Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton and I'm trace cur and it's time for our hundredth episode. So today we're going to kind of throw convention to the wind and we decided we were going to do 25 science facts, 25 history facts, 25 pop culture facts, and 25 animal facts. So today it's everything you never knew you wanted to know about our hundredth episode. I think we need to begin with pop culture too. It's one of my favorite and I'm so excited about this because we don't really know what we're going to talk about. And that's my favorite kind of episode when things just come at us out of nowhere. So Amy started us off playdough. Did you know Plato was originally used to wipe sit off of wallpapers? The company started in 1912 and they stopped using coal as much. An oil is a little bit, so he but not like coal.
Speaker 0 00:56 So suddenly in the 50s though, somebody was like, well, you can use it as play stuff and they started adding colors. That's where it played. Okay. My mom, Oh my God. Wow. Okay. I'm going to jump into something now. Okay. Different direction. Grey's anatomy. Yup. Uses cow organs in their surgeries and make blood. Yup. Fake blood made out of red jello blood and chicken fat. Oh, that's worse than regular blood isn't it? I imagine it must smell horrible. Yes. I just was like the odor in those scenes because those lights have to be hot. Yup. Okay. Tolken aligned events in his books with the real Western calendar. And so there are websites, one of them is today in middle earth where you can look up. So like October 24th at 10:00 AM is when Frodo woke up in Rivendell. So on my birthday at 10:00 AM every year we can celebrate the Frodo woke up, he's in Rivendell, he's safe.
Speaker 0 01:49 So you can just look up calendar dates and see what happened today in middle earth. Oh, I'm totally gonna do that. It's kind of great. So I'm going to keep going with that. Make believe stuff. So game of Thrones, if you watched the show, the fur capes were made from Ikea for rugs. They were shaved and died. And Ikea. Put the three step instructions to make your own capes out and I have that link, which I will put in the show notes in case you need to be John Snow. We're going to have brain junk craft day and I know I'm taking a decisive turn away from our fun direction that we were going in. I'm going to tell you that in 1923 Pierre, the brick cycled down the stairs of the Eiffel tower. He won a bet and he was arrested and there's pictures. Go to show notes, click the links. We are not telling you our sources today, by the way. There's no way we have time for that, but he is in like a jaunty cap and a suit and he's cycling down the stairs and he shook all of his bones all the way down the potty before he started.
Speaker 0 02:52 Okay. Another fact, in some of the original versions of frozen Elsa was an evil villain, not Anna's. She had blue spiky hair and this was my favorite part, a coat of living weasels. Oh, I know. I'm like, can we kind of have that version too? They need to have a cousin now I know like the, the evil version. I that there's so much there. I know. Ah, I'm going to go with fantasy movie and tell you that VIN diesel is the voice of Groot, which my husband knew and I didn't. However, he's also the voice of the iron giant. Oh. And it is so good if you've never watched the iron giant. You absolutely should, which I haven't. I'm like, Oh, I'm going to watch that now. It's been diesel. How fun is that? Yeah, it's super fun. More heroes when wonder woman was added to the all star comics justice league back in the day.
Speaker 0 03:40 They gave her the job of being the secretary. I'm kind of a secretary. It might be more amazing than I thought. Well, and it shows all these really amazing superheroes and they're like, wonder woman is volunteered. I have a picture of that in the show notes. I'm rolling my eyes. You guys. You can't see that. Yeah. How about a little British TV? Uh, the Muppets, I always thought they were TrueBlue American and they are, they started here and they made two pilots, both of which didn't go anywhere in the U S and so British ATV, their commercial station in the, in England pick them up. And then what we in the U S Scott was the syndicated British television. So our first experience of the Muppets was through the British television version. You mean like the Muppet show? Yeah. Oh my God. Love his show came from Britain because we rejected in initially.
Speaker 0 04:29 Of course we did. Ah, let's see. Oh, okay. So when trying to decide what the millennium Falcon looked like, a designer, they were at a, like a, a dinner meeting. He held up a hamburger with a bite out of it. So it's got that curving thing. And then he had a green olive on a, you know, a toothpick and he held it up next to it, like it was the cockpit and he was like, Hey, something like this. And that is why we now have the millennium Falcon. Oh, so excited about that. I've asked my mind. Sorry. That totally explains. I love star Wars origin stories, like how they got to where they ended up. Yeah, they're good.
Speaker 0 05:07 Have you ever watched a show and thought, I'm pretty sure that that's the full house sets repurposed that does happen a lot in TV. And so the one that I stumbled across was the I-CAR Lee high school set is the saved by the bell set. They just repainted it and there's a whole article on different ones and you're like, ah, I knew it. Yeah. When we lived in Pasadena, there was a high school that was kind of in uh, uh, North Pasadena that I swear is the, you know, when they pan past the school before they go inside for a while there in the eighties and the nineties, it was always that high school. Yeah. I love those smells like teen spirit, the Nirvana song. Well, Kurt Cobain had, somebody wrote graffiti. Kurt Cobain smells like teen spirit and he was using that as the idea to do the song. It wasn't until the song was over and done and out in the world he found out that teen spirit was a girl's deodorant.
