Weird

This is our weird but true facts category.  These may be a little odd and a little strange, but they are all most definitely true facts!  If you are looking for weird fun facts then start scrolling!

WTF Fun Fact 12778 – Krokettenmotie

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The Krokettenmotie is an obscure motion passed by a council in northern Holland, the Netherlands that entitles council members to a bit of a snack if their meetings run late.

Frankly, it sounds pretty civilized.

How did the Krokettenmotie come to be?

When the future Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, served on the municipal council of Amstelveen in 1993, he proposed the motion. And he fully admits to having had a juvenile sense of humor back in his younger days.

While the “croquettes motion” was meant as a joke, the other council members apparently agreed that any meeting that ran past 11 pm made them deserving of a little snack. The motion passed. Even better, it’s still in force (because why repeal a law that says you get a free deep-fried snack?!).

Updates to the Krokettenmotie

While it has never been repealed, the Krokettenmotie has been modified over the years, specifically to accommodate vegans and vegetarians.

In 2019, a vegetarian option was added. But that was likely a page taken out of a copycat motion passed in 2002 in Zwolle, which set the time limit to 10 pm and mentioned the option of a vegetarian snack as well.

Croquette controversy

As the Netherlands has focused more on healthy lifestyles and eating, all of the Krokettenmoties have come into question. After all, it’s not exactly the healthiest snack option. So many municipalities that have debated the croquette controversy have had members demands snacks such as fruit, nuts, and even hummus wraps as alternatives.

It may all sound ridiculous, but the justification behind the genuine debates is that the council is bound to do better work in the late evenings if they’re not hungry. Council members have pointed out that a bit of a nosh will help them make better decisions with clear minds.

Frankly, we’re just glad someone takes their snacks as seriously as we do.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Krokettenmotie” — Wikipedia

WTF Fun Fact 12777 – Busta Rhymes Island

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Have you ever wanted to take a trip to Busta Rhymes Island? Frankly, we had never considered it – until now.

Unfortunately, that’s not the official name of the tiny piece of land in Shrewsbury, MA (well, Wrentham, to be exact) but that is how it’s known and even how it appears on Google Maps.

What and where is Busta Rhymes Island?

According to Zillow (which does not refer to it as Busta Rhymes Island, sadly), that land is “A once in a lifetime opportunity to buy your own ISLAND!” Sadly, it’s not currently for sale.

“The island is one acre and the seller has gotten an elevation certificate so no flood insurance is required. 823 Eastside Rd is a parcel of land on the shore with a big 2 story storage building and dock. Super convenient to be able to leave your boat on the dock to be able to get back and forth from the island.”

How the island got its name

Ok, we know what you’re really wondering.

(And in case you didn’t already know, Busta Rhymes is a 12-time Grammy-nominated rapper.)

The island got its name when a then-27-year-old Shrewsbury resident named Kevin O’Brien started maintaining the tiny island (that’s basically in the middle of a pond). He had been a fan of the rapper since he was a teen and decided to plant some blueberry bushes, set up a rope swing, etc.

“It’s a very small little island [with] rope-swinging, blueberries, and . . . stuff Busta would enjoy,” he told a newspaper in 2009.

O’Brien “named” the island semi-officially by simply applying a geotag on Google Maps, where it still appears as “Busta Rhymes Island.”

He also applied to have it named officially, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names requires a celebrity to be dead for at least 5 years before a landmark can be named after them. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Busta Rhymes Island, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12776 – Swedish Banana Pizza

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The rumor about Swedes liking bananas on their pizza started in 2017. In fact, Snopes (cited below) traced it back to a Tweet on August 11 of that year from Curators of Sweden. In it, “a social media campaign initiated by the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden, the pineapple-banana-curry topping trifecta made up the ‘most Swedish pizza there is.'”

We know what you’re thinking.

Eww, why?

Well, to each their own. Maybe you’d like if it you tried it. As pizza purists, we’re just planning to let them be about the whole thing without venturing into dough-destroying territory.

Is Swedish banana pizza real?

As with all internet rumors that sound too weird to be true, the folks at Snopes did the research for the rest of us. And we give them props for being really good at it. Who even knows what’s we’d believe at this point if not for them.

In this case, the Snopes folks did us a public service by reviewing a bunch of Sewdish menus from pizzerias in Stockholm only to find that many really did offer some sort of banana pizza monstrosity…we mean, combination.

