wtf fun fact

WTF Fun Fact 12692 – The Monarchy Takes A Hostage

The word “hostage” seems a bit harsh, but that’s precisely what a British tradition was meant to imply.

The British monarchy began to share power with a legislative branch of government way back in 1215, with the signing of the Magna Carta. But over the centuries, the royals have become less “heads of state” and more “figureheads.”

Even though relations between the monarchy and the British government are good, Buckingham Palace maintains a centuries-old tradition (going back to 1600) of taking a member of British Parliament “hostage” to ensure the monarch’s safe return when they make a speech at Parliament. Most recently, MP James Morris was taken “hostage” in May 2022 when Prince Charles delivered a speech on behalf of the Queen.

However, that wasn’t the case in the 1600s, when King Charles I argued back and forth with parliament about how much power they should have. The people wanted a constitutional monarchy and the royals…well, they didn’t for obvious reasons.

There’s lots of detail we’re leaving out here (like an entire English Civil War, and a Second English Civil War), but the important part is that, in the end, Charles I was delivered to Parliament, where they proceeded to try him for treason, convict him, and execute him. Then for good measure, they abolished the monarchy.

So, as you might imagine, the monarchy is a little sensitive about the whole thing and while it looks like a nice joke to the rest of the world now, it’s rooted in something much more serious. Still, all the “hostage”-taking is agreed upon in advance and no one is in danger these days.

But the whole reason we’re here is that this tradition came to light on May 2, 2022, when Prince Charles gave a speech at the opening of Parliament on behalf of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen is suffering from intermittent mobility issues, so much of the royal family went in her place. And they did, indeed, take a ceremonial “hostage.” Conservative MP James Morris said he was the designated hostage this time around. Below, you can find him giving an explanation of the whole tradition. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Buckingham Palace has a centuries-old tradition of taking an MP hostage when the Queen or one of her representatives enter Parliament” — Yahoo News

WTF Fun Fact 12691 – The Roots of Memorial Day

In the U.S., Memorial Day honors all military personnel who died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

While the Act of Congress establishing the holiday was passed in 1968 and enacted in 1971, the roots of Memorial Day date back to the years after the American Civil War. And while Waterloo, New York, was identified by the federal government as the “birthplace” of the holiday, records show the first Memorial Day commemoration happened much farther away. (Waterloo was chosen because it hosted the first widespread, formal, annual event where businesses were closed and people visited the graves of soldiers who died in battle.)

Less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered and the Civil War ended in 1865, a group of formerly enslaved people held a celebration in Charleston, South Carolina, in honor of fallen Union soldiers.

Years earlier, the newly-freed men and women had stayed behind in order to give a proper burial to the 260+ Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave outside a racetrack the Confederacy had turned into a prison. The Union soldiers died of disease and exposure and were hastily buried in pits. Yet these men and women chose to honor them instead of evacuating the badly damaged city, removing them from the mass graves, and creating new graves for each soldier in a new cemetery labeled “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The commemoration event to honor them in 1865 involved nearly 10,000 people, mostly Black with a few white missionaries, who marched to the racetrack carrying flowers. Black regiments marched in the parade while ministers recited Bible verses and a children’s choir sang. (You can read about the event in the book Race and Reunion by David W. Blight – though people still question whether there’s enough evidence to say the parade happened.)

While a file in an archive labeled this event the “First Decoration Day,” a few years later, in 1868, May 30 was chosen by the leader of the Northern Civil War veterans organization as a day to remember fallen soldiers as well. General John A. Logan called for a nationwide day of remembrance “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

Logan called the proposed holiday “Decoration Day” and chose the date because it didn’t commemorate any particular battle (thereby including everyone from both sides of the war in the memorial event).

Decoration Day was, indeed, celebrated long before there was a federal holiday called “Memorial Day.” General (later President) James Garfield made a speech while 5,000 participants decorated the resting places of the Civil War soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetary (which contained the graves of 20k soldiers).

Later, Northern states organized Decoration Day and began to hold it on the same day every year, all declaring it a state holiday by 1890. The Southern states honored their war dead as well, but they each chose a different date to celebrate it. No one mentioned the Charleston celebration at the time.

