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WTF Fun Fact 12738 – Balance For Better Health

According to a new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, your ability to balance on one foot may indicate better health and a longer life expectancy.

People in the study who were aged 51 to 75 and couldn’t balance on one foot for over 10 seconds were more likely to die within the next ten years.

According to CNN:

“While aging leads to a decline in physical fitness, muscle strength, and flexibility, balance tends to be reasonably well-preserved until a person’s 50s, when it starts to wane relatively rapidly, the researchers noted. Previous research has linked the inability to stand on one leg to a greater risk of falls and to cognitive decline.”

If you want to try it out, lift your foot and out the front of the foot behind your standing leg. Keep your arms at your side and look straight ahead (focusing on something in the distance often help maintain balance).

If at first you don’t succeed, that’s ok. You get three chances to get your body used to the task. You just can’t use anything to hang onto for support.

CNN explained the correlation between lifespan and balance in the study, citing one of the study’s authors:

“Being able to balance on one leg is important for older people for several reasons, and it is also reflective of wider fitness and health levels, said study author Dr. Claudio Gil Araújo at Exercise Medicine Clinic – CLINIMEX – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ‘We regularly need … a one-legged posture, to move out of a car, to climb or to descend a step or stair and so on. To not have this ability or being afraid in doing so, it is likely related to loss of autonomy and, in consequence, less exercise and the snowball starts,’ he explained.”

So, how did researchers get to their conclusion? One in five study subjects failed the test (balance is tricky!). Then the subjects were followed for seven years. During that time, 7% of study subjects died. But what was significant is that the proportion of people who failed the balance test was much higher than those who passed.

That doesn’t mean you’re doomed if you have bad balance. It just means that it may be indicative of other issues that may affect your health and long life. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Wobbly on one leg? Ability to balance is linked to a longer life, study finds” — CNN

WTF Fun Fact 12737 – Ornamental Hermits

We know about garden gnomes, but what about ornamental hermits? They weren’t made of concrete or resin – they were real people.

In the 18th century, wealthy people with gardens didn’t want to be tacky, so no garden gnomes would do. The fancy way to decorate your garden was with an actual person paid to dress like a Druid, skip the showers, dress in tatty clothing, and wander around the estates.

Very rustic!

A British custom

This was mostly a practice in England, but there were ornamental hermits in Ireland and Scotland as well.

Atlas Obscura took a look at a book written about these interesting professionals by Gordon Campbell, a Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester. In a video explaining his monograph, titled The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome, he noted:

“Recruiting a hermit wasn’t always easy. Sometimes they were agricultural workers, and they were dressed in a costume, often in a druid’s costume. There was no agreement on how druids dressed, but in some cases they wore what we would call a dunce’s cap. It’s a most peculiar phenomenon, and understanding it is one of the reasons why I have written this book.”

History of hermits

In his book, Campbell mentions an ad from Sir William Gell’s A Tour in the Lakes Made in 1797, in which he states that ”the hermit is never to leave the place, or hold conversation with anyone for seven years during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatever, but is to let his hair and nails both on hands and feet, grow as long as nature will permit them.” 

Apparently, the ornamental hermit can be traced all the way back to the Roman emperor Hadrian. His villa at Tivoli had a small lake with a one-person structure for hermiting oneself away from the world (which, we imagine, would be a nice thing for an emperor to do every now and them). Pope Pius IV may have also built one for himself.

But the structures built for ornamental hermits were mostly for show and not necessarily for spiritual reflection.

How to be a hermit

The hermits were also instructed to be rather dour in order to be authentic. No shoes, no guests, and no smiling.

Atlas Obscura found a 1784 guide to the Hawkstone estate in Shropshire describing how to care for your ornamental hermit:

“You pull a bell, and gain admittance. The hermit is generally in a sitting posture, with a table before him, on which is a skull, the emblem of mortality, an hour-glass, a book and a pair of spectacles. The venerable bare-footed Father, whose name is Francis (if awake) always rises up at the approach of strangers. He seems about 90 years of age, yet has all his sense to admiration. He is tolerably conversant, and far from being unpolite.”