Banana pizza with…curry? And tomato?

Ok, so for the American palate (which is eclectic at best, we’re not claiming to be conniseurs of anything other than pizza here, trust us!), it sounds a little gross. But believe us when we say it actually gets worse.

According to Scopes: “Two such pizzerias were Corella Kungsholmen and Stockholm Pizza, both of which offered the ‘Tropicana’ pizza, described as topped with tomato sauce, cheese, ham, pineapple, curry, and — you guessed it — bananas. In the U.S., the Swedish-style food joint Viking Pizza, which is located in Glendale, California, included its version of ‘Tropicana’ pizza, complete with all of the above toppings and finished off with the addition of shrimp and peanuts.”

Ok, so leave it to the U.S. to take an already sketchy-sounding pizza and somehow make it worse. You took an already questionable Hawaiian pizza and added pizza AND curry? Astounding.

We kid though – it’s never nice to “yuck someone’s yum,” as they say.

How Swedish banana pizza came to be

Snopes did some more research and if it didn’t seem rude, we’d just copy and paste it all because they really went out of their way to add some context. In fact, Sweden really likes their bananas, and “this love affair dates back to the early 20th century when Caribbean-grown bananas were first introduced to the Scandinavian nation, according to historical records.”

Picture it. Sweden, the earth 20th century. Boats comes into the harbor weighed down with tons of bananas. The descendants of apes (aka humans) no longer even know how to enjoy a banana. In fact, they asked the age-old question about every new fruit humans encounter: which parts are edible.

If you think about it this way, maybe it’s no surprise that some confused Swedes eventually put it on a pizza. Sadly, there are no extant written accounts of early attempts to try to figure out what to do with bananas, but we hope there’s a history grad student out there combing Swedish archives to find them. It should add some levity to all the reading about colonial oppression that it probably took to get those bananas out of the Caribbean in the first place.

Of course, there’s a lot to unpack here, historically, about how foods travel around the world, but we’re left with knowing that the banana trade has obvious interruptions during war time. What’s interesting is that as far as Snopes can tell, the banana pizza (with curry) thing started in the 21st century.

We’re going to need a food anthropologist to unpack the rest. The best we can do is tell you it’s not a rumor.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Do Swedes Really Put Bananas on Pizza?” — Snopes

WTF Fun Fact 12773 – Lord Hailey’s Vampire Hunting Kit

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Does the buyer of an auctioned “vampire hunting kit” know something we don’t?

According to British auction house Hansons: “A mysterious vampire-slaying kit containing objects reputed to ward off the blood-thirsty monsters sparked an international bidding battle – and smashed its auction estimate to smithereens.”

Ok, we’ll, it didn’t sell for millions, which is probably the kind of money we would want to find a way to scrape together if we thought vampires were real.

How much should a vampire hunting kit cost?

On June 30, 2022, the kit was estimated to sell for £2,000-£3,000 ($2,400 – $2,600). But it quickly saw a five-figure price tag after the bidding began. When the hammer dropped, the final bid price was £13,000 ($15,638 and some change by the July 10th exchange rate).

It’s pretty impressive for something to sell for six times its estimated worth. You really have to want to own that particular vampire hunting kit to pay that kind of money.

But, why?

Why this vampire hunting kit?

Charles Hanson, the owner of Hansons Auctioneers, explained that the odd item inspired headlines around the world and that attention likely pushed up the price. But he was still shocked at the final value.

According to the Hansons website, part of its mystery and allure is the kit’s original owner: “It originally belonged to Lord Hailey, a British peer and former administrator of British India. Whether through fear or fascination, it’s interesting to know a member of the highest aristocratic social order, a man with a place in the House of Lords, acquired this item. It reminds us that the vampire myth affects people from all walks of life. I think the aristocratic connection made this object even more desirable and, perhaps, helped it on its way to a particularly strong result.”

Charles Hanson also added “William Malcolm Hailey, 1st Baron Hailey (1872-1969) was recognised for his intellect. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was Governor of the Punjab from 1924 to 1928 and Governor of the United Provinces from 1928 to 1934. And yet, amid his illustrious career, he was drawn to this vampire-slaying kit. That’s understandable. These objects are both curious and intriguing.”

So, what’s in a vampire hunting kit?