Speaker 0 05:59 He didn't know that intentionally. I thought it was just a cheeky Nope. He didn't know they took so many jobs at culture. Yup. He did apparently not know about that. Well it always smells fresh. I know Laurel, did you know that ranch dressing really did originate from the hidden Valley dude ranch? No, in Santa Barbara, California. I'm like, cause so many things are just made up to be homey or familiar and comfortable or, and that's a real thing. It's a real place. I kinda love that. Uh, let's see. Bugs bunny was, his name was a mistake. What is it? Yeah, the animator Ben bugs Hardaway, he was talking to an artist at Looney tunes and he asked him to do a character sketch of a rabbit. So the fellow did the character sheet with all these different, you know, bunnies from different angles kind of thing. And he wrote across the top bugs, apostrophe S bunny. So it was bunnies drawn for bug Hardaway. Oh yup. And somebody else picked it up and was like, Oh, this is great. And they started producing it and then they were just like, Oh, it's bugs bunny. Because they didn't see the apostrophe. So yeah. Excellent. That's a good origin story. It is a good origin story. You guys probably know this, but it never ceases to delight me that Puma is the first Disney character to fart on film.
Speaker 0 07:20 Bart fact. That's the first part fact ding. I'm think I'm limited to like three nice 40.7 million people streamed stranger things season three in the first four days. Whoa. I was one of those people. We waited until this last summer and then we'd binge-watch while we were traveling. Ooh. So that is kind of a good way to do it because there was a lot of waiting in between. It wasn't fun and we could watch for hours. How about another Disney movie? Fact? This is actually original fairy tale and beauty and the beast. The fairy tale. Original version. Beauty has two sisters and they were jealous of her and the beast and so they try to make the beast angry. So he'll eat her, she gets a pass to go home to her family like in the movie and they try to delay her. So he'll be angry when she comes back and eat.
Speaker 0 08:11 Her sister's mad, you know things. I'm like, I am so glad I'm an only child. Oh my gosh. Thanks for not trying to make anybody eat me rabbit and Ruthie. I appreciate that. Will Smith was originally offered the part of Neo and the matrix, how it would be you imagine it being him and different kind of thing. Right. <inaudible> I know. I do too. On April fool's day in 1976 the BBC convinced many listeners that especial alignment of the planets would temporarily decrease gravity on earth and so they, their phone lines were flooded with people calling saying, I felt it. I felt it. Oh, we're so suggestible. Oh yeah. Okay. So I have a double header fact here. So it's two for one, the average American eats seven pounds of potato chips a year. I feel like I might not be average there. I think I'm eating somebody else's potato chips and the national association of pizza operators.
Speaker 0 09:09 Yeah. Says that about 100 acres of pizza is sold a day. Okay. That's 13 times bigger than the Lincoln reflecting pool. That makes me happy. People deserve to have good pizza. Yes. And if you're ever bored, Google acrobatic pizza toss competition. I will have a link in our show notes. It's amazing. Okay. Bog snorkeling. Fair at pantsing acrobatic pizza tossing competition, brain junk. Summer games are shaping up. It's going to be amazing. How about a completely different direction. In 1999 Furbies were officially banned by the NSA at Norfolk, the military base because the administration was concerned that the Furbies would end up tripping out classified info cause they were trained to learn to mimic and you know, so they listened passively all the time. Sort of like your smart speaker. See cards against humanity. Bought a remote Island in Maine in 2014 and renamed it Hawaii too and ran this complicated puzzle contest. And now 250,000 people own one square foot of the Island. Ah, I love that so much. It caused a lot of controversy. Yeah. Well because they were like, how can all these people own little pieces of it and how does that do for ownership and Maine? Uh, some people that live kind of near Hawaii too are not so thrilled with the Hawaii to name. Yeah. But I S I was like, well, that's really cool.
Speaker 0 10:43 Uh, my last one, I loved the Archie comics, the original ones, and they have not kept up with Riverdale as an adult, but I love the Archie comics. So Jughead's hat is called a clubhouse beanie or a whoopee cap, a Palookaville or a rat cap. And they were actually bowler hats or the men's fedoras that had been taken and cut down and they're squished down and they cut that brim to customize it. And the one that kind of looks like a crown, right? Oh yeah. Those were the old men's, like your dad's old fedora that you wear around town. They chopped him down and often mechanics wore them. So at the time the RG came out, you were extremely likely to be a mechanic or somebody that worked in a trade like that. If you had one of those caps on. Oh, are a jug heads kind of marked as a tradesman in the original?
Speaker 0 11:29 Totally. You know his status right there just by his hat. Yeah. Well, and my last pop culture fact in 2008 Monte Kerr who is of no relation to us as we know, bought a corn flake from two sisters selling it on eBay for $1,350. It was shaped like the state of Illinois. I thought it was going to be Jesus crying or Nope, he wants to, Steve wanted to start this whole petite corn, like low museumy kind of thing. Yeah. So there's a, there's an image in the show notes of the Illinois cornflake. That's so good. All right, next step. In the hundred facts, we're going to animals. I've got a good one. Oh yeah. This is one where I also suggest you go in and click the link. Uh, deer's eyes and I think these are more Northern Arctic deer. They change from gold to blue throughout the season as they approach winter.
Speaker 0 12:22 And the reason for that is that they think this is one of those we think probably right, cause you can't ask the deer. No. And when they're alive, you really shouldn't be poking around their eyes. But the gold reflects back most of the bright light in the summer. Whereas as the days darken in the winter, deer still gotta eat but they don't have as much time. And so the eyes turned to blue and they're more dilated all the time to allow as much light in as possible. Ooh. And it's a beautiful blue. All right, I'm going to have to go take a look at that. I'm going to go a little whimsical here. According to the American public power association, squirrels are the most frequent cause of power outages. In 2016, there were 3,456 outages. Oh my goodness. Caused by furry marauders. I've heard that um, rodents in general can wreak havoc and mayhem.
