wtf fun fact

WTF Fun Fact 12727 – Steven Jay Russell Escaped Prison Multiple Times

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Steven Jay Russell has had 14 aliases, but the conman will always be remembered by his real name because, despite all his cons, he has always been caught. Oh, and they made a movie about him!

Russell also has some nicknames, such as “King Con” or perhaps the more apt “Houdini,” since he seems to slip out of jail quite often. Four times to be exact (although, to be fair, once it was from a hospital while he was in police custody).

He’s currently serving his 144-year jail sentence for a litany of non-violent charges, including felony escape and embezzlement.

His life of crime began in 1992 when he was being held at Harris County Jail in Houston for making a false insurance claim that said he injured his back. Disguising himself as a repairman, he got access to a walkie-talkie, which he used to simply waltz right out the front door, despite it being guarded.

When he was caught, he was sent to a Texas prison where he met his long-time love, Phillip Morris. When the pair was released (Russell was released on parole), Russell wanted to give his partner a lavish lifestyle. That’s when he managed to get himself a job as the chief financial officer at a medical insurance company.

Over the next five months, he managed to embezzle them out of $800,000, which he spent on cars, Rolexes, and even some cosmetic surgery. Then he was caught.

This time, Russell escaped from police custody instead of jail (so, technically, he has 5 escapes under his belt). He impersonated a judge over the phone, asking that his bail be reduced from $900k to just $45k. It worked – and Russell paid the less bail with a check. Of course, the check bounced. He was caught when trying to get back in touch with Morris.

The Guardian explained his third escape after interviewing him:

“Three years later, he stockpiled green felt-tip pens from prison art classes, squeezing the ink from the cartridges into a sink of water and dying his overalls the colour of surgical gowns. ‘You have to be very careful because if you wring them out, you get streaks in the material,’ he says matter-of-factly. Underneath the makeshift medical clothes, Russell taped several plastic bags tightly to his body so that police dogs would not be able to follow his scent once he was on the run. He picked a moment when the woman manning the front desk was on the telephone and then, unquestioned by prison staff, simply walked out ‘dressed like Dr Kildare.'”

The fourth escape occurred on March 20, 1998 (a Friday the 13th – in fact, all of Russell’s escapes took place on Friday the 13th!). Russell posed as a millionaire from Virginia to get a $75,000 loan from Dallas’ NationsBank. But bank officials were on to him and alerted the police.

When the police apprehended him, Russell faked a heart attack. In the hospital, he managed to impersonate an FBI agent on the phone to tell the hospital to release him.

Each time, he and Morris were tracked down. Ninety-nine years of his 144-year sentence is for the escapes.

Today, Steven Jay Russell is currently serving his sentence in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day (to give you some perspective on that, the United Nations has deemed it torture to hold people in solitary for more than 15 days without meaningful human contact).

With a release date of 2140, many people have called his sentence excessive and have asked Texas to release him (he became eligible for parole in 2020, but that doesn’t mean you automatically get granted a hearing). People who support his release (or a shorter sentence or release from solitary point out that there are cold-blooded murderers who received much shorter sentences. None of Russell’s crimes or escapes involved the use of violence or force of any kind.

There’s a 2009 film about his life called I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey as Steven Jay Russell. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “I love you Phillip Morris: a conman’s story” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12726 – New Zealanders Eat The Most Ice Cream

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If you thought Americans were the biggest ice cream eaters in the world (or maybe Italians with their gelato), think again. New Zealanders come in first, consuming an average of 7.5 gallons of ice cream per year. Americans eat about 4.4 gallons, so while they come in second, they’re pretty far behind.

New Zealand is known for its epic dairy products, and they have a highly competitive ice cream industry.

The two main ingredients, milk and sugar became readily available in New Zealand in the 1800s. Sugar was readily imported from Australia, and Durham dairy cows were introduced in 1814, followed by Jerseys, Friesians, and Ayrshires in the 1860s and 70s, once people realized the grazing land was ideal.

But what about the ice? That’s also integral in making ice cream.

Interestingly, New Zealand’s ice originally came from the US Great Lakes area. International ice sale was big business in the 1940s, and Great Lakes ice was shipped around the world on large ships. Giant cubes were stacked together and insulated by wood shavings. Melting did occur, but the giant cubes managed to make it to New Zealand!