The 19th-century kit comes in a lockable box with Lord Hailey’s initials and address. The tools inside include “holy objects to ward off vampires,” including “two brass crucifixes on the lid which act as a sliding secret locking device. Inside are more crucifixes, a matching pair of pistols, brass powder flask, holy water, Gothic Bible, wooden mallet, stake, brass candlesticks, rosary beads and Metropolitan police paperwork from the period.”

Very comprehensive!

Vampires have long been a character in European folklore and two books only made them seem more real – John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).

“The task of killing a vampire was extremely serious and historical accounts suggested the need for particular methods and tools. Items of religious significance, such as crucifixes and Bibles, were said to repel these monsters, hence their presence in the kit,” Hanson said.

So, who bought it?

Sadly, we only know the new owner of the kit is from Derbyshire and they did not wish to be named.

The owner said: “I was stunned and delighted by the result. It’s a fascinating item, a conversation piece. I came across it in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, fairly recently. I liked it for its novelty and historical value. Interestingly, Lord Hailey has a memorial tablet in London’s Westminster Abbey which pays warm tribute to him.”

Maybe you will run across them if you walk around at night in Derbyshire – but you probably don’t want to run across someone so well-armed in the forest at night. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Mysterious vampire-slaying kit – owned by peer of the realm – stuns at auction” — Hansons

WTF Fun Fact 12771 – The Saraha Desert Forest Mystery

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Ok, trigger warning: There’s a high chance of getting Toto’s “Africa” stuck in your head by reading this post. But, the truth is, there used to be plenty of rains down in Africa. Enough to have made the Saraha Desert a rainforest.

It’s not a huge shock, since we know the Earth has gone through different climatic periods, but this was one far more recent and accounts for a more radical change than scientists ever could have imagined. In other words, it really takes a lot to turn a vibrant forest into a bone-dry desert, and this happened a mere 6000ish years ago! It’s pretty interesting.

How did the Sahara go from forest to desert?

So, what’s the deal here? Well, since we don’t have a time machine, we can’t know for certain. It could have to do with the tilt of the Earth’s orbital axis changing, it could also be part of a longer, larger pattern of transition.

African Humid Periods in the distant past meant….you guessed it…more rains down in Africa. In particular, northern Africa (which is where the Sahara is, in case you don’t have a map handy). But at some point, those rains went away.

As Smithsonian Magazine (cited below) explains:

“With more rain, the region gets more greenery and rivers and lakes. All this has been known for decades. But between 8,000 and 4,500 years ago, something strange happened: The transition from humid to dry happened far more rapidly in some areas than could be explained by the orbital precession alone, resulting in the Sahara Desert as we know it today.”

Cool use of archaeological data

We can see from archaeological data (which is not perfect, but is overwhelmingly in favor of showing past water and trees in certain areas) that the area was once forest, and even rainforest. But what’s also interesting – and seals the deal for most people – is that in this period there is also evidence of pastoralists. That means people were raising and herding animals. And you definitely can’t do that in a desert.

Are humans to blame?

If it wasn’t solely an axial issue (regarding the Earth’s tilt), some scientists believe that humans could have played a big role in changing the climate due to overgrazing.

There have been suggestions that the end of the humid period in northern Africa could have been brought about by humans letting domesticated animals eat up all the moisture-loving plants. They would have probably had to use fire as a land management tool as well. And that may have been enough to trigger the big change that turned the forest into a desert.

It’s not that easy, of course, but that’s the general idea. There are also hypotheses that humans had nothing at all to do with it. And neither one of those would be related to whether or not humans are affecting the climate currently, so it’s not a political discussion (thankfully). – WTF fun facts

Source: “What Really Turned the Sahara Desert From a Green Oasis Into a Wasteland?” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12765 – The North Carolina Nuclear Bomb

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The North Carolina nuclear bomb incident occurred around midnight on January 23/24, 1961.

Despite the potential for catastrophe, not many people know about the event. But when documents from the incident were declassified in 2013 after a Freedom of Information request, we found out just how close the U.S. came to suffering a self-inflicted nuclear disaster.

North Carolina Nuclear Bomb incident

Residents of the small farming town of Faro, North Carolina (near Goldsboro) awoke one night in 1961 to the sound of a B-52 bomber accident.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress broke up in the air, releasing the two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs it was carrying. But dropping a bomb like this is different from having it explode. The nuclear payloads inside the bomb casings are what would have caused the major disaster and they had extra fail safes.