Speaker 0 13:16 Yes. Well there's even, there's a squirrel, there's a squirrel tracker and uh, that link will be in the show notes or outages. Yeah, there's a lot of shownotes so good salamanders can extend their tongues more than half of their body length. Wow. Tracy is trying it. She has not achieved that goal and they can do it in seven milliseconds. So they're wicked fast, wicked fast. And we can fat if we suddenly go to Boston, the Bastin if we get fast salamanders. That was terrible. I'm sorry. Boston was pretty good. Okay, so all the way back to the first century Ady people prized spiderwebs for bandages. It was thought that they had antibiotic and wound healing properties. Well, it turns out spiderwebs are full of vitaminK , which does help clot blood. That's interesting. And that's definitely a youngest sibling job. We need more spider webs. Jimmy got cut.
Speaker 0 14:09 You need to go get some. Yeah. I don't want to go into the cave, ma. I don't know if you need to be actually trying this at home, but it was pretty cool. So I thought, you know, I believe that they, that's interesting. Yeah. How about grasshoppers? They have ears in their bellies, not in their heads. Their ear drum or Tim Pentium is covered by their wings. Snails can hibernate for up to three years really? So if it's stuck to the side of the tank and it's not moving, it might not be dead. It might just be taking a really long nap. Wow.
Speaker 0 14:40 How about cats? I know that cats don't always land on their feet, but um, they do frequently because they have a good sense of balance and the where up and down is, and they've got a really spine which allows them to shift mid air and get their feet oriented with the ground. And there are some pretty cool YouTube videos where a fellow drops his cat in slow Mo and he's like, no cat got hurt in the making of this video. And they're really cool because you see the cat just immediately head twists around, feet twist around, and everybody just follows along behind. Oh wow. Super cool. Let's see. Let's do some historical animal facts. 6,000 years after all the mammoths on the mainland had gone extinct on Wrangel Island in Siberia and then a few other islands kind of in that area. Willy mammoth survived until 4,000 years ago.
Speaker 0 15:30 Wow. Okay. So just give you some context. People were building the Egyptian empire. Sumerians were creating early cuneiform. It was the rise of the Minoan civilization and in South America people had already domesticated corn and there were still wooly mammoths alive. Ah wow. Right. That's crazy. It was super crazy. That was almost an entire episode cause I just couldn't stop learning about mass. This was all a lot of these. It was a slippery slope I thought. Nope. One or two sentences. I have to stop. Here's a fun, weird one. The four eyed fish has two eyeballs, but each eyeball has two pupils and a retina that are split top and bottom. So when they cruise along the surface looking for bugs, they can scan bottom and top and it looks, you see the pictures and I kept thinking, where's a good picture of this thing's eyeballs?
Speaker 0 16:17 Cause I thought the water was splitting. You know how just the view. Yeah, no, it really is. This one eyeball is split out into two sections and one scanning the bottom so it doesn't get eaten. And one is looking for bugs on the top. It's weird. I have another eye thing. So iguanas have three eyes. Weird. Where's the third? It's not really an eye. It's called a parietal eye. And it's the light colored scale in the center of their head. And if you look at pictures of them, you can see there is this light colored scale and it's a light set sensitive. The hepatic, it is a light sensitive spot that helps them detect aerial predators. So a bird flying over it. They notice that change in light. Oh, weird. So they can keep watching whatever they're watching for, but they're alerted to that change.
Speaker 0 17:04 Yeah. Huh. That is weird. It is weird. Uh, how about Cardinals? They like to cover this themselves in ants. And it could be dead ants. It could be live ants. And the reason is that, let me back up. Scientists are not a hundred percent sure why this is. However, they think that it's because the formic acid from the ants gets rid of lice. So they choose one pest over the other. Oh. So they're going down into like an ant nest and flopping around and spreading it all over their bodies. And then the itchy lice cause they can just roll and kill the ants. The lies are awfully tiny and they don't like that formic acid. Nope. Oh, that's smart. Yeah. Sounds very typically though. And I have a friend who's very ant averse. I imagine she just died listening to you talk about that. She'd rather lies.
Speaker 0 17:49 Yes. Wow. That's also very bad though. Okay, so polar bears are, Oh, I have a typo. That's funny. I was like polar bear lovers. What? Polar bear livers are full of vitamin a. So if you were to eat even a small portion, it could make you sick and too much of it could kill you with vitamin a. Poisoning. Yeah. That's probably when they found out the hard way, huh? Yeah. That was found out by European explorers because they were told by the indigenous people were like, don't eat that. And they're like, yeah. Whatevs. And then they ate it and then they died, which seems fair. It's the start of many, many stories about concrete nations meeting indigenous people. Ooh, here's a good one. Worm eating Bayesean thrushes they have been known to dislodge their prey from piles of leaves by directing their farts at them, what the gas shifts the Leafs and the litter from the ground and apparently provokes the worms to move around and reveal their location. You have to do a video of that. Oh look, I was just so happy with that fact. Oh my gosh. Okay. Another bird fact bird fact in small flocks. Female zebra finches. Okay, so if you ever seen the little zebra finches, the females have like bare faces and the males have a little orange circle. Oh sure. At least the ones we see in the pet stores. But in small flocks, females, zebra finches are able to recognize the face of their mate. But in larger flocks they're not so good at it.