We can’t decide if it sounds like a dream job or a really depressing life.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Before the Garden Gnome, the Ornamental Hermit: A Real Person Paid to Dress like a Druid” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12736 – When Cleopatra Lived in the White House

Presidential pets have their own history museum. And it’s totally worth exploring (even online) since there have been some interesting animals with interesting names living on those grounds.

The first president to live in the White House and therefore keep pets there was John Adams. (George Washington had many horses and dogs, but he never actually lived in the White House.)

John Adams’ Menagerie

John and Abigail Adams had some of the most interesting pet names – but the reasons behind those names are unknown. For example, they had two dogs – Juno and Satan – and a horse named Cleopatra. 

They were definitely dog people through and through. According to the Presidential Pet Museum, Abigail Adams was especially fond of June, writing to her granddaughter: “If you love me … you must love my dog.”

We’re not so sure how they felt about Satan, but the name says a lot.

Other Presidential Pets

The most popular presidential pet is a dog, owned by 30 of the 45 presidents. But there have also been pet raccoons, former circus ponies, billy goats, and more. There has even been a famous presidential cow named Pauline, who was often covered in the press.

But if you really want to know about the weirdest pet moments in presidential history, behold:

– President Martin Van Buren tried to keep a pair of tiger cubs given to him by the Sultan of Oman. But Congress made him send them to the zoo.

– President Andrew Jackson had a parrot named Poll, who was taught to swear.

– John Quincy Adams (not to be confused with John Adams) kept an alligator given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette in an unfinished bathroom. AND he let guests try to use that bathroom! (Ok, some have tried to debunk this, so it’s up to you whether or not to trust the official Presidential Pet Museum or not.)

– There were two more alligators who visited the White House during Herbert Hoover’s presidency in the early 1930s. His son Allan owned the animals and would often bring them by.

– Thomas Jefferson was gifted with two grizzly bear cubs who were caged on the front lawn for public viewing before finding a new home when they grew too big.

So, while there’s been much hoopla in the press over President Biden’s shelter dog Major being a bit of a menace to the Secret Service, he was certainly not the most dangerous presidential pet!

– WTF fun facts

Source: “An alligator, tiger cubs, and a dog named Satan — these are the weirdest presidential pets in history” — Business Insider

WTF Fun Fact 12735 – The Summer Solstice

The Summer Solstice happens at the instant the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer. That means it doesn’t really matter what your clock says – it can happen long before the sun even rises in your area.

In 2022, we know this moment will take place on June 21 at 09:13 UTC (that’s 5:13 AM EST) – and you should be able to do your own math from there.

While June 21st is usually the day people remember and mark on their calendars as the solstice, it can actually happen on the 20th or 22nd. But the latter is rare. In fact, the last June 22 solstice in UTC time was in 1975 and it won’t happen again on the 22nd until 2203. So, sorry if you missed it.

The word “solstice” actually comes from the Latin words sol and sistere. If you’re thinking that means soul sister, you’re wrong, but we were kind of hoping the same thing. It actually means sun and standing still, which makes a lot more sense.

North and South, Summer and Winter

Of course, lands south of the equator are welcoming winter. June 21st is their Winter Solstice. So, if you’re a fan of cooler weather (and are one of the millions experiencing a heat wave today, you can always celebrate in solidarity with your friends in Australia).

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year in terms of sunlight, while in the Southern Hemisphere it’s the shortest day. That’s because at the precise time of the solstice the earth is tilted either the minimum or maximum towards or away from the sun. In summer, you’ll see the sun stay at its noontime elevation for what seems to be a bit longer than usual, and that effect will last a few days. However, the earliest sunrise and the longest sunset take place a few days before and after June 21st.

There are two other interesting things to note here. The tilt of the Earth doesn’t really change, it’s the rotation of the Earth that changes and points our already tilted planet’s Northern Hemisphere towards the sun. And Summer Solstice is actually the time of year when the Earth is farthest away from the sun (or on its aphelion). So, it’s not really the distance that matters. It’s all about how the planet is positioned.