The plane

The plane was meeting up with a tanker for in-air refueling when the crew saw that it had a fuel leak in the right wing. Eventually, the pilot lost control of the rapidly leaking aircraft and ordered the crew to eject at 9000 feet. Unfortunately, two died in the crash, unable to parachute out, and one man died during his parachute landing. Five men survived.

The bombs then broke free of the aircraft and broke up roughly 1-2000 feet above the ground, releasing their payloads (but not activating them).

A very close call

In order for the payloads to detonate, the four arming mechanisms would have needed to break. In 2013, the US government released records showing that 3 out of the 4 mechanisms did fail, and one bomb had started to arm itself and charge its firing capacitors.

Only one functioning arming mechanism stood between North Carolina and a nuclear disaster. No one knows why the fourth mechanism stood up to the damage and failed to cause the explosion.

Remnants remain

The second bomb did not fully arm itself, but plunged into a muddy pit where it could not be recovered. All the military could do was remove the mechanism needed to detonate it and extract pieces of the bomb. Then, it covered the remaining parts with an easement, where it still sits today. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Remembering the night two atomic bombs fell—on North Carolina” — National Geographic

WTF Fun Fact 12732 – Everyone Thinks Archimedes Created A Death Ray

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There’s a great New York Times article from 2003 that begins with the line “For the last time: Archimedes did not invent a death ray.”

Of course, it disappointed a lot of people. The reason someone had to say it was that the obsession with this particular invention had to be debunked so many times that even President Obama got involved and called on Mythbusters (who debunked it a third and final time on their show alone). Alas, people still believe it existed (presumably just because they think it sounds really cool and don’t care much for evidence).

Archimedes did invent a number of very wacky weapons though – we just have little to no evidence that most of them were ever used. Take the “claw of Archimedes,” for example. The ancient Greek inventor did come up with an idea to build a giant claw that would work like a crane to reach out into the sea and “grab” enemy ships to destroy them.

But while there are ancient accounts describing it (and even Wikipedia and some engineers and a handful of ancient historians might have you believe it was used), there isn’t so much as a single drawing or scrap of wood that would prove it was ever really built. There are, however, written accounts. It’s just that no one can be sure they aren’t recalling tall tales told during times of jubilant victory. But, hey, maybe underwater archaeologists will find one. It’s not entirely impossible.

So, about this death ray. The invention was basically a series of mirrors that would use the sun to point a ray of searing sunlight at enemy ships in order to incinerate and sink them as they launched an amphibious assault. It would work a bit like using a magnifying glass to burn an ant but on a very large level. We’ll admit, it does sound cool, but again, there would be a lot of evidence if someone had managed to construct something like that.

If you want to know why people remain obsessed with the “death ray” (which is not a name Archimedes used), blame some 12th-century historians and MIT students.

However, according to Sciencing: “Twelfth-century historians John Tzetzes and John Zonares credit Archimedes with using a system of mirrors to direct the heat of the sun at Roman ships, setting them ablaze. Zonares goes so far as to claim that Archimedes destroyed the Roman fleet this way. Many modern historians and scientists consider these claims dubious. However, a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering students were successful in replicating the feat of setting a ship ablaze using only mirrors in a 2005 set test, lending plausibility to the legend that Archimedes invented a death ray using mirrors.”

Aspiring historian Spencer McDaniel has also convincingly debunked the myth using writing sources, noting that: “The Greek historian Polybios of Megalopolis (lived c. 200 – c. 118 BC), the Roman historian Titus Livius (lived 64 or 59 BC – AD 12 or 17), and the Greek biographer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD) all give detailed accounts of the Roman siege of Syracuse and not one of them ever mentions anything about Archimedes having built a death ray to defend the city.”

Only people writing 400 years after Archimedes’ death started writing about a “death ray.” Sorry. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Archimedes’s Death Ray” Debunked” — Tales of Times Forgotten

WTF Fun Fact 12731 – Cute Aggression

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Have you ever seen a chubby baby face or a fluffy bunny and thought about snuggling it to pieces? It’s called “cute aggression,” and it isn’t typically as violent as it sounds.

According to Forbes, “cute aggression” was first described by Yale researchers in 2015. It’s “actually pretty common and can encompass behaviors such as wanting to bite, nibble, squeeze, or smoosh the face of something extremely adorable.” In addition, “studies have long shown that people who view photos of tiny, adorable things often react with extremely aggressive language.”