Speaker 0 19:18 Bob Randall, I don't know. You seem nice. That's funny that cause usually it's like they can recognize their mate from a hundred miles away or some crazy, you know, ha little bird, tiny green. I knew I had another eyeball one. The box jellyfish has developed the ability to jet around and not just drift, which is a fun fact and most jellyfish sort of are at the whim of the current box. Jellyfish can navigate and drift. They can travel up to four knots per hour, which is about four miles per hour. Wow. They have eyes grouped in clusters. They have like six eyes on each side of their head and the eyes have different jobs and one of them is just a light sensor basically. And then another one is for acute vision. So like the iguana acute, I always hear that is a cute vision. Let's see. According to the world animal foundation, they estimate 1 million dogs are listed as the beneficiary of their guardians will has to create some complications.
Speaker 0 20:17 Yeah. There was a lot of legal documents that went along with that. Does the dog have to have a will? What happens to the money when the dog passed? Well, the dog then has a like a, an executor who takes care of these days and then the estate goes to whoever was next. If they pass before the dependent or the other named parties, it gets confusing. Interesting. Don't do that to your family. No care for your dog with some sort of brand or, but not the whole, no, not the whole. Magilla I have that kind of money though. Not a problem here. I left my dog $9 and 95 cents. Right. I got to wondering about the ROI. U S is from the princess bride. What's the real, the rodents of unusual size? Uh, the Smithsonian's Christopher Halligan in 2009 discovered a rat wing three and a half pounds and measuring 32 inches nose to tail.
Speaker 0 21:12 And they live in the crater of a volcano in Papa new Guinea. So that's like two bowling pins tall. That is a really big, red is a big rat. You know, I have a rat fact too. It's kind of funny how these are lining up in Africa and they use rats that are also rather large. I mean, I was surprised by how big these rats were. Uh, they are training their rats to find landmines. Rats have turned out to be very smart. Right? It takes nine months to learn and they're perfect because they're too light to set off the mind. And I do have a video of that. It's like a nine month certification. This is a trades course. You're not getting an advanced degree, but it's good quick work folks. And you get banana, you get banana. Yeah, they do. They have a string and their leash is kind of hooked to the string.
Speaker 0 21:56 So then they just walk in straight lines and then it's two handlers that'll move down, but every time it gets to the end they get some banana. Awesome. I know they're willing and they don't get blown up so it's fine. Yup. How about in 2015 in Australian peacock spider was discovered near Brisbane and it's scientifically named Meritus Jack tutus, but the researcher who found it, Madeline Gerard of the university of California has called it sparkle muffin and they're just five millimeters in length and they have a little mating dance and the male spider raises a leg to signal female. So the sparkle muffin waves and it's lady, I couldn't, there is this sharing this sparkle muffin with you guys. Sparkle muffin. I love you. Ah, largest. Okay. So we're going to go to a giant animals who've done tiny spider. The largest leather turtle ever recorded was 10 feet from nose to tail and it weighed 2019 pounds.
Speaker 0 23:01 That's about the size of a small car. Cause 2000 pounds is one time. That's a smart car. Yeah. It was estimated to be at least a hundred years old. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine seeing that thing? Wow. No. Yeah. I've got a big animal too, but not quite that big. Gorillas can catch colds from people. So be a conscientious zoo visitor and do not go to the gorilla habitat if you are sick. Yeah. Especially because if you irritated gorilla, he will throw poop at you. And when he's got a cold, you might get mucus and poop. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. Let's see. A Komodo dragon. Oh, this is so good. A Komodo dragon can eat 80% of its body weight in one feeding. So let me put that in perspective for you. That's like 150 pound teenager eating 120 pounds a hot pockets.
Speaker 0 23:48 Wow, Pat. Just the amount of wildlife you'd have to have around for it to sustain that. Oh yeah. Well I, you know, I don't have to eat as often. I mean, you figured that finish off 120 pounds of hot pockets you've done for a couple of days. Yeah. All right. That's true. The mute day are a family of more than 3000 species of wasps. They, but the wingless females resemble large ants. They're found in Chile and they're known for their really painful stings and, but the black and white specimens look like pandas. So they're called Panda ants due to their colorization. They look like pants. They're super cute. Oh my gosh. So many good. Shownotes Oh, okay. So my last one, Wiener dogs or dash clones were bred to hunt in long burrows. That's why they're shaped like that because, uh, they were being sent down after badgers.
Speaker 0 24:45 O dash cones is German for Badger dog badgers. Who would win or was the Wylie dog like just running them out. He would go down the hole and grab a hold and take them on. That explains kind of the demeanor of some of those little guys are tatters and, Whoa. My last animal fact is there is a fish in Papa new Guinea called the ball cutter. The local fishermen were really worried about the safety of their testicles when they got into the water. And so the local fisherman were worried, I have a devil. Let me look that up real quick.
Speaker 0 25:22 The ball cutter. Oh my God, this is going to be the world's longest episode. I just want you to know that we've only done 50 facts and we're already at 35 minutes. So it's been pretty streamlined. You have to edit a little bit. So those of you who complained to me, your brainstorms are way too short. We'll sit back. Brothers and sisters, it's coming at ya. Okay. Amy is assessing the last fact. So the ball cutter, it has spiky or fin teeth and apparently it must go for um, crevices. Is it going through crevices and probably dangly things that look like they might be interesting. So if you were in Papa new Guinea, I think there's multiple things in Papua New Guinea that you should wear a swimsuit for sure. Not just seems like SmartPractice agreed. You know, that's our last animal factory. Oh wow. Let's, um, let's talk about some history.