Upon arrival, the ice was stored in insulated ice houses.

However, it was ice from Massachusetts’ Wenham Lake that went into making New Zealand’s first ice cream. It was harvested by the Wenham Lake Ice Company, founded by “Ice King” Frederic Tudor, and the “Wenham Ice” is mentioned in New Zealand’s earliest ice cream ads. – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “The New Zealand Ice Cream Industry” — New Zealand Ice Cream Manufacturers Association

WTF Fun Fact 12725 – Ancient Stone Pillows

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It’s hard to find a good pillow. And while some of us like our pillow firm, it would take a major adjustment to sleep like ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians (well, in more ways than one, I suppose).

Here’s one of the most famous pillows in history, brought to you from Egypt King Tut’s tomb:

One of 8 headrests found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. The god of air, Shu, is carved in ivory. The piece resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

It’s beautiful, but it lacks the kind of functionality we typically look for today.

Until the Industrial Revolution, pillows weren’t even a household object. Yes, some ancient Greeks and Romans did stuff straw in cloth to lay their heads on, but a pillow is also a symbol of having excess lying around to use for more practical purposes. However, we can credit the Greeks with bringing us closer to the era of the soft pillow.

However, in ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, wealthy people would elevate their heads on “pillow” made of stone (or ivory – or another luxury material). They were designed to keep insects out of their ears, noses, and mouths – and probably to maintain a good hairstyle every now and then.

We’ve also found some pillows that are beautifully engraved with messages about keeping away bad spirits as well, but it’s unclear how those would be fooled by an elevated head. Still, it gives us a good idea of what ancient people were concerned about when they laid down their heads at night. — WTF fun facts

Source: “HEADRESTS IN GLENCAIRN’S EGYPTIAN COLLECTION: PRACTICALITY AND PROTECTION” — Glencairn Museum

WTF Fun Fact 12724 – Creating Summer Indoor Entertainment

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Without Willis Carrier’s 1902 invention of the air conditioner, we’d have a very different world. And it would have started with missing out on opportunities for indoor cultural experiences in the summer when people are most commonly off from work and school.

Carrier’s original design was meant for a publishing company in Brooklyn that needed to keep its paper from expanding and contracting so it could achieve proper print quality while it was hot and humid. But not long after that, businessmen saw the opportunities to add it to factories (which technically cut off some summer break for workers who could now work more safely in the summer) and then to department stores. The real cultural moment came when it was added to movie theaters in the mid to late 1920s and regular theaters in the 1960s.

For example, Carrier’s company put an air conditioner in Lincoln Center in 1961. This extended the performing arts season in New York City from “a single season to 52 weeks a year,” according to the Carrier website.

For more cool facts and stories about the history of air conditioning, check out:
Slate, “A History of Air Conditioning”
JSTOR Daily’s “Can We Live Without Air Conditioning?”
BBC, “How Air Conditioning Changed the World”

— WTF fun facts

Source: “The History of Movie Theaters and Air Conditioning That Keeps Film Lovers Cool” — WPLF

WTF Fun Fact 12723 – Air Conditioning Was Invented In Buffalo, New York

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Willis Carrier is the man to thank if you’re cooling off in an air-conditioned space today. He was born in Angola, New York, and attended high school in Buffalo, where he would later work, he submitted the first drawings for a cooling unit in 1902.

Children and some laborers were already some time off in the summer when productivity was low because of heat and humidity. But, of course, many companies needed to keep on producing their goods.

Carrier, who got an engineering degree at Cornell and then returned to work as a research engineer at Buffalo Forge Company, was set upon the task.

But the primary goal wasn’t to give us all comfort during sweltering summers. In fact, according to the Willis Carrier website, the “young research engineer initialed a set of mechanical drawings designed to solve a production problem at the Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in Brooklyn, New York.” Ironically, it was a problem with paper.

Also interesting is that Buffalo Forge was a supplier of forges, fans, and hot blast heaters. Creating cold air is the first challenge that needed addressing!

So why begin with paper? Why does paper need to be cool?

Well, it turns out it expands and contracts when heat and humidity are a problem – and that’s just not good when you need to print something.