For those ready to jump on the whole Earth axis thing, please note that in our lifetimes (and those of everyone we’ll ever know or remember), the tilt of the Earth will be the same. Technically, the tilt of the planet does vary between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees, but this cycle takes about 40,000 years.

Solstice Celebrations

People around the world celebrate solstice or “midsummer” in many different ways, but most include festive meals, traditional songs, bonfires, or reconnecting with nature in some way. In England, the so-called modern-day Druids (and tourists) like to hang out at Stonehenge to see the stones align perfectly with the sun. In Sweden, families raise the maypole for traditional dances and music. – WTF fun facts

Source: “11 Things About the June Solstice” — TimeandDate.com

WTF Fun Fact 12678 – The (2nd?) Tallest Statue of Jesus

When we see scenes from Rio de Jeneiro in Brazil, their epic Christ the Redeemer statue is always part of the photo montage. However, it’s not even the tallest Jesus statue anymore – and it’s no longer the tallest one in Brazil! Of course, that all depends on whether or not you want to count pedestals.

The Jesus Buntu Burake statue in Sulawesi, Indonesia stands at 172.4 feet (131 without the pedestal), while Christ the King in Swiebodzin, Poland stands at 172.2 feet (108 without the pedestal). But feel free to correct us in the comments since it’s probably hard to get a tape measure up there and we only know what we read on the Internet (but it was from Architectural Digest)!

Rio’s statue is a mere 98 feet tall (and it’s pedestal adds another 28 feet) by comparison. But a tiny town nearly 1000 miles southwest of the city just took the Brazilan title for tallest Jesus statue away from their Christ the Redeemer.

Cristo Protetor de Encantado was built with funds raised by the Associação Amigos de Cristo, and cost of $350,000. It is also far more detailed than Rio’s (though we’re not sure that matters in the long run).

Mexico now pledges it will build the tallest statue of them all in Ciudad Victoriaat standing at 252 feet. Christ of Peace is currently being constructed.

Holy monument? Pilgramage site? Both? More than 37,500 people have come to visit so far, even before Jesus was “open for business.” When he’s done, he will have interior shops, restaurants, and viewing areas, including a glass heart to view the city from.

You can look at him from his base for $4 on the weekends from 9am to 5pm. He opens fully in early 2023.

Now, there’s a little confusion in the press over the height of all of these status and whether or not the official tally includes the base. Smithsonian Magazine seems to think this new statue will be the tallest, however it will stand at 143 feet (43.5 meters) with the pedestal (making it the largest Jesus, but not the largest full statue. Without the pedestal, the statue is 123 feet (37.5 meters), so by our math, Indonesia’s is still bigger in that sense.

Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world and Jesus is a big travel draw. It remains to be seen to what extent the people of this small town will benefit financially, but we’re sure it’s quite a sight nevertheless. –  WTF fun fact

Want to see a video about all of this? Here ya go:

Source: “This Statue Is Now the Third Tallest Monument of Christ in the World — and Will Open to Visitors in 2023” — Travel & Leisure

WTF Fun Fact 12646 – The Power of the Musical Birthday Card

Ok, to be fair, there wasn’t much computing power available to the Allied forces during WWII. But it’s really more about something called Moore’s Law.

According to Michio Kaku’s book Physics of the Future:

“Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, this simple law has helped to revolutionize the world economy, generated fabulous new wealth, and irreversibly altered our way of life. When you plot the plunging price of computer chips and their rapid advancements in speed, processing power, and memory, you find a remarkably straight line going back fifty years. (This is plotted on a logarithmic curve. In fact, if you extend the graph, so that it includes vacuum tube technology and even mechanical hand-crank adding machines, the line can be extended over 100 years into the past.)

Exponential growth is often hard to grasp, since our minds think linearly. It often starts deceptively slowly. It is so gradual that you sometimes cannot experience the change at all. But over decades, it can completely alter everything around us.