Speaker 0 26:10 I have a great one. The bear who became the living symbol of smokey bear was a black bear rescued from a forest fire as a Cub. His original name was hot foot Teddy. I like hot foot Teddy a lot. Of course they don't want to promote fire, so no. So his name, the, the actual living bear's name was changed to smoky after the cartoon bear. Ah, love that. My first fact is completely different in nature. As of 2019 in October, there was still a law on the, in Oklahoma stating that if beer is more than 4% alcohol, it must be sold at room temperature. You <inaudible> English. There's some people that are like, yeah, you refrigerate your beer. That's just honesty. Well, let's talk about a president. Okay. So the eighth, ninth, and 10th presidents all served in one year. Fad is eighth, ninth, 10th. Yep.
Speaker 0 27:04 So when kids would know who these, no, no. So in 1841, uh, Martin van Buren completed his term, William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia one month into his presidency. Okay. And then John Tyler, who was the vice president ascended to president. Wow. That is a fast turnaround. It was kind of busy. Yeah. We're going to go kind of ancient here. Shepherds in Christmas nativity scenes from hundreds of years ago sometimes have goiters. And I never noticed this. I don't look at a lot of negativity. I don't either. But I heard about that in the news. Yes. So it was common in that time for people of the poor classes to have a pretty homogenous diet that wasn't married and didn't have a large source of iodine. And so the shepherds would have been of that class and so that would had a swollen neck might have had a greater, wow. Let's see. Let's go a little lighthearted.
Speaker 0 27:54 In anticipation of the 1984 summer Olympics, the city of Redondo beach, California made the Goodyear blimp. It's official city bird in 1983 that's so California. No, right you guys. That's excellence. I'm going to go ice cream cones. They were, the cones themselves were invented during the 1904 world's fair in st Louis when the high demand for ice cream and the low opportunity for quickly made vessels in which to hold it. Uh, they weren't next to a waffle vendor and so ta-da. Ice cream cones were born. Yep. Well, I have another inventor, Frederick Bauer. He created the Pringles potato chip in 1966 66 when he died at the age of 89, he left one strange request to his children. He wanted to be buried in a Pringles can and it's a great interview. His kids said they stopped at a Walgreen's on the way to the funeral home to pick out his Cannes and they debated over the different flavors. Yeah, they went with original. I was thinking original is red. It's, I hope he was cremated. Well, yeah. That would've been a really tight fit. Yeah. All right. I think we were talking, we both have pizza facts. My pizza fact is in the late 1960s the U S Army's 113th military intelligence unit spied on reporters and politicians using fake pizza deliveries. That's crafty. Oh, you're like pizza delivery. I'm just making change. Talk among yourselves. Speak into the end of the box please.
Speaker 0 29:30 Oh no. Back in 12th century China judges had glasses made of smoky quartz to hide their eyes and mask their emotions while questioning witnesses. Really? Yeah. That's interesting. I know. It's kind of spooky too. I like it. It's creepy looking. Mary did indeed have a little lamb. Oh, she did. She did. The poem was written in the 19 1826 gives me, um, and Mary was Mary Sawyer and 11 year old Bostonian whose lamb did indeed follow her to school. And apparently it's wool was really used in projects because later on in that century somebody was taking a, or a sweater apart and selling chunks on a card as this is Mary's little Lamb's wool to raise money for something. Okay. I'll stick with the childhood theme. So mr. Potato head. He was the first toy to be advertised on TV and on April 30th of 1952 it was also the first commercial to be pitched at kids instead of parents.
Speaker 0 30:31 Ah. Those crafty folks cause up until that time, yeah. They were just like, your kid needs Lincoln logs. And this was like, Hey kids, would you like to play with mr? Potato head? You know, it's total different angle. Oh yeah. How about a Titanic fact? Okay. It on the door. No, I'm sorry. In 1985 when professor of oceanography, Robert Ballard, announced that he was planning a mission to find the Titanic. It was actually a mission to find lost nuclear submarines, and so they finish that mission and they're like, we're ahead of schedule. Let's poke around. You never know what we'll find. And that is how the Titanic was found. Holy cow. It was overtly a mission to find the Titanic, but it was really in, in reality that it was the byproduct of spare time as all good science is. Yeah. Okay. Complete different change of direction.
Speaker 0 31:24 Mustard has been around since the Egyptians, at least the Romans grounded into a paste and French monks mixed the ground seeds with unfermented wine called must, which is part of the inspiration for the name. Oh mustard. That's a fun fact. Yeah. This is a Gingiss con fact. He exempted the poor teachers, artists and lawyers from taxes. He encouraged literacy and established freedom of religion across his empire. He also forbade selling of women and the hunting of animals during the breeding season. So he was terrifyingly marauding Lee murderous outside, but he had his own community. He had a kind spot. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Not all bad. Uh, let's see. It took an Rubik a month to solve the first Rubik's cube that he invented in 2018 it was solved in 4.22 seconds. My son and his buddy are Rubix fans and Will's just a casual user, but his buddies time themselves and it's a thing and they've got different kinds.
Speaker 0 32:29 They've got a two by two and a four by four and I don't know what those things mean. Um, so how many squares are on the side? I come from the air where you pop the cubes off or you peel the sticker, peel the sticker. Yup. I'll admit it. Me too. Okay. Here's a great one cause I'm from Washington and Idaho's right next door and we're very neighborly most of the time. But you know, you're always a little competitive with your neighboring state. Idaho was reportedly named for the Shoshone phrase, meaning gem of the mountains. But the actual meaning, um, was it was a deception that was not there. It's a fake name. They made up this, it's like you went to camp fire and you created your name because you love cats and pizza and mountains and so your KP Mo, it's kind of Idaho. Oh, that makes me deeply happy. I giggled out loud when I read that.