Don’t worry – no one gets hurt

The good news is that no matter how many times we say “I just want to smush her cheeks” or “I want to cuddle that kitten SO HARD,” those words don’t actually translate into action. For the most part, we lay off the smushing and potentially painful cuddles. (Of course, toddlers and cats may not agree – they always act like a snuggle is about to kill them.)

Research into “cute aggression” was done by Katherine Stavropoulos, an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside. She’s also a licensed clinical psychologist and neuroscientist. Stavropoulos looked at the brain’s electrical activity as subjects viewed images of really cute creatures. She published the findings in an article titled “‘It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!’: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggression,” in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Forbes states that “the new study backs up the hypothesis that these feelings may serve as a mechanism to prevent people from being overwhelmed (and thus incapacitated) by cute things. It’s basically what happens to your brain when you just can’t even.”

“Cute aggression” is all in your head

In other words, the electrical activity in our brains showed that we have a physiological reaction to cuteness. And it can be A LOT. In order to make sure we don’t actually smother baby animals (which were deemed to be the cutest things overall, producing the biggest neurological response), we use “violent” language to talk about snuggling things really hard.

That’s just how our brains respond to a cuteness overload.

Forbes also revealed that “Journalists have noted that this phenomenon is universal and that most languages have a word for this type of feeling – the Filipino language Tagalog, for example, has a word Gigil, which means gritting your teeth and trembling in an overwhelming situation.” In addition “Other studies have shown that cuteness aggression is felt far more acutely when people can’t physically touch the cute thing they’re seeing.”

That would help explain all the squealing when we see cute animal videos online. – WTF fun facts

Source: “The Science Behind Why You Want To Destroy Something Beautiful” — Forbes

WTF Fun Fact 12717 – Humanity In A Meatball

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Turns out we’re not much to look at if you were to put all of humanity in a blender and use the solid parts to create a giant meatball.

On a Reddit forum called r/theydidthemath, user kiwi2703 made some gruesome calculations and found that the nearly 8 billion humans on Earth could be blended into a goo sphere that’s actually pretty small, all considering.

We’re not sure what motivated them to come up with this little math trick, but it did make us say “WTF?!” – and that’s why we’re all here, right?

Behold:

[Self] If you blended all 7.88 billion people on Earth into a fine goo (density of a human = 985 kg/m3, average human body mass = 62 kg), you would end up with a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide. I made a visualization of how that would look like in the middle of Central Park in NYC.
byu/kiwi2703 intheydidthemath

—WTF fun facts

Source: “Blended Up, Every Living Human In The World Would Make A Meatball Just Three Eiffel Towers Wide” — IFL Science

WTF Fun Fact 12711 – A Ram Charged With Murder

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A sheep – a ram, to be exact – killed a woman in South Sudan by headbutting her in the chest. There aren’t many more specific details, but we’d rather not have them anyway.

People have been killed this way before. In fact, a 73-year-old U.S. woman was killed in Bolton, MA after being rammed while volunteering at a livestock farm in 2021. She was caring for the sheep alone in a pen when the animal repeatedly rammed her.

But the incident in South Sudan also made headlines because we’re not used to seeing other systems of punishment. In this case, the ram itself has been sentenced to three years in jail. Since it sounds like the animal was in human captivity, it’s unclear what that means.

According to LADbible, which published the story and cited multiple local sources:

“The ram was taken into police custody in South Sudanearlier this monthafter it attacked Adhieu Chaping, 45. She later died as a result of her injuries.” And, according to police, “The ram attacked by hitting her ribs and the old woman died immediately. So this is what happened in Rumbek East in a place called Akuel Yol.”

LADbible quoted Major Elijah Mabor telling a local radio station:

“Our role as police is to provide safety and separate fights. The ram was apprehended and currently under custody at a Police Station of Maleng Agok Payam...The owner is innocent and the ram is the one who perpetrated the crime so it deserves to be arrested then later on the case shall be forwarded to customary court where the case can be handled amicably.”

We’re not sure what it’s like to arrest an angry ram, but it sounds like a dangerous job.

The next step is to take the animal to a military camp in Aduel County headquarters in Sudan’s Lakes State for its prison sentence.

