I’m very enthusiastic about learning new, niche (sometimes silly) things and I love a good factoid. thought it’d be fun to encourage everyone to share some cool facts they know or things they learned that day! they can be about anything at all! sourcing is optional but encouraged.
I’ll start us off: most everyone knows the word ‘autumnal’, and a lot of people are familiar with its spring equivalent, ‘vernal’. less well-know are the winter equivalent, ‘hibernal’ (like hibernation), and summer equivalent, ‘estival’ (like festival!)
Many people, even trained chemists, think hydrogen is just placed above the alkali metals because it has the same electronic properties as them (1 valence electron in an S shell), even though it’s physical properties are very different from lithium, sodium, etc. However, hydrogen probably is actually a metal under the right conditions. Metallic hydrogen has been theorized as a potential rocket fuel, among other applications.
American crows are thought to be able to read human intentions from looking at their faces. (source) they also have some ability to remember specific humans and can pass this information down through generations! (source)
in the US (and some other parts of the world like Australia and Japan) it’s required by law for stores to refridgerate eggs. this is because, in these places, eggs are washed after laying to destroy salmonella bacteria; however, the wash strips away a protective layer that makes them more susceptible to other bacteria entering through small cracks in the shell, and this is why they have to be refridgerated. in parts of the world where eggs are not washed, it’s common instead for laying hens to be vaccinated against salmonella - therefore, the eggs don’t need to be washed or refridgerated.
semi-related: don’t try to make cake batter with cold eggs! it will split. eggs should be room temperature before adding to batter.
a fun fact i shared with @mordread about Record of Lodoss War:
Record of Lodoss War was created in 1986 by Group SNE as a Dungeons & Dragons “replay” serialized in the Japanese magazine Comptiq from September 1986 to September 1989 issues, though they also used the setting with other systems such as Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest. Replays are not novels, but transcripts of RPG sessions, meant to both hold the interest of readers and convey the events that took place. They have proven to be popular, even to those who do not play role-playing games but are fans of fiction (including fantasy fiction). Similar to light novels, many characters and parties in replays have become popular as characters of anime. An example of such a character is the female elf Deedlit in Record of Lodoss War, who was played by science fiction novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto during the RPG sessions.
advance warning that a lot of my fun facts are probably going to be etymology-related - it’s a little hobby of mine :D
avocados were first discovered by the Nahua (indigenous people of Mexico and El Salvador) circa 500 BC. they named the fruit āhuacatl, meaning ‘testicle’ (presumably for its appearance LMAO). this later became aguacate in Mexican Spanish, then abogado (advocate/lawyer? probably a mishearing LOL) in Spanish, then finally, avocado in English. (source)
There is not only one, but a few Initial D typing games. A collection of them was released for pc/mac, with a wallpaper for every day of the year, desktop clock and a few other things.
yay word-nerd-five! :D i just find it so interesting and it’s so satisfying when you make a new connection between words you didn’t realise had common roots.
today I learned that having people play Tetris shortly after experiencing traumatic events such as road traffic collisions can reduce the severity of their trauma response and resulting PTSD. this may be because Tetris is sufficiently cognitively demanding to interfere with the permanent consolidation of traumatic memories that lead to developing PTSD. (source / source)
I’m bringing this thread back goddamnit I love facts and I want to share them/want other people to share them with me!
one shared with me through a discord recently:
lizards (aside from varanid/monitor lizards) struggle to run and breathe at the same time. varanid lizards, as chase predators, physically force air into their lungs via “gular pumping” to enable them to run without stopping to breath.
today i learned that apparently fluticasone (Flonase, various inhalers) interacts badly with Paxlovid. something i had ZERO idea of as a pharmacy tech. and people who need these types of meds may have underlying conditions that get you prescribed paxlovid in the first place! ough
sort of relevant but i had no idea that if you don’t follow those sinex severe instructions properly you can just develop a dependency to them which is wild to me.
learned at work that we can only transfer c2 (e.g. most opioid pain meds, adhd meds, etc) scripts between other (redacted pharmacy chain that i work at) stores once BUT that only applies to electronic scripts; if the rx is a paper one, we Cannot transfer it but have to delete the script from our system and give it back to the patient in order for them to take it to the other store. oops!