Speaker 0 33:24 I know. Really is the gem of the mountains though. So you didn't drink or take that away from them. It's amazing. You drive a half hour and you're in a completely different beautiful land. Yeah, you're in Montana. And by the time it was discovered by this highway was discovered, it was called Idaho and it was too late to backtrack and, Oh, we're going to be something else now. It was already, it was just called Idaho, so it was, there you go. Huh. Wow. Well, here's another mistaken identity thing. The teabag was an accident in 1908 Thomas Sullivan put loose tea and silk bags as samples for his customers and he was giving them out. Well, people were like, Oh, it's tea. And then they just dumped the bags in their water. Oh. And they liked the convenience so much. They came back and they were like, can we have more of those tea bags?
Speaker 0 34:13 And hence the tea bag was born. They fell backwards into a ridiculously simple solution. They did, huh? Wow. Um, how about, Ooh, here's one I really love. Nunchucks I started looking up, I'm like, what do I like? What do I want to tell people about? Nunchucks originated, um, China was at war with the Mongols and they were not doing great. And so they receded into the Chinese countryside and they stayed in on Chinese farms while they recuperated and the general got everybody situated and then he came back through and he's examining the troops and noticing that the farmers are using, uh, wheat flails and a wheat flail looks like an uncheck with one side that's kind of shorter than the other. And he's like, that would be a great weapon. And that is where nunchucks came from. He spent some time while they were camped and recuperating and he went away with himself and he's came back with like, these are 18 uses that we can use this thing, this is, we're going to join and started training his troops because they're readily available.
Speaker 0 35:15 Wow. Materials and stuff you already had. And so now the nunchuck is across many martial arts that has transitioned over the years. Wow. Yeah. Just think it could have been like the art of the way for wheat. I know. Exactly. I was like, I'm going to scare you with this. I think the nunchuck is, and it's more, uh, carried easily. <inaudible> <inaudible> but it gives you an extra arms, like distance from your opponents and, wow. Huh. Well, if you want to know about bones and not the breaking of them, but the looking at them. Yeah. From 1924 to well into the 1970s shoe stores used the shoe fitting fluoroscope to size your feet. Okay. So that's an X Ray machine. You would put on a pair of shoes, stick them into this thing. It would take an X Ray of your feet. I what years were these? Between 1924 and into the 1970s, like about 30 States in the 70s were like, this is not good.
Speaker 0 36:11 You know, cause you wouldn't get x-ray. You're covered with lead. Oh yeah, no. So the people who were selling shoes, yeah, we're just getting constantly irradiated. Oh, true. Like you as the shoe buyer probably are I put no, no. They were like, because children were going, if you try it on four or five, Sarah's his shoes, it'd be like taking several, you know, high altitude trips into space. Not good. No, it's amazing. Society has, society hasn't crumbled because of the things we do for convenience. Um, this is the opposite. Um, computer weekly reported that the computer system that went up in Apollo 11, uh, was no more powerful than a pop pocket calculator and that it was more basic than the electronics in the modern toasters that have computer controlled start-stop doneness uh, so you might have a toaster that's more powerful than the Apollo's.
Speaker 0 37:05 Yup. And if you want to know more about that, we do have an episode that just came out not too long ago. Hand-stitched computers. That is one of my favorites. And so you can learn even more about that. I'm going to go back to the civil war in the 1860s during the American civil war because they didn't have fences when they had prisoners, they would draw a line or a ditch and they called that the deadline and if you crossed the deadline, you would be shot. That is the origin of deadline. Oh my goodness. Wow. That is much more serious by five o'clock. Cause I'm going to cross the deadline. Wow. I know. I did not know that. Some of these I have an inkling of and I've heard and I just don't know the big picture, but I didn't know that at all. Yeah, I mean either you ever wonder where the soccer ball came from? A little bit. I didn't, but my children did. I think this one comes from my daughter Allie Charles Goodyear in 1855 created the first vulcanized rubber soccer ball panels similar to today's basketball were glued together at the seams, but before that it was a pig's bladder which were much less consistent in directionality and so play was much more challenging. You can kick it and Ooh off on a 45 degree angle. Yup. This is my last fact and I'm going to tell you about the first cat beams.
Speaker 0 38:26 Henry Whittier freeze was born in 1879 and became an American photographer. He was super famous for pictures of animals, mostly cats and puppies dressed up in human clothes. They are adorable and witty and very whimsical. It started with someone. He was at a party, someone stuck a paper birthday hat on a cat and he took a picture and everyone was like, Oh my God, that's hilarious. And so he went on to make postcards, books and calendars. Yeah, I have an image and then you can just look up his name and they're everywhere. That's wonderful. I have two more. Did you do 12 for this one? I just did a 12 yeah, I've got two more winner. Winner chicken dinner. Oh, we come from the state of the space needle over in Seattle. I did not know that originally when it came out for the world's fair, it had a glass torch that produced a 40 to 50 foot flame on top and yeah, it is said to, it was supposed to be promoting using gas natural gas in your home, which you know, it did great.
Speaker 0 39:25 It burned high and burned long and the said to a burned enough fuel to heat 125 homes. That is a lot now. We would be mortified by that and we'd be like, shut it down, get a halogen light in there. Something that's just a tiny red blinking light. It's not as cool. Okay. Last one. Baseball hats were originally made a straw like woven together and then they evolved into wool, but if you are out on the farm playing baseball, you would have had a straw hat originally. This is definitely one of those. We're playing farm sport out in the field. And you use which you have. Oh yeah. Huh man. All right. We're, yeah. Home stretch of the hundredth episode.
