Last Updated on: 7th March 2018, 09:10 am
And now, Gill with a giant pile of completely random facts.
Looking out the window and seeing rain doesn’t scare me, but it does make me a little angry when my next stop is outside. I wonder if there’s a name for *that*. Oh, and am I the only one who feels like I’m bleeding when I get rained on? Like I can actually feel stings the way you sometimes do when you split yourself open. Maybe I need to get Gill on that one, too.
Good Nerdsday, I mean Thursday, hope all is going well for you. Are you ready to think about stuff? From a cheese rolling festival to a fear of bananas here’s some stuff you’ve probably never thought of.
- Let’s go to a festival – In a UK town they actually have this annual event where a bunch of people roll a giant wheel of cheese down a hill.
- 14 days – In the lifetime of an average person 14 days, that’s two weeks, or a fortnight if you want to put it that way, will be spent either looking for lost socks or tying one’s shoes.
- Bananaphobia – Yes this is actually real, and a crippling fear. People who have this often avoid produce, and have awkward times at homes with fruit bowls.
- The British say it coolest – Over here in North America we call an operating room an operating room, but in Great Britain and other former colonies of Great Britain they call it an operating theatre. The reasoning behind that was before the days of anesthesia the general public could come to a hospital to see an amputation.
- Mirror mirror no more- This is called photophobia, and sufferers can’t even have mirrors in their homes, there also may be a superstition element to that. Two things can happen to a sufferer, they can be so obsessed with what they see that it leads to vanity, or they could care less.
- Is that some silver on your wrist – In a region in Mexico there’s a festival dedicated to all things silver. So if you like jewelry, or cups this is something for you.
- Creative sentencing – In Ohio judge Michael Chikenetti has an interesting way of handling his cases, E.G. an 18-year-old who didn’t pay for a cab ride could choose between some time in jail or walking the equivalent of the mileage she stiffed the driver. She chose to walk the 30 miles. The good thing about judge Chikenetti is that he has a far lower rate of repeat offenders than the national average.
- Smart babies – A study was done that said that mothers who spoke more than one language while the child was in the womb and for the first six months after the child was born would be more likely to have a child that would understand both English and the other language E.G. Swedish better than their counterparts who weren’t spoken to much or at all.
- Fried tarantulas – This Cambodian snack food has a dark history. When the Kmare Rouge came to rule in 1975 a wave of food shortages forced people to scrounge for what they could find. Now eaten as a snack, these sometimes made all the difference between life and death. Note my friend Jeff suggested I try them with some black pepper and a splash of lime juice.
- Fatal Familial Insomnia – Have you ever had a sleepless night? Imagine now that not only do you have those you have a whole host of other frightening symptoms. Fatal Familial insomnia {ffi} is a rare but deadly sleeping disorder characterized by first being unable to sleep, then extreme weight loss, dementia like symptoms etc. It is made worse by taking sleeping pills.
- There are far too many potatoes on that barbie – For this we travel to visit our friends down under where there’s actually a law of how many potatoes one can have. There is literally a potato board wearing perma-frowns, so don’t even think about buying 100 pounds of spuds.
- Indura bread- There is a unique tradition of eating stews and other foods with a sour doe bread in Ethiopia. For those not in the know it’s kind of a beige gray color and it’s rather gooey with little braille dot ridges, but it tastes like more once you start dipping in one of those delicious Ethiopian wats {stews}.
- Triple threat – On the heels of War Of the worlds broadcast in 1938 Orson Wells took his acting, directing, and writing talents, and poured them in to a big Oscar winning production called Citizen Kane.
- Full body mustache – While in the womb you have hair covering your entire body, this hair falls off shortly before birth.
- Water Bottle T-shirts – Have you ever wondered what happens to those water bottles that you buy at the store? Some end up in landfills, while others go to companies dedicated to re-purposing them in to T-shirts.
- Umbraphobia – If the very thought of looking out your window and seeing rain scares you, you have umbraphobia. Most often caused by childhood trauma, such as being told to stay out of the rain or losing a favorite relative in an accident on a rainy day or night this is rare indeed.
- Insensitivity to pain – although this seems like it would be nice, sufferers have done serious harm to themselves E.G. unknowingly walked on fractured bones.
- Dextrophobia – This is the fear of the right hand. Sufferers may have grown up attending a one-room school house where their wrists were hit with rulers for using their left hands.
Questions
What’s an interesting statistic, festival, fair, or event you have attended? Do you have an unusual talent or are you the only one in your family who looks a certain way? What is your most unusual fear? Your worst nightmare? How many of you out there think I’ll take Jeff up on his suggestion?