Again, according to the website that now carries his life story:

“In the spring of 1902, consulting engineer Walter Timmis visited the Manhattan office of J. Irvine Lyle, the head of Buffalo Forge’s sales activities in New York. Timmis’ client, Sackett & Wilhelms, found that humidity at its Brooklyn plant wreaked havoc with the color register of its fine, multicolor printing. Ink, applied one color at a time, would misalign with the expansion and contraction of the paper stock. This caused poor quality, scrap waste and lost production days, Timmis said. Judge magazine happened to be one of the important clients whose production schedule was at risk. Timmis had some ideas about how to approach the problem but would need help. Was Buffalo Forge interested?”

Carrier was tasked with the problem because he already had a sterling reputation as a researcher and data collector, and this problem would need a lot of work.

But he did it. He was able to not only produce cool air but humidity as well by “replacing steam with cold water flowing through heating coils, balancing the temperature of the coil surface with the rate of air flow to pull the air temperature down to the desired dew point temperature.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job. Carrier later started a company, and sold his updated creations to factories, and then to department stores and movie theaters in the 1920s.

The source down below is a comprehensive website on his invention and the impact it had on the world (just click through the dates on the left side of the page to follow the timeline to today). —WTF fun facts

Source: “The Invention That Changed the World” — WillisCarrier.com

WTF Fun Facts 12723 – No Such Thing As A “Safe Tan”

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It’s been decades since we’ve known that tanning beds cause cancer and yet some folks just can’t get enough. It doesn’t help that the tanning industry continues to tout the benefits despite copious scientific evidence that they’re unsafe at best (and, at worst, deadly).

Of course, sun exposure is damaging too, but some of us can’t avoid that – you actually have to walk in and pay for skin damage at a tanning salon dispute there being no physiological benefit (for example, there’s no such thing as a “healthy base tan”).

In addition, a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine estimated that more than 3,200 people are treated for tanning-related injuries in US emergency rooms every year.

It’s hard to hear for many people as “tanning addition” becomes more of a problem, especially among young, white women.

But here are just a few facts from the American Academy of Dermatology Association to provide food for thought:

  • Even one indoor tanning session can increase the risk of developing skin cancer (melanoma by 20%, squamous cell carcinoma by 67%, and basal cell carcinoma by 29%).
  • Nearly 25% of young adults the Academy surveyed were unaware or unsure that tanning beds are not safer than the sun.
  • You can’t get enough vitamin D from tanning beds because the bulbs used emit mostly UVA light; however, your body needs UVB light to make vitamin D.
  • About 20% of 18- to 30-year-old white women who use tanning beds show signs of tanning addiction. When they don’t tan, they even report feeling fidgety or depressed.

And, finally, a Forbes article laid out the issues with indoor tanning as well as some research that shows our desire to tan may actually be influenced by genetics! — WTF fun facts

Source: “10 SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT INDOOR TANNING” — American Academy of Dermatology Association

WTF Fun Fact 12722 – A Tenth Of A Cent Of Savings

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Yes, we know. When gas prices are over $5/gallon for even the cheap stuff, no one wants to talk about gas prices.

But chances are you’ve stared a little harder than usual at the prices on the signs lately. And if you’re observant, you’ve probably noticed that more often than not, those prices end in 9/10 cents.

Part of the reason is historical. In the early 20th century when states began taking gas to help pay for highway repair, they did it in increments of a tenth of a cent. That entire cost got added on to gas prices and passed along to drivers. But when gas was 9/10th of a cent back in the day, rounding up would have been a huge 10% hike.

Today, rounding up would hardly even register to most of us, but the pricing is part tradition and part marketing.

Nearly all prices are rounded down to the previous dollar (except for luxury goods, where paying a premium is no big deal). Think about how many prices end in 99 cents. It’s purse psychology.

Marketers study human psychology in order to understand what will make us buy things. And it turns out that we are far more likely to buy something that is $9.99 rather than $10. Our brains process that as real savings (because we’re paying in the nine-dollar range instead of the ten-dollar range).

It’s called “just-below pricing,” and it’s used everywhere. And it’s so effective that even the news doesn’t necessarily pick up a story on gas prices until they hit a new full dollar mark.