Speaker 0 40:04 We're stepping into science. Yes. How about for our first one? In an average lifetime, a person walks the equivalent of five times around the world, which is about 110,000 miles. Wow. It's a lot of walking. That is a lot of walking. Blood donors in Sweden can get a text when their blood is used. I love it too. You can also get texts that remind you to donate, and I love this. This one is, we won't give up until you bleed. The blood donation. People are pretty creative. Very cheeky. Well, I want to get you in there. Oh yeah. You know, I love size comparisons to get an idea. Yes. The ocean is eight empire state buildings deep on average. So that's 12080.7 feet. Wow. The deepest part is 25 empire state buildings deep, which is 36,000 and change that is, it's just, you can't even fathom, huh? Can't fathom it.
Speaker 0 41:02 I know. Just the concept of what would that be like? Can't imagine I have a scientific Marvel and a medical mystery. So this is the BBC a REFA Sultana gave birth to a baby in February and March. She was rushed to the hospital, complaining of stomach pains. They did an ultrasound. They found a second uterus and twins. Yeah. Oh my heavens. Two uteruses. All right. You need to be questioning your medical care. Well, she lives in India. She had never been to a before the first kid was born. So yeah. So there was nobody looking. Yep. Wow. And it takes a little while for your body to go back a decade or so. Yeah.
Speaker 0 41:44 Speaking of heaviness, the average Cumulus cloud can weigh up to a million pounds, which is about as heavy as the world's largest passenger jet. Okay. I saw that and I fluffy it. I'm, my mind is boggled. I mean it's water and it's heavy. How is it float? I just don't know. You just have to accept it. Yeah, of course. Of air. When you see people in wind tunnels trying to stay, that's true. Upright. Uh, Louisiana has a wild pink dolphin. They've named her pinky. Oh, she is? Yes. She is albino. And she is bubblegum pink. Yes. First seen in 2007 pinky was seen again in 2015 and 2018 swimming with baby dolphins, none of whom were pink. Wow. So yeah, past often. I love it. Wow. Oxygen in its solid and liquid States are, is blue pale blue. Really? Y'all might know that. But yeah, pale blue if it's liquid or solid.
Speaker 0 42:40 I don't think about oxygen in those States very often though. No, cause it has to be really squished. Yeah. All right, so I'm going to take you to Sweden now in 2012 we're not doing a blood donation. We're going in a different direction. A woman lost her wedding ring while making Christmas dinner in 1995. Okay. Okay. In 2012 she found her ring when she pulled up a carrot in her garden. The ring was around the carrot, like the carrot grew through the ring. She think they checked it out with the compost. They think veggie peelings to the compost. Yeah. And it just took that long. What are the odds that that would ever happen? I don't know. Ever. Find it again. Right? Can you imagine? You pull up this carrot and you're like, Oh, that looks like my woo.
Speaker 0 43:21 That is amazing. I'm taking you to Hawaii now. Hawaii moved 7.5 centimeters closer to Alaska each year. Tectonic plate shifting. Wow. So maybe someday, like you know on the kids' maps, they always have Hawaii right next to Alaska. Maybe someday that'll actually be accurate to take a few millennia. We're, we're, we're leaning that way. Yup. All right, so a mouse trap revealed at the great exhibition in London in 1851 was in a museum's cupboard in 2016 155 years later, a mouse climbed in to get a string. Now this was a humane trap. It was designed, it had like nesting material and the mouse would go in and then you could release it. Well it was in a cupboard. Yeah. So a mouse climbed in, got trapped and they didn't know until they found the mouse. Oh. Which that isn't. That is wow. Cool for the mouse. But 155 years it was still working.
Speaker 0 44:13 Still stood the test of time. It's amazing. I saw a post on Facebook, somebody posted something about thunder snow the other day and like that is not a thing. It is a thing. It's a thunderstorm in the snow. I've seen it. I have not. Or you might've experienced it and didn't realize it because the um, snow on the ground mutes the sound of the thunder and so only a couple, few miles can you hear it? Whereas you can hear it for a long, long way if the skies are, um, if it's just the storm and you don't have snow, another fun natural thing. Lake Hillier, it's close to the coast of Western Australia. It has algae in it and Hallo bacteria that thrive in the salty water. I mean, it's like really close to the ocean. The Lake is pink. Wow. And I've got a picture in the, in the notes super, and it's like super bright pink and they have quite a few lakes that are like this, but this one is weird.
Speaker 0 45:06 Pristine. Huh? Bacteria and algae and weird stuff. Make some excellent colors. This is an entirely different direction, right? The risk of heart attack for Germans doubles when their national football team plays in a world cup match. When the opposite team scores a goal, German football fans start dropping that blood pressure. Yeah. They're like, you need to calm down guys. It's just a game. I guess. I love it because of their passion for their game. Maybe their love for cured meats. I don't know. It's like the mice. You're like, wow, that's really interesting and kind of awful. Um, it's possible for Moonlight to refract off water droplets in mist and make a moon bow. I love, I've seen the picture. Well, it's rare and the moon bow is mostly white light, but there's a picture of one in Kentucky, there's a special falls that's located just the right angle.
