Interesting & Amusing Facts

Why do we say 'once in a blue moon'

2012-07-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

A sixteenth-century rhyme by an anonymous author counsels us that that, 'if they say the moon is blue, we must believe that it is true.' The statements of poets and song writers about the moon are rightly open to question. but in Edinburgh on September 26,1950, Scottish astronomer charles Wilson focused his telescope on the moon and measured its spectrum-its breakdown of colours. He proved that the moon on that night was blue.Later, Wilson deduced that the moon's blueness was caused by oily particles floating high in the atmosphere. The debris came from a forest fire across the atlantic in Canada , of such intensity that smoke and dust were swept thousands of meters upwards on convection currents. what we see as light is a combination of colours , from red at one end of the spectrum of blue indigo and violet at the other. Atmospheric dust tends to give light from the sun or the moon a reddish hue.This is because fine dust breaks up the light's combination of colours, scattering the blue and leaving the red to come through more strongly. That is why we often get a red sky at night or in the morning. The sun is low, and its light passes through more dust particles than when it is high in the sky. At the other extreme, large particles of water vapour scatter sunlight's basic colours almost equally, making the clouds look white (or grey and foggy). Medium-sized particles, such as those from the forest fire, scatter red light more effectively than blue light. The red light is filtered out, vanishing against the blackness of the night and the phenomenon-a blue moon. Why are blue moons so rare that we have a saying about them? It's unusual for medium-sized particles of dust or other matter to be swept into the atmosphere. Fine dust is easily blown high into large particles which when heavy enough , will fall as rain or hail.But, once in a blue moon, huge fire or volcanic eruption will send up particles of just the right size to give our poets and astronomers something to sing about.

Why do we always see the same side of the moon?

2012-06-30T01:18:00.001-07:00

In 1609, soon after the telescope's invention, the great Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, adapted it as a means of studying the night sky, its first use in astronomy. Galileo's telescopes were crude by our standard(his first magnified objects about three times), but they showed him the heavens as nobody had seen them before. For ail that, his overall view of the moon, though clearer, was not much different from that seen by the first humans about there million years ago or by Babylonian astronomers in 2000 b c. Whether we look at the moon with our naked eyes or with the see only one face of it. To understand why this is (and perhaps to explain it to a child) try this simple illustration, in which you will act as the Earth and the child as the moon. Stand on a spot and get the child to move a circle round you by stopping to the side, face turned towards you all the time. As the child moves, you turned slowly so that you are constantly facing one another.When both you and the child have turned a full circle, you will be back where you started without either of you having seen the back of the other.But that can happen only while you keep your rotations perfectly synchronized. If the child made only 99.999 per cent of a turn in every complete orbit, you would eventually see his or her back. The moon rotates once on its axis in the twenty-seven and a third days that it takes to complete a circuit around the Earth. If it rotated slightly faster or slower, the other face would gradually come completely into view. But that does not happen. The rotation of the Earth and of the moon are so perfectly synchronized to keep the moon's other face hidden that they might almost be meshed by gears. Can that precision be accidental? you might believe so, except that many other moons-the satellites of Mars and Jupiter, for example-show only one face to their parent planets. For so many moons in the solar system to act in this way is no coincidence. They are governed by what astronomers call 'tidal locking'. When our moon was molten rock, a bulge developed on its side facing towards Earth. This bulge, a tide in the molten rock, was caused by the Earth's gravitational pull, which acts more strongly on the moon's closer face than on its far side. As the moon spun, the tidal bulge of fluid rocks rose and fell, rubbing against material deeper in the Moon's core and gradually slowing down the moon's spin. While there was a difference between the time it took the moon to rotate on its axis and for it to revolve round on its spin. Only when the Earth and its moon were perfectly synchronized did the braking action of tidal friction cease. But when it did, the moons other face was hidden from direct view for ever. Fortunately, we no longer rely on a direct view from Earth to give us information about the moon and other heavenly bodies. In 1959 the moon, since when dozens of other missions by the soviets qne by the United states have added enormously to our knowledge.

Why do we touch wood?