Meanwhile, there’s not much of a difference to our wallets if gas is $4.99 and 9/10ths a gallon. But seeing $5.00 and 9/10ths sets everyone off in a whole new way. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Why gas prices always end in 9/10 of a cent” — WTF Fun Fact

WTF Fun Fact 12721 – The Wara Art Festival

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Niigata isn’t a typical travel destination, but it does draw people in for a unique festival held each year between August and October.

The Wara Art Festival is held in Uwasekigata Park and shows off amazing sculptures made of rice straw left over after the annual rice harvest.

People weren’t quite sure what to do with all the straw, but now tons of it is donated to art students at Musashino Art University in Tokyo as well as local volunteers who are tasked with making giant animal sculptures with it. Some of them are up to 16 feet tall!

The sculptures include gorillas, dinosaurs, bears, rhinos, and more. Underneath is a wood frame skeleton to ensure the sculptures stay up throughout the festival, but over two weeks, more and more layers of wara are added. Some are braided, others thatched – in fact, there are many techniques the artists use to build their sculptures.

If you do go to Niigata for the festival, be sure to try the rice, which is considered to be the best in all of Japan. And according to Japan’s tourism association, the town is also known for its sake as well “thanks to the high snowfall in the prefecture which creates pristine conditions for rice growing. Centuries-old sake making traditions are kept alive by the toji, or Sake Masters, of Niigata. Local sake from breweries in Niigata are revered nationwide for their dry, sharp finish and refreshingly crisp flavour.”

If you visit the park, there are sake breweries within walking distance as well as beer breweries to visit. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Wara Art Festival, Niigata” — Japan National Tourism Association

WTF Fun Fact 12720 – Let Them Eat Cake

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We’ll spare you some of the legal jargon, but we did actually read the 51-page judgment of an Irish court declaring that the bread used by restaurant chain Subway is now basically considered a confectionary in Ireland.

It wasn’t exactly riveting, but it was enlightening. And to summarize – it all had to do with paying taxes. Otherwise, we doubt Ireland would have bothered to consider it any more closely. And no one is saying you can’t call it bread – the judgment is only referring to how the bread is categorized for tax purposes.

This started when an Irish Subway franchisee, Bookfinders Ltd. filed a suit claiming that they were due a refund for value-added tax (VAT) payments between January 2004 and December 2005.

Their argument hinged on 2 paragraphs of the Value Added Tax Act of 1972, which described which goods and services should have VAT added to them. Bookfinders claimed that the majority of their goods fell into the category requiring a 0% rate (rather than the 13.5% they had paid).

That category includes: “chocolates, sweets and similar confectionary (including glacé or
crystallised fruits), biscuits, crackers and wafers of all kinds, and all other confectionary and bakery products whether cooked or uncooked, excluding bread…”

And “bread” is specifically defined as “food for human consumption manufactured by baking dough composed exclusively of a mixture of cereal flour and any one or more of the ingredients mentioned in the following subclauses in quantities not exceeding the limitation, if any, specified for each ingredient…”

To spare you more jargon, we’ll just say that the subclause in question is the one that says that in order to be considered bread, the weight of any fat, sugar, or “bread improver” cannot exceed 2% of the weight of the flour included in the dough.

It actually gets pretty complicated since there are different tax rates for different items and part of the argument is about averaging out tax rates, how tax rates might differ for businesses offering primarily take-out goods, and whether the temperature of the food makes a difference when it comes to taxing it.

This might be the very best (and by best we mean absurd) sentence: “They [Bookfinders] also submitted that the 1972 Act breached the principle of legal certainty by making the difference between ambient air temperature and the temperature of the food central to their VAT classification.”

Anyway, in the end, the fact that Subway’s bread had too much sugar in it (5 times as much as allowed by the tax code), means it is not considered bread for tax purposes.

Subway was pretty miffed at the implication that their bread was not bread, saying:

“Subway’s bread is, of course, bread. We have been baking fresh bread in our restaurants for more than three decades and our guests return each day for sandwiches made on bread that smells as good as it tastes.”

Our favorite commentary on the matter is this Tweet:

If anything, people got a warning that their sandwich bread had a lot of sugar in it, but there doesn’t seem to be much proof that anyone cared. — WTF fun facts

Source: “For Subway, A Ruling Not So Sweet. Irish Court Says Its Bread Isn’t Bread” — NPR