Speaker 0 45:59 So the mist comes up with the waterfall. It's quite lovely. Needs bouncing all over here today. The total tension on all strings of a piano measures around 20 tons. So that's why you see those really strong metal frames in a grand piano. We were watching a show where they were making the Yamaha factory, they were making pianos and they have this guy, he's got a big crank and 20,000 pounds on all those strings. What makes sense? Cause I've seen like in videos and things where a string goes and it's dramatic violent along the lines of stretchiness rubber bands lasts longer. When refrigerated the polymers in the rubber band relax, making them less brittle and more stretchy. Oh you guys know crickets. Silence. I'm thinking, Oh, here's what I really like. Point Nimo is located over a thousand miles Equa distantly from the coast of three islands. And so at times if you are in the point Nimo area, you are closer to astronauts. On the international space station than you are to any other humans. So the closest people might be in space to you when you're in the point Nimo area. Where is pointing emo?
Speaker 0 47:11 Close to the international space station. Let's look it up. I didn't, I didn't include that in my clip. I figure like it's out in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Yes. It's an Oceana. It's a point in the middle because there's been talks over the years. How do we, who owns it measure the middlewares in the middle of the ocean. Oh. And this point is considered to be, they have decided point Nimo is the farthest place and it is the world's navel. Oh it's, yeah. Um, but between doosey Island Moto Nooyi, the Easter Island chain and Antartica so it's sallow way down there. Wow. Gamey. This one's for you. Okay. The average person farts 14 to 23 times per day. <inaudible> that seems so high. Yeah. Wow. I imagine people above average, that's, you only tell you if you're passing 23 times a day, you should see a doctor. Wow. Cause you might have like overactive bacteria in your gut and it might be disruptive to your family. Like I was thinking like, you know, if you find this bothersome, attacked your physician.
Speaker 0 48:27 Oh here's a fun one. Look up pictures of the shadow of fire and you'll see a person holding a match and there's no shadow on the wall. And the reason for that makes a lot of sense actually because the shadow comes when light, um, can't go around. It can't go through an object. Um, but when you have fire there, you have to have a much brighter source of light behind the fire for it to show a shadow. Well, so I imagine like big fire and probably cast, but Oh, a little fire. Yeah. Wow. All right. Here's another mind bending sciencey thing. Cans of regular Coke sink diet Coke cans float. Why? Well, if you think about it, Coke is full of sugar and sugar makes it more dense and heavier. And the diet Coke has artificial sweeteners and stuff like that. So even though you've got the same amount of fluid in there, it's not as dense. So they float a viscosity kind of issue. So I have a YouTube video cause I was like, no, I know. I don't want to go buy any pop. But it's true. I wonder it seltzer water probably floats to dependent. No. Well <inaudible> doesn't have sugars in it. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't check that. Just like a cell. Sorry.
Speaker 0 49:46 Yeah. But uh, yeah. Wow. And sinks. One floats. Now I'm going to like go to barbecues and say I'll be right back. Exactly. I'm going to take off to into the bathroom. See what happens. We're super fun party guests. Everybody please invite us right here is my last fact of the day. Hot and cold water sound different when being poured. It is actually noticeable to the human ear if you're listening for it. And that goes back to a change in viscosity as well. Um, so the thickness or stickiness of the water depending on the temperature. Wow. After this we're going to go make cans float and pour some water. Absolutely. Apparently hot water has a higher pitch. Okay, I have three more. So I think we've got, we've got, we've got slightly more than a hundred, but I have to tell you these three because they're so great. So the first one is Viagra dissolved in water can double the shelf life of cut flowers by at least a week stand up longer.
Speaker 0 50:47 That's all I'm going to say. The inter gluteal cleft is your butt crack is okay. That is a really Epic sounding phrase. Right? Crack. And I warn you not to type inter gluteal cleft into Google because your world will be changed. Okay. And then the last one, you can cut a round cake into eight equal pieces with only three cuts. And if you're thinking one, two, three, that gets you more than eight pieces. Okay, I'm thinking here, I'm thinking a cut, um, horizontally. Yes, you're going to cut that round thing and half. So it's in tune round complete round circles. Okay. Okay. And then cut down the and then stack them on top of each other and do one, two, like crossing and doing X. So the top one is four pieces in the bottom. One is four pieces. I would never have thought of that.
Speaker 0 51:40 Me neither. Because we fought, we cut ours and we frost him in the middle for a layer cake. Yes. But you would not cut a cake like this. And originally I had, you can cut a pie into eight equal pieces that way and I was like, ah, I would never do that. That would be messy. Yeah. So see the, the genius thinkers figured that one out right away. Cause they think outside the box. They're not back frosting. I am bound by frosting. No, they're just bound by design. So that is a possible but not practical. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well I want to say thank you that you guys have listened for as long as you have. I never thought honestly that we'd make it to a hundred episodes. Not because we don't have the stamina or the, you know, I just was like, it just seemed like such a big number.
Speaker 0 52:22 It did. You know, and now we're here so we love you loyal listeners and enjoy your like, well once I edit 45 minute long episode, I'm going to be a painful edit. This is supposed to come out. Let's see, February 25th so you could just bank this for spring break, you know, and have a nice drive and listen, or it's February. You need a little humor. Oh yeah. You need something to bring you out. Ugly. Absolutely. Anytime you need another dose of random fact. Tacularness all right, let me, let me try that again. I do love that. It's hard to say. It's good though. Okay. Brain junkies, anytime you need another dose of random fact tacularness ask your smart speaker to play brain junk podcast. You can also find us on Twitter as at my brain junk and we're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast. Tracy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored and you'll be full of facts. So many things.
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