2008-08-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

We’ve all had the feeling that things ar5e sometimes going too well, that by over confidence of idle boasting we may stretch our luck too far and bring some terrible retribution. An old proverb says, ‘He who talks much of happiness, summons grief.’
The idea that joyful events in life may suddenly run in reverse and end in misfortune or tragedy is closely linked with the superstition of touching or knocking on wood. That action is so commonplace that we scarcely recognize it as superstition. Any statement that may be seen to tempt the fates is almost inevitably followed – and swiftly! – by a search for the nearest piece of wood.
The belief that touching wood will placate the evil spirits goes back to pagan times, when trees were held sacred as the abode of gods. These gods commanded the trees to spring into life and to lose their leaves. They chose some trees to be ever green, a sign of immortality. Touching a tree was a mark of respect to the gods, a request for favour to be granted of thanks for one already given.
After the Crucifixion, pagan reverence was joined by a Christian belief that, because Christ died on a wooden cross, all wood was holy. Many people wore wooden crucifixes, touching them as a sign of penitence if they caught themselves gloating of making a rash statement of intent. They felt, too, that Christ had called upon them to lead humble lives. Lack of humility was not only tempting fate – it was a sin.
The super-superstitious aren’t happy about touching just any piece of wood. If no living tree is at hand, they will try to find unpainted wood, touching or knocking upon it not once but three times.
It’s interesting to note that touching wood for safety features in many children’s hide-and-seek games. A player gets home, safe from capture, by touching base, usually a tree of wooden post.

Why do teenagers dance in disco?

2008-08-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

The French word discotheque, meaning a record library, kept that meaning until September 1960. In the month, chubby checker had a hit record with The Twist, and the smart sets of New York, Paris and London took up a new dance craze. A Paris nightclub where café society gathered became the first discotheque. The owner installed loudspeakers, and hired a Youngman to choose and announce each record. The coolness of dancing without any physical contact to music from a human jukebox was an immediate success.
For a time the trend was confined to smart clubs, but by the late 1960s discotheques were operating at private parties. Pubs and clubs took the craze to larger groups. The record industry had a large and ready-made market for a different kind of music, dominated by a heavy bass rhythm designed for dancing rather than singing.
With the 1976 release of Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta, the discotheque had come of age, with its own music, dance style, dress code and a new set of teenage fans.

Why do couples ‘tie the knot’?

2008-08-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

It’s a fair bet that during the course of a couple’s engagement somebody will remark that they are ‘trying the knot’. Equally, it is unlikely that the person making the remark or these hearing it will have much idea of its origins.
The reference is to what was originally an ancient Babylonian custom, probably 3000 years old. At the marriage ceremony, friends of the couple would take a thread from the groom’s and tie them together, a gesture symbolizing the pair’s eternal union.
The custom spread in carious ways, and the tying or undoing of knots acquired many meanings. At some marriage services in medieval Britain, as the priest intoned, ‘Whom God hath joined together let no man separate,’ a needle-woman tied three knots in a piece of lace to ensure the couple’s fidelity.
At ceremonies in the Scottish Hebrides, a groomsman took three threads each of a different hue tied three knots in each and uttered what he believed were the most cruel disappointments of the nuptials bed. To avoid such calamity, the groom stood at the altar with his shoes untied. Elsewhere in Scotland, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, all knots in the brides clothes - garters, shoelaces, petticoat strings – and on the groom’s were examined. If sorcerers wished to render the union childless, they had only to tie any cord with special knot. The couple, it was believed, would then have no hope of raising a family.
At some Irish weddings a century ago the tying of knots as the priest gave his benediction was thought to bring equally dire consequences. An ill-wisher repeated the benediction and, at the mention of each of the three sacred names of the Holy Trinity, tied a knot in a handkerchief or piece of string. Such an act, lit was believed, would render the marriage childless for fifteen years, unless someone destroyed the curse by burning the handkerchief of knotted string.

Why do male produce millions of sperm to fertilize one egg?

2008-08-11T22:49:00.001-07:00

Scientists researching the sexual behavior o primates have made some remarkable discoveries about their sperm counts. The 200 or so species of primates include tiny lemurs, huge gorillas, baboons and humans, and they have a variety of mating habits.
Gorillas, for example live in small groups, in which one dominant male controls several females. Macaques, the most widespread an versatile of monkeys, live in large groups in which competition for females is fierce.
The size of a primate’s testicles is a reliable guide to sperm production. Remarkably, the gorilla has small testicles and produces about sixty five million sperm with each ejaculation. Some macaques, by comparison, have extremely large testicles and ejaculate several thousand million sperm
Scientists say that this difference is a measure of the competition that males face in trying to reproduce. The gorilla, with his harem of females, has no immediate rivals. Male macaque monkeys have many. But even in what seem to be stable relationships, research shows that females are fickle. In all species, insects included, females are rarely faithful. To ensure that their eggs are fertilized, they try to mate with as many males as they can frequently outside their group.
This in turn affects male behavior. Studies show that sperm counts may suddenly change if a male feels threatened. Rats with steady partners ejaculated an average 29.7 million sperm; given the uncertainty of different partners, their sperm counts almost doubled.
Fidelity may possibly affect sperm production in humans. Researchers have found that, if couples spend more time together, the male’s sperm count, which is normally 200 and 500 million, declines. Separated from his partner the male’s sperm count increases, even though the interval between each ejaculation remains constant.