As the official said, the owner of the ram, Duony Manyang Dhal, will not be charged with a crime, but a local court determined a just punishment would be to give five of his cows to the victim’s family (who are his neighbors) as compensation.

Apparently, when the ram is released from detention, it will also be given to the neighbors.

It appears that this may be a photo of the ram (however, the news source called the 45-year-old victim an “old woman,” so we’re not sure we trust anything else after that):

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Sheep Sentenced To Three Years In Jail After Being Convicted Of Killing A Woman” — LADbible

WTF Fun Fact 12708 – Parents Sue For Grandchildren

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In a story that raised eyebrows around the world, a couple in India is telling their son and daughter-in-law that waiting six years for a grandchild is just too long (or at least long enough).

Sanjeev Ranjan Prasad and Sadhana Prasad paid for an education in the U.S. so their son could become a pilot, bought him a luxury car, and financed his lavish wedding and overseas honeymoon. And now they are looking for payback in the form of a grandchild to dote on.

The couple’s lawyer, Arvind Srivastava, seems to understand: “I feel very sorry for them because I am also an Indian and I can understand their pain,” he said. “This is an Indian parent thing.”

There are probably plenty of prospective grandparents around the world who can sympathize with the disappointment, but it’s the lawsuit (and the accompanying feeling of entitlement) that is…let’s say…puzzling.

They seem to feel that the money was an investment in their own child so they could get something back – in the form of a grandchild. They’ve expressed sadness, embarrassment, and now a bit of litigious rage that the couple seems to have no interest in having a baby after six years. And they seem to think that they are now owed $650,000 for the disappointment and humiliation they have endured.

The deal is that the young couple can now take a year to produce the heir or pay up, and a northern Indian court is overseeing the case (which, according to most legal scholars, will go nowhere).

But regardless of whether or not the case just goes away, it’s raising a debate about what kids owe their parents, legally and spiritually.

According to the NYT: “In the Hindu faith, as in other traditions, children have a duty to repay a moral debt to their parents by taking care of them in their old age. Having grandchildren is also seen as necessary to carry forward a family’s lineage and help one’s parents achieve enlightenment.”

Here’s an interview with the parents involved:

– WTF fun facts

Source: “No Grandchild? Six Years After Son’s Wedding, These Parents Are Suing” — The New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 12707 – The Role Of Goats In Argan Oil

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Maybe you’ve heard of argan oil. It’s very trendy in skin and hair products and the oil is quite expensive. It comes from the nuts of Argania trees, which are found in Morocco.

But argan oil isn’t so easily harvested from these nuts. In order to make the oil easier to harvest, you generally have to wait for the nut to pass through the digestive tract of a local mountain goat first. So, yes, what we mean here is that the nuts are eaten by goats, softened by their digestive tracts, pooped out, and THEN gathered by people for creating argan oil.

Of course, there are other ways of harvesting (humans doing the hard work of peeling them) and you’ll find many companies insisting that their argan oil comes from goat-free nuts. In those cases, the goats end up being a nuisance (and all because people are squeamish).

But frankly, it’s hard to know for sure how the nuts get into human hands. And it doesn’t really matter since the oil has no traces of goat poop in it by the time it gets to you.

The other fascinating thing about the mountain goats that helped launch the argan oil industry is that they became talented tree climbers precisely because the Argania trees bear fruit. There’s not much fruit on the ground in Morocco for goats, especially in summer. Once the goats eat all the low-hanging fruit, they have no other choice than to head upward.

While there are other goats around the world that climb trees, many of the pictures we see of multiple goats in trees are probably Moroccan mountain goats getting their fruity dinners.

And because they’re goats, they end up eating the nuts as well. Since they can’t digest those, the nuts end up on the ground later on (via poop mostly, but some goats will spit them out after trying to chew them). – WTF fun facts

Source: “Tree goats” — CBS News

WTF Fun Fact 12705 – Invasive “Jumping Worms”

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In a not-so-fun turn of events, people in the U.S. are concerned about an invasive species of worm that can reproduce on its own, destroy soil, and spread quickly.

Usually, worms are a vital part of ecosystems and help the soil provide nutrients to crops. But not the Amynthas agrestis, or Asian jumping worm. They’ve been troubling people since 2013 in the U.S., but they’ve been spotted far and wide now and farmers are concerned. They are native to east Asia, and Japan and the Korean peninsula in particular.

