (which takes it all one step further). It’s called Manar. But its island, lake, next biggest island, etc. remain unnamed. But the main island is in Lake Yathkyed, way up in Nunavut.

We’re not sure they make the best vacation spots – though there’s little stopping you from visiting many of them – but they do make for good trivia! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Taal Volcano Main Crater Lake” — Wikipedia

WTF Fun Fact 13111 – The Most Common Wild Bird

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You may see sparrows, cardinals, and pigeons non-stop. But the most common wild bird in the world actually lives in Africa. Now, it won’t be common for all of us to see, but it’s the most abundant wild bird, meaning there are more of these birds than any other birds.

What is the most common wild bird?

The most common wild bird in the world, in terms of its sheer abundance, is the Red-billed Quelea.

These birds live in sub-Saharan Africa (south of the Sarahan Desert). And they don’t just fly in flocks, they fly in massive hordes. In fact, if you see a group of these birds, you’re probably looking at 2 million or more in one flock.

According to the Audobon Society (cited below): “They fly in such tightly synchronized masses they can be mistaken at a distance for clouds of smoke.”

How many Red-billed Quelea are there?

It’s estimated that there are around 1.5 billion Red-billed Quelea out there. That makes them the most abundant wild bird in the world. Of course, they’re not common in North America, but if you took all the birds in the world and put them together, the number of Red-billed Quelea would dwarf the populations of most other wild birds.

The Red-billed Quelea is the size of a sparrow and is brown for the most part. Like most birds, the males are more colorful. They often have red and black feathers on their heads.

These birds eat seeds, which they crack open with their beaks. But unfortunately for farmers, they are drawn to crops like millet. And as you can imagine, having 2 million birds descend on your field for a meal can easily strip you of your income.

At times, “Single colonies can cover hundreds of acres, totaling tens of millions of birds,” according to Audobon.

Unfortunately, their tastes include cultivated crops, like millet. But the enormous growth of cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa has likely led to the birds’ proliferation. —WTF fun facts

Source: “What Is the Most Abundant Wild Bird in the World?” — Audobon Society