randomfacts-dump

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Persephone's bouquet

Thanks to Homer ( the ancient Greek Poet, not the Simpsons), we have an idea of the exact flowers Persephone was picking in the meadow when she was abducted by Hades. So here you go, Persephone's bouquet, for any of you who were wondering :

Roses, crocus, violets, iris blossoms, hyacinth and narcissus.

Source : Homeric Hymns, Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

PS : for any Sapphics out there, it is a funny coincidence that half of the bouquet matches with this verse by Sappho from the Ode to Aphrodite: “Many crowns of violets, roses and crocuses…together you set before more and many scented wreaths made from blossoms around your soft throat…"

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From pigeon sh*t to Nobel prize :

So in the 20th century there was 2 theories competing to explain the creation of the universe :

The Steady State Theory : the universe was always like that, eternal and unchanged

The Big Bang Theory : a finite universe, expanding from a single point in space

But strong physical evidence was lacking for the Big Bang Theory.

Then, in 1964, a trio of researchers at Princeton – Robert Dicke, Jim Peebles and David Wilkinson – hypothesized that if the Big Bang theory was correct, it should have produced an amazing burst of radiation still visible today. After traveling for 13 billion plus years, it would be red-shifted to very long wavelengths, probably appearing as radio waves. So they gathered a ton of expensive materials to try to capture this elusive noise.

Meanwhile, 40 miles away, also in New Jersey, two researchers with named Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to measure the radio waves emanating from galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

To capture these signals they had to deal with "noise" coming from broadcast radio channels, military communications or even the sun.

But even after removing the obvious interference, a noisy hum remained : the noise didn't change no matter where they pointed so it wasn't the fault of New York or even the Milky Way itself.

They thought : "Maybe it's the machinery itself ?” so Penzias and Wilson cooled their receiver with liquid hydrogen to soothe away these signals, yet their hum persisted.

So they looked at the antenna itself : a group of pigeons had taken to roosting in and around the instrument. The researchers had to catch their noisy neighbours and once the pigeons were ousted, the researchers had to remove their nests and droppings.

And.....

And the signal was still humming.

Finally, because New Jersey’s physics world is only so large, the Princeton group heard about the other group’s noise problem. They visited, and found that completely by accident, Penzias and Wilson had discovered the very signal Peebles and his colleagues had been looking for : the Cosmic Microwave Background energy.

In the spirit of true scientific cooperation, the two groups simply agreed to publish simultaneously. Penzias and Wilson wrote about their persistent signal, and the Princeton group wrote the theoretical explanation.

But with Penzias and Wilson’s evidence, the Big Bang Theory smashed the already wavering Steady State alternative. A decade later, the pigeon cleaners won a Nobel Prize.

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A common misconception is to think that flamingo egg yolk is pink !

Flamingo egg yolks get stained by the same carotenoids that turn the flamingo's feather pink.

While flamingo yolks are bright, they are an intense, deep orange but not a highlighter pink!

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Harvard has a library that protects various rare colours from all over the world.

The most unusual colors from Harvard's storied pigment library include beetle extracts, poisonous metals, and human mummies.

Edward Forbes, a historian and director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University from 1909 to 1944, traveled around the world amassing pigments in order to authenticate classical Italian paintings. Over the years, the Forbes Pigment Collection—as his collection came to be known—grew to more than 2,500 different specimens, each with its own layered backstory on its origin, production, and use.

Today, the collection is used mostly for scientific analysis, providing standard pigments to compare to unknowns.

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Legend has it that one of Capone’s relatives became seriously ill after drinking bad milk, which made him very angry and led him to, surprisingly, regulate a law, which he imposed on the Chicago City Council: the obligation for milk producers to add expiry dates to the bottles.

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Latibulating is a 17th century era verb meaning ‘to hide in a corner until conditions improve’, and has also been defined as retiring into a den or lying dormant in winter.

(And I'm telling you, I need it back into everyday vocabulary!)

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Mary Katharine Goddard (June 16, 1738 – August 12, 1816) is the only woman whose name appears on the Declaration of Independence.

She was an early American printer and publisher who was also probably the first woman postmaster in America.

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The US Flag Acts (3 in total, latest established in 1818) are specifying the following rules for the US flag :

- thirteen horizontal alternating red and white stripes

- the number of stars matches the current number of states

- the stars are white on a blue field

The brevity of the Acts leave a lot of ambiguity since neither the size or shape of the flag nor the exact colors or the size or placement of the design elements are specified which means that this is a completely valid US flag :

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Here's a few random ways to call groups of "stuff" :

A group of crows is a Murder;

A group of gnomes is known as a Donsy;

A group of golden retrievers is a Happy;

A group of rabbits is a Fluffle;

A group of ferrets is a Business;

A group of Pugs is a Grumble;

A group of labradors is called a Mischief;

A group of wombats is called a Wisdom;

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While modern sharks are "only" 200 million years old, the first sharks have appeared somewhere around 400 and 450 million years ago. Making them older than :

Saturn's rings : latest estimate is 10 million and 100 million years old

A galactic year : it takes the Solar System about 240 million years to complete one orbit of the Milky Way

Trees and flowers : the first trees appeared 390 millions years ago whilst the first flowers have evolved somewhere between 256 and 149 million years ago

The North Star : is estimated to be around 70 millions old

Most importantly they are even older than the continents and oceans as we know them now since Pangea has broke appart 150 million years ago.

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The word "bug" to describe a defect in the system has nothing to do with insects (despite a few urban myths saying the opposite).

Rather the word originated from the Middle English "bugge" meaning monster, scarecrow with the expression "bug" used as far back as the 1870s, including by Thomas Edison himself : " this thing gives out and [it is] then that "bugs" - as such little faults and difficulties are called - show themselves".

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A volcanic eruption in Iceland may have caused the French revolution.

Just over 200 years ago, the Laki volcanic fissure in southern Iceland erupted over an eight-month period from 1783 to 1784, with the lava and poisonous gases devastating the island's agriculture, killing much of the livestock and around a quarter of Iceland's population with the following famine.

The clouds of dust and sulphur particles thrown up by the volcano were carried over much of the northern hemisphere.

The ships were stuck in ports, fogbound, and the heat of summer paired up with the constant volcanic clouds, caused the crops to die in a lot of European countries including England, Norway and France.

The eight months of eruption and constant volcanic clouds, meant a severe disruption to weather patterns with the following winter being unusually harsh, and the consequent spring flooding claiming more lives.

All of it had a serious impact on the economics of European countries, with the following famine being a major cause of the French revolution of 1789.

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Female dragonflies, when stalked by an unwelcome lover (or two), crash to the ground and plays dead to avoid mating with them.

(Which, of you ask me, is a MOOOODDD)

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.1781

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Robert A. Wardhaugh is a Canadian historian known as a host of the longest uninterrupted Dungeons & Dragons campaign. As of 2023, the game has been going on for 42 years, since 1982.

https://thegamednd.com/

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Every license plate in Québec (Canada) has the sentence "Je me souviens". While the original author of the quote didn't bother explaining what he meant, the general agreement is that it symbolises the memory of the struggles led by Québec to achieve the quasi-autonomous and unique status as a french speaking province in North America

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The brains of cephalopods (squid, octopus) are shaped like a ring (or a donut) with their oesophagus going through the hole.

These animals literally cannot swallow too big a bite unless they want to seriously damage their brain since the brain is slightly stretched as food moves through the oesophagus.