While Decoration Day was originally a day to honor the Civil War dead, after WWI, it became a day to celebrate all the people in the military who lost their lives while serving.

The Act of Congress that created “Memorial Day” fixed that date as the last Monday in May (rather than the 30th) and declared it a federal holiday. This made it part of a movement to create more three-day weekends.

However, the story of the freed slaves who commemorated Union soldiers was lost to time, and some still reject it as a part of the Memorial Day timeline. However, the graves of the soldiers have been found and moved to a new cemetery (the re-burial was not in doubt), and some local residents grew up hearing stories about the massive parade from their grandparents. Still, it will likely never be recognized as the “first Memorial Day” (even though the title may be less important than simply remembering the story). That’s because it was only written about once, as far as we can tell. Perhaps archives will reveal more evidence in time.

As a bonus fun fact, did you know that there is a national moment of remembrance each year at 3:00 p.m. local time each Memorial Day? If you can’t make it out for a formal remembrance but want to honor the dead, a 3 p.m. moment of silence is a simpler act of reverence for those who want to acknowledge the day. – WTF fun facts

Source: “One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies Was Held by Freed African Americans” — History.com

WTF Fun Fact 12689 – The World’s First Gardens

While the practice of growing plants and flowers for aesthetic pleasure hasn’t been a characteristic of all times and places, gardening goes back thousands of years. There is evidence of Egyptian palace gardens in the second millennium BCE! And they were so large it was said that oarsmen could row their boats through their water features.

Of course, agriculture existed long before that, but gardening (or ornamental horticulture), was designed purely for pleasure (not for medicinal purposes alone) once people settled down.

While some trace the oldest gardens to China, those acted more as hunting lands. Other ancient references to “gardens” (such as in the Epic of Gilgamesh) were likely patches of trees and not purely ornamental agriculture.

In the 6th century BCE, gardening was in full bloom. The Babylonians had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which the Hellenistic Greeks referred to as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

There were gardens at the schools of ancient Greece (Aristotle kept one) and all over Rome. In fact, the Romans were obsessed with gardening. The architectural author Vitruvius wrote the first book on landscaping.

After the decline of Rome, the Moors kept the tradition alive in the West (along with much of Western intellectual tradition) while a separate culture of gardening developed in China and spread to Japan. Monks also copied Roman gardening manuscripts and kept gardens of their own, penning some original gardening manuals as well.

Purely ornamental gardening fell out of fashion (or, well, people didn’t quite have time for it) in the middle ages. But it was revived again in France in the 13th century to some extent and boomed again in the Renaissance period.

In the 16th century, the Spanish were the first to build public parks. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Where was the world’s first garden made?” — Garden Visit

WTF Fun Fact 12688 – The Dubai Miracle Garden

If you’ve paid much attention to what Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has to offer, you’d know a giant garden is one of the less miraculous things. Nevertheless, the Dubai Miracle Garden is 72,000 square meters large and contains an amazing 150 million flowers. That makes it the world’s largest natural flower garden.

Just a few years ago, it contained a mere 65 million flowers, so it’s growing all the time. And there are over 2 miles of walkways for you to travel down to view them all. And since the flowers change every year, visitors can see a different set of attractions each time they visit.

The Dubai Miracle Garden was named the “Largest Vertical Garden in the World” by the Guinness World Records in 2013. Throughout the property, you’ll also find giant peacocks, teddy bears, and faces made out of flowers, along with (at least at one point, a life-size replica of the Emirates Airbus A380 which the Guinness Book called the “Largest Floral Installation” in 2016).

The garden, which opened in 2013, typically attracts over 1.5 million people each year. And while things may be different now because of the pandemic, in 2017, the garden reported that creating the attraction each year requires 60 days and 400 people.

One impressive feature is the way it’s watered. After all, it’s in a desert! Well, it turns out the flowers are kept alive via drip irrigation that reuses wastewater.

Interestingly, there are 60 different kinds of flowers (which is a lot, but still less than expected). That’s no doubt due to just how many (or few) can survive the weather – petunias, geraniums, and marigolds are quite common. The garden is closed in summer but remains open from November through May of each year.