Why do newlyweds take a ‘honeymoon’?

2008-08-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

When a bridegroom and his bride slip away – unnoticed, if the can – to start their honeymoon, they are repeating part of a barbarous practice of centuries past. In those days, a young man, usually aided by his best man, seized a wife by force, hiding her away and fighting off all attempts to recapture her. Later, having convinced his wife that he was the perfect husband, the pair would come out of hiding, and the young man would try to placate the bride’s family by offering gifts.
Today, the wife is a willing partner in the getaway ploy, aiming merely to avoid the pranks that often upset the departure of newly wed couples. Many keep their destination secret, another link with past times of honeymoon hideaways.
The honeymoon custom started with the ancient Teutons, who lived in Jutland, northern Europe, until they migrated south in the second century BC. For a lunar month, or Moon, after their wedding, Teutonic newlyweds celebrated their union with mead, wine made from honey. This feast became known as a honeymoon, and later defined the custom of newlyweds taking a holiday immediately after marriage. Since then, the term has come into more general usage. Today it is often applied, somewhat cynically, to any period, particularly involving a new government, when harsh realities are temporarily suspended.

Why is thirteen an unlucky number?

2008-08-10T23:56:00.001-07:00

No superstition is so strong or so wide spread as the belief that thirteen is unlucky. From Argentina to New Zealand, and Scotland to Siberia, the numeral 13 brings shudders of foreboding.
Hotel guests refuse to take Room 13 (so hotels usually renumber them 12A or 14), hospital patients feel they are doomed if they find themselves in bed 13, and some home-buyers refuse to look at a blocks commonly have no thirteenth floor, many passenger aircraft have no Row 13, and only a brave hostess would seat 13 at dinner.
Triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, is said to come from Norse mythology. Odin’s son Balder, the god of peace and light, went to a banquet in Valhalla. Loki, god of discord, was an uninvited thirteenth guest. He tricked Hoder, the blind symbol of darkness, to shoot and kill Balder with an arrow of mistletoe.
The superstition gained pace after the Last Supper, when the 13 at the table included Judas. He was the first to quit the table, and the later hanged himself. An other superstition decrees that, if 13 dine together, the first to leave will die before the year is out at a dinner including royalty, the royal guest are always the first to rise from the table. For that reason, no royal dinner ever has a table of 13.
Friday, the unluckiest day of the week, has its own range of superstitions. When it comes as Black Friday, coinciding with the thirteenth day of a month, some people fear a double dose of disaster. Doctors and dentists say that many patients are reluctant to book appointments. On Friday the Thirteenth, removalists find that some householders are afraid to move.
One group of Americans in the Philadelphia Friday the Thirteenth Club sets out to defy the fates on that day by deliberately walking under ladders, spilling salt, breaking mirrors and opening umbrellas in doors. As cynics say, if they do that for ling enough, bad luck will inevitably come their way.
If there is anything lucky about Friday the Thirteenth, it is that no year can have more than three Black Fridays and some have only one.

Why do we have dreams and nightmares?

2008-08-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Nothing in our lives is stranger than the fantasies created in our dreams. Some of them are delightful, with all the joy and romance that have inspired poets since ancient times. We wake up sorry to find that we have been dreaming.
Other dreams are so bizarre that we are baffled: people appear who have been out of our thoughts for years; other characters are a composite of two of more acquaintances; decades become muddled; we do things we would never dare to do in real life.
Another kind of dream solves a problem. We see where a lost object is located. We get the answer to as tricky office matter of to some difficulty in arrangement of design. The solution comes in a miraculous flash of wisdom – and we remember it gratefully when we wake up.
In other dreams we find ourselves in hopeless situations: doors are shut fast, never to open; trains depart when we are desperate to catch them; we try to run, but our legs won’t function. One degree farther and an unpleasant dream becomes a nightmare, from which a victim may wake in fright, trembling with terror.
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who gave us the first comprehensive study of form of wish-fulfillment, closely related to the deep emotional reactions of infancy. A person’s dreams revealed repressed feelings and thoughts, presented often in a disguised form.
Many psychologists today say that dreams are an extension of daytime consciousness, a process in which the ideas, feeling and mental impressions absorbed from a variety of sources during our waking hour are sorted out. Strange and inexplicable events take place in dreams because the conscious and awake mind of the day is sleeping: actions that the conscious mind would control in its waking hours are left to run freely.
Some true nightmares, experienced once more a year by about half the poputation, may stem from infancy, and are vague in detail. Others are created by real and devastating experience involving the dreamer, such as a car crash, fire or the death of a close relative. Studies have shown that certain personality types, particularly those doing creative work, may be more nightmare prone than others.
Research using electroencephalography has divided our sleep into phases. By recording the brain’s electrical impulses, we know that dreams take places during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which occurs four of five times a night and may last eact time for up to twenty minutes.
During REM, the brain is extremely active. People woken during an REM phase often report quite vivid dreams, remembering them in great detail. This may explain why we recall some dreams and not others. Those remembered probably occur in an REM phase close to our normal waking time.
Babies spend more time in REM sleep. So do people who have suffered a head injury. Medical scientists say that this may indicate that REM sleep plays an important part in promoting brain activity. In the first few years of life, the impressions made in a baby and recorded during REM sleep may set up the patterns that dictate the child’s personality.
By tracking brain activity during our sleep, some researchers believe they can pinpoint the exact location of the mind or ‘psyche’. They place it within the limbic system, which is located in a semicircle in the middle of the brain. They say that this region acts as the brain’s executive office, deciding which events should be filed away in the memory and which should be forgotten. The dream process, they suggest, is essential for these structures within the brain to function efficiently.