According to Moore’s Law, every Christmas your computer games are almost twice as powerful (in terms of memory and processing speed) as they were the previous year. Furthermore, as the years pass, this incremental gain becomes truly monumental. For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip which sings “Happy Birthday” to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied Forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip. But what do we do with it?  After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away.  Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it sent two astronauts to the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3D situations, use more computer power than main frame computers of the previous decade. The Sony Playstation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.“

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Your cell phone has more computing power than NASA circa 1969” — Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

WTF Fun Fact 12440 – Professional Mattress Jumping

There are hundreds of mattress companies flooding the market today, and many can even be delivered by mail. However, there are still some artisan mattress makers out there and McRoskey Mattress Works in San Fransicso is one of them. Their classic mattress may run you anywhere from $1,600 to $4,500, but you can be sure it’s been tested well – by a pair of human feet, in fact.

The world took an interest in the factory back in 2012 when SFGATE published a story about them and one of their employees, Reuben Reynoso. Reynoso is the man who jumps on the mattresses to ensure they can stand up to everything from child’s play to…well, whatever else it is you do on your mattress.

While a grown man being paid to jump on mattresses for a living might elicit a chuckle, Reynoso wanted people to understand that his job was an important one. “It’s work,” he told SFGATE in 2012. “It’s not for everybody. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it.”

While we didn’t know there was a “right” way to jump on the bed, Reynoso isn’t doing this for fun and games. It’s his job. “This is not a game. Not to me,” he insisted. And we believe him. After all, even if you were living your dream at your job, after a while it all becomes a serious task. But that doesn’t mean we’re not a little jealous of the free and knee-friendly cardio he gets at work.

To be fair, the task does sound like it can get tedious. As SFGATE noted in their article:

“Jumping on a mattress is one of the final steps in making a handmade mattress…a machine cannot do what Reynoso and his toes can do, which is to expertly compress no fewer than 28 layers of fluffy cotton batting while seeking to detect pea-size mattress lumps or other imperfections…”

While it’s unclear if Reynoso is still with McRoskey or if they still employ a person to test their mattresses “by foot,” we’d like to think it’s all still going strong. The mattress company sure is. They’ve been in business since 1899, surviving the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 and everything that’s come after. – WTF fun facts 

Source: “McRoskey mattress jumping is serious work” — SFGATE

WTF Fun Fact 12434 – The Kitchen Toe Kick

It’s always interesting to find out there’s a reason behind something you’ve totally taken for granted. Unless you’re remodeled your kitchen or are a contractor, you may not have thought much about the design of kitchen cabinets (beyond daydreaming about new ones).

Even those of us who have imagined getting a whole new kitchen rarely look closely at that space between the cabinet and floor and wonder why it’s there. (It’s likely the case in your bathroom as well.)

Between the floor and the cabinet base is something called the toe kick, and it’s meant to do pretty much the opposite of what it sounds like. It keeps us from kicking the bottom of the cabinets with our toes.

The goal of the toe kick is mainly ergonomic – that is, it makes life more comfortable, enabling us to stand for longer without getting fatigued or developing a backache from leaning). And it’s a safety issue as well. Have you ever tried to lean over a surface while using a knife? It’s not so stable. (Trust me, I just tried it, so you don’t have to.)

We’ve always taken our toe kick for granted, and since most of us have a backache most of the time, maybe it doesn’t seem that important. But not having one would only make things worse.

There are no legal requirements or codes for building toe kicks, so you may see super-retro kitchens or hyper-modern ones without this feature. But it’s generally the case that experienced carpenters just know the ideal dimensions and build one into your kitchen.

The standard depth for a toe kick is 3 inches, while the height is 3.5 inches. Most cabinets conform to these measurements (certainly any you buy from the hardware store). However, if you’re having your kitchen remodeled and are very tall or have otherwise larger-than-normal feet, you can always ask your contractor to give you a little extra room down there.
– WTF fun facts 

Source: “Ideal Toe Kick Dimensions and Height for Cabinets” — ThoughtCo