It also doubles as a theme park with food stands, which we imagine serve lots of cold treats since the temperature in winter is still in the high 70s Fahrenheit. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Dubai Miracle Garden: world’s largest natural flower garden” — CNN Travel

WTF Fun Fact 12687 – The Problem With Pointing Out Baldness

A UK judge just ruled that using the word bald as an insult in the office is now considered inappropriate because it’s a word more likely to apply to men than women. (While outlets keep reporting that calling a man bald in general now constitutes sexual harassment, that’s not what the ruling said.)

But the employment tribunal also compared calling a man bald to commenting on the size of a women’s breasts (which, well…I guess we’ll all just have different opinions on that one).

According to CNBC’s coverage of the ruling:

“Three members of the tribunal who decided on the ruling, and alluded to their own experience of hair loss, said that baldness was more prevalent in men than women. Therefore, they argued that the use of the word ‘bald’ as an insult related to a ‘protected characteristic of sex.'”

And we get it, but it’s worth pointing out that we’re all now extremely aware that women can experience baldness as well (alopecia, the Will Smith slap…anyone remember that?).

The case was brought by Tony Finn, who was an electrician for the British Bung Manufacturing Company. He was fired last year and a threat from his shift supervisor is part of the complaint. The supervisor called Finn a “bald c—”! And, no, the main problem was not the second word.

The insult was deemed a “violation against the claimant’s dignity, it created an intimidating … environment for him, it was done for that purpose, and it related to the claimant’s sex.” Again, we’re talking about the world “bald” here, not the C-word.

According to CNBC:

“The tribunal members also suggested that it was not the use of profanities that was the issue, with Finn also having being found to use such language in the workplace: ‘Although, as we find, industrial language was commonplace on this West Yorkshire factory floor, in our judgment Mr King crossed the line by making remarks personal to the claimant about his appearance.'”

Finn will now receive compensation from the company, but the amount has yet to be set.
– WTF fun facts

Source: “Calling a man bald counts as sexual harassment, UK judge rules” — CNBC

WTF Fun Fact 12686 – RIP Sandy Island

Sandy Island was 15 miles long, roughly the size of Manhattan. Or at least that’s what the maps showed in the decades leading up to 2012. It even showed up on Google Maps in the Coral Sea, east of Australia.

Discovered in 1876, the best we can guess is that there might have been a floating pile of pumice there at some point that made explorers think it was an island. In any case, they put it on a map, and there it stayed until 2012. That’s when a research crew passed by the site and realized the island wasn’t there.

It hadn’t been covered by water. There was no evidence at all that an island had ever been in that location. The water a mile down was free of any proof that a landmass had ever been in that location.

As if embarrassed, everyone from National Geographic to Google quickly and quietly removed the island from their maps. (Which, let’s face it, raises some questions about maps in general and what they encourage us to believe without asking further questions.)

The truth is, the island had been “undiscovered” even before 2012 as people reported that there was nothing there and some maps labeled Sandy Island “ED,” or “existence doubtful.”

Maybe it started with a false sighting or perhaps with a simple recording error, but that error was replicated in databases for over 100 years without anyone questioning it (or looking for proof via satellite).

David Titley, a retired Navy rear admiral who spent over three decades as an oceanographer and navigator, told The Washington Post:

“When we look at these computer displays, with the three-dimensional imagery and colorized, it can give you a sense that we know more than we do. A lot of people in the Navy don’t always understand the difference between having a chart and having the survey data that formed that chart.”

There is no longer a Sandy Island on modern maps. Scientists even published an obituary for it in 2013. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Pacific island that never was” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12685 – A Pristine Forest In A Sinkhole

But there are 30 giant sinkholes throughout China, and explorers who rappelled down into one of them in May of 2022 discovered that nature was hiding something from us – a pristine, ancient forest. In fact, we know so little about this ecosystem that it would very well harbor wildlife we’re never seen before!

The sinkhole is 630 feet deep, 1,004 feet long, and 492 feet wide. Some of the trees inside the sinkhole are 130 feet tall!