Why is laughter said to be the best medicine?

2008-08-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

Without doubt, the mind has an enormous influence over our health. Doctors’ casebooks are full of examples of patients whose illness appears to stem from general depression. A healthy person receives bad news is understandably upset, and before long complains of being ‘run down’. One British study shows that chronic illness among unemployed is six times as high as among those at work.
The body responds to mental stress by producing more cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are designed, among other functions, to increase the heart rate and blood pressure, improving our performance so that we can cope more efficiently. Too much stress over stimulates hormone production so that, instead of improving our efficiency, we became less able to cope. That is why some people faced with life-threatening crisis find themselves unable to act sensibly.
Laughter triggers nerves in the brain to start a chain of reactions. The body’s endocrine system secretes natural painkillers and tranquillizers. Other substances aid digestion, and the arteries relax to improve the blood flow. No doctor would claim that laughter will cure all ailments, buts there is no doubt that a good laugh does us all a power of good.

Why are men more aggressive than women?

2008-08-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

Behavior is difficult to measure, but many scientists – male and female – agree about certain differences between the sexes. They say that girls are superior at reading and understanding difficult material, and they speak more fluently. Boys are generally better at mathematics. They shine at such skills as reading maps and finding their way out of mazes – and they are without doubt more aggressive both physically and verbally. That doesn’t mean, of course, that any one boy is particular girl, or that he is necessarily more aggressive. Scientists are talking about the average.
Psychologists Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin analyzed more than 2000 separate studies to provide considerable evidence of standard differences in boys’ and girls’ behavior. Others searched for a biological explanation. May scientists say that male aggression stems from androgen hormones, which trigger male secondary sexual characteristics, such as muscle bulk in the chest and face? Among these androgens is the hormone testosterone. One study of male juvenile delinquents showed that the most aggressive had the highest levels of testosterone.
Aggressive in men may come from prehistoric times, when only adept fighters were likely to survive. To scientists who argue that the biological evidence is inconclusive, anthropologists point out that in cultures worldwide men are the hunters and killers. It’s rare for women to go to war. If similarities exist between otherwise different societies, behavioral scientists say they are likely to stem from biological, not environmental, factors.

Why is june a favorite month for weddings?

2008-08-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

An old British saying is that one wedding makes many. and that is undoubtly true in June, a month when all weddings are said to be guaranteed lifelong bliss. The belief dates from ancient times, a relic of Roman myhtology.
The month is said take its name from Juno, the goddess of youth, the faithful wife of Jupiter and guardian of womanhood from birth to death. the goddess ensured that a marriage in her month was blessed with happiness.
In many countries, particularly in the northern hemisphere, more marriages take place in June in any other month. Mid-summer weather is one explanation; another is the survival of this ancient superstition, which seems to overpower beliefs regarded as the unluckiest.
If saturday is the unluckiest day, a Saturday wedding in May must be instantly doomed. Fewer weddings are held in May, which is still regarded by many which is still regarded by many as the unluckiest month for marital vows. The goddess Maia, or Majesta, is said to have been the month's protector, but she was also the wife of Vulcan, god of fiery elements. A May marriage, some believed, would bring an unpleasently fiercly relationship. Others pointed to Maia's role as patroness of old people, asserting that june weddings were for young lovers and May for the elderly.
Are June weddings blessed with greater happiness? Divorce statistics don't support this. Proportionally, just as many June marriages break up those made in any other month of the year.