The Origin of Everyday

Week of October 1, 2023

Post author By Headlight
Post date November 26, 2023

The Gourds’ Greatest Hit

Sunday

The tradition of putting a light in a carved pumpkin actually started with doing the same to turnips. This began in Ireland and Scotland with the folk tale of “Stingy Jack,” a man who twice tricked the devil and was denied entry into both heaven and hell when he died. He was doomed to wander the earth at night with only a coal ember to light his way, and scary faces carved for “Jack of the Lantern” were to keep him and other evil spirits away.

Monday

In the US, no state grows or processes more pumpkins than Illinois. Over 40% of all pumpkins grown in the US come from Illinois, as do fully 90% of the nation’s canned pumpkin. (On the topic of Illinois and pumpkin time, the horror classic film “Halloween” was set in fictional Haddonfield, Illinois, but not actually filmed in the state at all, as anyone noticing mountains in some scenes might suspect. It was wholly filmed in California.)

Tuesday

When Smashing Pumpkins band founder Billy Corgan first heard someone mention smashing pumpkins, he thought it would be a good band name. He was thinking “smashing” in the British sense, an adjective meaning “fantastic and amazing,” and later clarified that “it could have been any vegetable.”

Wednesday

The now-ubiquitous pumpkin spice flavoring began in the 1930s as the all-in-one combination of spices long used in pumpkin pie. The exact combination varies, but ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves or allspice are basically universal. Starbucks first started selling pumpkin spice lattes in 2003, and now the flavor / scent seems to be in everything.

Thursday

There are many pumpkin colors besides orange, including red, white, blue, green, yellow, purple, pink, black and tan.

Friday

It turns out that all parts of a pumpkin are edible, with the right preparation, and pumpkin seeds are quite nutritious.

Saturday

Pumpkins are simultaneously a gourd, a fruit, and a squash, and likely the heaviest in all of these categories. The world’s heaviest pumpkin, as of time of writing, is 2,749 lbs., grown by a Minnesota horticulture teacher in his backyard.

Week of September 24, 2023

Post author By Headlight
Post date November 22, 2023

Facts for Those with Heads in the Clouds

Sunday

Clouds are made of water evaporated from the Earth’s surface suspended in the air as droplets or tiny ice crystals, since the water has condensed (or also frozen) at higher altitudes where it is cooler. These droplets form by water first adhering to a particle such as dust, dirt, smoke, pollen, or sea salt, which are known as “nuclei.”

Monday

These nuclei can be put in the sky artificially to encourage precipitation by a process called “cloud seeding.” Silver iodide, which has a structure similar to ice, is typically used, and tiny ice crystals tend to form around this seeding particle. According to several studies, this has increased snowpack in mountainous areas by 10-15%.

Tuesday

Fog is really just a cloud that’s very near the ground and, by definition, reduces visibility to one kilometer or less.

Wednesday

There are four main types of clouds, and in addition to different shapes, they’re typically found at different heights in the sky. They are cirrus (thin and wispy), cumulus (puffy), stratus (layered like a blanket), and nimbus (rain clouds).

Thursday

Floating fluffy clouds seem nearly weightless, but they are not, since water is heavy. A modest-sized cumulus cloud measuring one km on each side, for example, weighs about 551 tons, or about the weight of 42 school buses.

Friday

Other planets have clouds, but they are scary. These clouds can be made of, among other things, ammonia, sand, and metal.

Saturday

Concert organizers once paid $55,000 to make the rain clouds go away before a 2004 Paul McCartney concert in St. Petersburg Palace Square. Three jets sprayed the heavy clouds with frozen carbon dioxide, which theoretically should make the clouds disperse, though this is difficult to prove. In any event, the clouds disappeared, and Sir Paul could play “Good Day Sunshine” under a clear sky.

Week of September 17, 2023

Post author By Headlight
Post date November 13, 2023

Wonder Week, All-Natural Version

The Seven Natural Wonders of the World, a list compiled by the news network CNN, are:

Sunday

The Grand Canyon, over one mile deep, seventeen miles wide, and two billion years old, is aptly named. Eons of Earth’s life are visible in the geology and erosion of rock layers visible to any visitor. President Teddy Roosevelt declared that it was a sight which could not be improved on, and now five million visitors come to the enjoy it annually.