There are lots of ways worms can move around the world, but we’ve never seen them pose this kind of threat. More recently, they’ve been seen as far west as California’s Napa county (although to be fair, that’s actually closer to Japan).

We import a lot of beautiful plants from overseas for our gardens, so it’s no surprise the U.S. is now home to new kinds of worms. But these ones can cause long-term damage (and startle gardeners quite a bit!). They’re called “jumping worms for a reason.

According to The Guardian, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) warned in a report:

“These earthworms are extremely active, aggressive, and have voracious appetites. True to their name, they jump and thrash immediately when handled, behaving more like a threatened snake than a worm, sometimes even breaking and shedding their tail when caught.”

Yikes. Good thing they’re still small.

Normally, we’d say let nature be, but it turns out that they may cost a lot of money (and even livelihoods) down the line since this isn’t the soil they’re supposed to be in. The Guardian warned: “Jumping worms can destroy a forest ecosystem by chewing through fallen leaves, in turn destroying the top layer of forest soil upon which many plants and organisms depend.”

The CDFA report continued the dire warning: “They are destructive and cause severe damage to hardwood forests, especially those consisting of maple, basswood, red oak, poplar or birch species that rely on thick layers of leaf litter that serve as rooting medium.”

Sometimes we don’t realize how important soil is to our lives, and these are capable of completely changing the nature of soil (and therefore the crops that can be grown in it).

The Guardian also provided some advice (since, as you likely know, even chopping a worm into pieces with your garden shovel isn’t going to do the job – in fact, it can just create more worms):

“Experts have recommended several strategies to detect and eliminate the worms, including using a mustard pour – a mixture consisting of water and yellow mustard seeds – over soil to drive out any worms to the surface, and covering moistened soil with a sheet of transparent polyethylene for two to three weeks until soil temperature exceeds 104F for at least three days, destroying the worm’s cocoons.”

You can also bag the worms and bake them in the sun – anything that keeps them from thriving and spreading. And you may want to double-check your potting mixes and mulches before you spread them around your yard. Even the wind can blow around their egg sacs, spreading them easily.

It may even be the case that over the last few years, leaf pick-ups that turn our autumn leaves into compost have helped spread the worms.

Want to see a jumping worm in action? Check it out:

– WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Extremely active’ jumping worms that can leap a foot raise alarm in California” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12701 – Like A Fish Out Of Water

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We may not all love bees, but we can’t live without them since they pollinate the crops that make the food we eat (among other integral ecological roles). That makes protecting them integral to our future.

In California, that means considering them “fish” for conservation purposes.

The law is a weird thing sometimes. In this case, it required some creative thinking in order to make sure bees got protected status under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

Others had argued that the Act protects only “birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and plants” – in other words, not insects like bees. They won the original court case, but it was just overturned by a Sacramento Court of Appeal.

According to Reuters:

“While ‘fish’ is ‘commonly understood to refer to aquatic species, the term of art employed by the Legislature … is not so limited,’ Associate Justice Ronald Robie wrote for the appeals court.
CESA itself does not define “fish,” but the law is part of the California Fish and Game Code. The code’s definition includes any ‘mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate (or) amphibian,’ Robie wrote. All those categories ‘encompass terrestrial and aquatic species,’ and the state legislature has already approved the listing of at least one land-based mollusk, the opinion said.
‘Accordingly, a terrestrial invertebrate, like each of the four bumblebee species, may be listed as an endangered or threatened species,’ Robie wrote, joined by Acting Presiding Justice Cole Blease and Associate Justice Andrea Lynn Hoch.'”

The case is Almond Alliance of California et al. v. Fish and Game Commission et al, Xerces Society For Invertebrate Conservation et al, intervenors; California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, No. C093542.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “Bees are ‘fish’ under Calif. Endangered Species Act – state court” — Reuters

WTF Fun Fact 12700 – Dr. “Mummy” Pettigrew

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During England’s Victorian period, people were obsessed with ancient Egypt. But this fascination led them to plunder pyramids, disturb the dead, and desecrate sacred artifacts. Of course, they didn’t see it this way, they were just having a good time.

A surgeon and Egyptologist (back in the days when you could be both), Thomas Pettigrew, took advantage of this “Egyptomania” to aid in his research on mummies.