While he was not involved in the expedition, George Veni, the executive director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI) in the U.S, told Live Science more about these features:

“The discovery is no surprise, Veni told Live Science, because southern China is home to karst topography, a landscape prone to dramatic sinkholes and otherworldly caves. Karst landscapes are formed primarily by the dissolution of bedrock, Veni said. Rainwater, which is slightly acidic, picks up carbon dioxide as it runs through the soil, becoming more acidic. It then trickles, rushes and flows through cracks in the bedrock, slowly widening them into tunnels and voids. Over time, if a cave chamber gets large enough, the ceiling can gradually collapse, opening up huge sinkholes.”

He also said China was an ideal place to find sinkholes with something worthwhile inside: “So in China you have this incredibly visually spectacular karst with enormous sinkholes and giant cave entrances and so forth. In other parts of the world you walk out on the karst and you really don’t notice anything. Sinkholes might be quite subdued, only a meter or two in diameter. Cave entrances might be very small, so you have to squeeze your way into them.” 

The sinkhole is located in a UNESCO world heritage location in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, near Ping’e village in the county of Leye.

While we don’t usually think of sinkholes as harboring anything special, this one surely did. These giant sinkholes are called a “tiankeng” in Mandarin, meaning “heavenly pit.” –  WTF fun fact

Source: “Giant sinkhole with a forest inside found in China” — Live Science

WTF Fun Fact 12684 – Pushed Into a Fortune

Some people come into our lives and make them richer. Other people barrel through our lives just because they’re rude and we’re in their way. For LaQuedra Edwards, it only took one person to do both.

In April of 2022, the Southern California woman was buying her weekly lottery ticket at a grocery store in Tarzana when “some rude person” (as she described them) bumped into her and didn’t even stop to say excuse me. That ended up pushing her into the machine as she was about to hit the button for the ticket she wanted. Except her finger veered off course due to the surprise and landed on the button for a $30 scratch-off.

She had already bought some other tickets and went out to her car, unhappy with the overall investment. But as many lottery players know, sometimes those cards end up paying for themselves.

Ms. Edwards $30 scratch-off DID pay for itself – and then some! She scratched it off to find she had won the lotto’s biggest prize, a whopping $10 million!

“I didn’t really believe it at first, but I got on the 405 freeway and kept looking down at [the ticket], and I almost crashed my car,” she said in a statement to the California Lottery. “I pulled over, looked at it again and again, scanned it with my app, and I just kept thinking this can’t be right.”

The odds of winning $10 million in that particular scratch-off game were 1 in 3 million! And while there are plenty of rude people out there who just keep on barreling through the lives of other folks, we almost have to wonder if this wasn’t some sort of “guardian angel.” (Or at least a fairy godmother in a rush.) –  WTF fun fact

Source: “An accidental encounter with a ‘rude person’ made this woman $10 million richer” — Fortune

WTF Fun Fact 12683 – From New Hampshire to Norway

Right before the pandemic closed schools, students at New Hampshire’s Rye Junior High School were working on a science project to launch a boat into the ocean with GPS attached to see where it would end up and what route it would take.

According to NPR: “Rye Junior High and the nonprofit Educational Passages — which says it aims to connect students around the world to the ocean and one another — started working together on the project in 2018, according to a release. The organization provided students with an assembly kit in 2020, though the construction and launch were complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.”

They thought it was lost when GPS stopped transmitting for a while, but eventually, it pinged again from a little uninhabited island off the coast of Norway. They just needed someone to retrieve it. Enter local sixth-grader, Karel Nuncic, who took a boat with his parents and puppy out to the island (which they could see from their coastal home) to recover the vessel. It wasn’t in great shape, but the hull containing artwork from the students who launched it was intact and dry.

In a Facebook post, the school said:

“RJH’s miniboat made it across the Atlantic! Our students put together a 5 foot drifter and had it launched into the middle of the Gulf Stream current on Oct. 25, 2020. Which way did it go? The onboard GPS recorded its location, most of the time. Then it went silent for a while. On Sunday, it pinged again and its location was on a small island off of Norway! Stayed tuned for more of the story! Here are the before and after photos of our miniboat and a map of its path. (Thanks to Educational Passages and The Clipper Foundation!)”

–  WTF fun fact

Source: “A Norwegian student found a boat launched by New Hampshire middle-schoolers in 2020” — NPR