According to Tasha Dobbin-Bennett on behalf of Yale’s Peabody Museum:

“…During the spring and summer of 1833, Pettigrew conducted his research for this manuscript while leading three mummy “unwrapping” parties, where members of the British social elite would gather to observe the unwrapping of ancient Egyptian mummies. Although no longer under the employ of the Duke of Sussex, Pettigrew effectively parlayed his introduction to the social elite into patronage, riding on the wave of Egyptomania sweeping the British Isles. While the majority of these private parties were produced for entertainment value alone, Pettigrew utilized these events as another line of investigation complementing his education and access to extensive libraries. The material included within the manuscript testifies to his detailed and serious methodology, particularly in the chapters concerning the mummy as a drug, the embalming procedure and paraphernalia, and the comparison of classical authors with his research. Ten illustrated plates by the satirist George Cruikshank, the result of careful observation, complement the extensive text.”

Tomb-raiding was so common that Egyptian mummies could be procured by wealthy people for just about any purpose.

Apparently, mummy unwrapping parties sometimes involved the hosts giving away the objects people were buried with as party favors. –WTF fun facts

Source: “Mummy-Mania” – Yale Peabody Museum

WTF Fun Fact 12699 – A Shark Attack Of A Different Sort

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In August 1956, Leslie Nye and Richard Kirby were killed in a shark explosion. Even worse, they saw it coming. And even worse than that, they were the ones that launched the explosives at the sharks to begin with.

But before you assume they got what was coming to them, it’s important to have some context.

This was all part of a military diving exercise and the day before, an officer saw a shark approach the dive team and identified it as a potentially aggressive danger. In fact, he saw the shark swim toward men in the water and turn to its side as if to get its mouth into position to bite. However, it was scared off by bubbles from the divers.

But the next day, sharks started circling the boat again as the men were putting on their gear. Then, a decision was made to scare the sharks off (or kill them – either would have been fine at the time) so the divers wouldn’t be anxious.

That’s when two officers and two civilians boarded a dinghy with a pair of 14oz explosive charges fastened to a rope. Someone threw the rope and it wrapped around the shark’s fin, as planned.

What they didn’t plan for was the shark turning around and heading back for the boat. It ended up underneath the vessel when the charges exploded. All four men were on the boat at the time, but only Nye and Kirby were killed (Brooks and Spicer were seriously injured).

The Coroner ruled the ordeal a “misadventure.”

After the incident, there were rumors that the military was trying to test explosives during the Cold War and used the shark story as a coverup. But it’s just weird enough to be true.

– WTF fun facts

Source: “When an exploding shark killed two men off the coast of Cornwall” — Cornwall Live

WTF Fun Fact 12694 – Will You Rue The Day If You Marry In May?

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When the ancient Roman poet Ovid’s daughter wanted to marry, Ovid was told by the high priestess to wait until mid-June. The Romans avoided May weddings in general for superstitious reasons. That’s in part because it overlapped with the Lemuria, a near-month-long festival for the dead.

According to Global News, the French weren’t all that fond of May weddings either:

“Another text that dates back to 1840s France supports this idea. It states: ‘The month of May is also in the Black Mountain a month altogether rejected by the young girls who are betrothed; and they frankly say upon the subject, that it is not suitable to marry at a period when the asses are amorous.’ In other words, it’s unsavory to marry when the animals are mating.”

Believe it or not, May superstitions extend all the way to animals – in fact, cats born in May were thought to be bad rodent killers but also bring snakes home with them.

These days, weddings are very common in May. The only day that’s largely off-limits is Mother’s Day. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Here’s why you shouldn’t get married in May” — Global News

WTF Fun Fact 12693 – Fun Calendar Facts

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This year (2022), May began on a Sunday and June will begin on a Wednesday. That means no other months this year will begin on those days. In addition, May 31st is a Tuesday, meaning no other month will end on a Tuesday.

Sure, it’s a bit of a useless piece of trivia, but it’s a fun numbers game for those who like those sorts of puzzles.

Some international and national U.S. highlights to plan for this June include:
June 2: National Rocky Road Day and National Rotisserie Chicken Day
June 4: National Cheese Day
June 7: Chocolate Ice Cream Day
June 10: National Iced Tea Day
June 12: National Peanut Butter Cookie Day
June 15: Global Wind Day
June 18: International Sushi Day
June 21: Go Skateboarding Day
June 26: World Refrigeration Day

–WTF fun facts

Source: “Some facts about the month of June” — WYTV News