Monday

The huge Harbor at Rio de Janiero, also known as Guanabara Bay, is surrounded a picturesque granite mountain range that also includes the site of Christ the Redeemer (one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, see previous week) and dotted with over 130 islands. This busy bay is now both a natural gem and an important economic port.

Tuesday

The Paricutín Volcano, found in Michoacán, Mexico, is strikingly smooth and conical, but also very young, having only first appeared in a cornfield in 1943, burying the town of Paricutín as it continued to grow over the next 9 years. This eruption not only created an intriguing tourist attraction, but gave the scientific opportunity to study a volcano since its birth.

Wednesday

Fittingly named “the smoke that thunders” in the native Lozi language, Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, empties a mind-boggling 165,000,000 gallons of water per minute to produce the single largest sheet of water in the world. The spray from the massive falls is visible over 30 miles away and the nearby rain forest is wet from the spray at all times.

Thursday

Mount Everest, rising nearly 5.5 miles above the Nepal-Tibet border, is the highest peak and tallest point on Earth. Shaped roughly like a 3-sided pyramid, Everest attracts many ambitious climbers every year, though many do not survive the brutal weather and low oxygen at the extreme altitudes.

Friday

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, composed of over 2,900 individual reef systems and 900 islands across an area as large as 70 million football fields. This remarkable aquatic treasure is home to fully 25% of all known marine species in the world, including 134 species of sharks alone.

Saturday

Aurora Borealis, AKA The Northern Lights, may be the least predictable spectacle on this list, but they wow nonetheless. Caused by energized particles from the sun being pushed to Earth’s poles by our planet’s magnetic field, these dramatic lights in the sky can appear green, pink, red, blue, purple, and white.

Week of September 10, 2023

Post author By Headlight
Post date November 7, 2023

Wonder Week, Modern Version

In 2000, over 2 millennia since the first list was compiled, a Swiss foundation collected 100 million votes for the New Seven Wonders of the World. The results were:

Sunday

The Colosseum, built about 70 AD, was a marvel of size, engineering, and gruesome spectacle. Besides the gladiator battles and human-animal combat, the Colosseum was sometimes flooded for mock naval battles, with an estimated 1/2 million people meeting their death there. After some centuries of earthquakes and neglect, the building was restored in recent times and now draws about 7 million tourists annually.

Monday

Chichén Itzá, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, is a city first started by the Mayans in the 5th century AD. Among the remarkable temples is El Castillo, a stepped pyramid where natural shadows combine with carved stone snake heads to give the appearance of serpents slithering down one side on the two annual equinoxes.

Tuesday

Machu Picchu, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, is another rare well-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Americas, this one built by the Incas. Dating from the 15th or 16th centuries, this extensive and elaborate complex of over 350 structures is surrounded by terraces and aqueducts and was likely home of a palace.

Wednesday

Petra, in modern Jordan, is also called the “Rose Red City” for the color of the rock that the many elaborate buildings are carved out of. Though the surrounding area has been used by humans for at least 10,000 years, this capital of the ancient Nabatean Arabs has been around since about the 3rd century BC, and thrived until an earthquake and a later change in trade routes left it all but abandoned until a more recent “rediscovery” about 200 years ago.

Thursday

The Christ the Redeemer statue, rising 125 above the peak of Mt. Corcovado in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, was originally inspired by fears of “an advancing tide of godlessness.” Built in the 1920s during the heyday of Art Deco architecture, it is the largest statute of that style in the world, is covered by over six million tiles, and is hit by (and damaged by) lightning surprisingly often.

Friday

The Great Wall of China, easily one of the largest-scale construction projects undertaken by humans, was built along the country’s northern border to protect against invaders. The Great Wall is actually a series of walls and fortifications, many parallel to each other and in varying states of maintenance, making a definitive length measurement tricky. A conservative estimate might be 5,500 miles for the best-preserved stretch up to 13,170 total miles, with construction beginning in the 7th century BC and with repairs going on as late at the 11th century AD before modern renovations.

Saturday

The Taj Mahal is an enormous and elaborate marble masoleum built by Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife, who died in 1631 while giving birth to their 14th child. The shah was later overthrown by one of his sons and imprisoned nearby. The Taj Mahal is easily the best recognized building in India and attracts about 3 millions people a year.

Week of September 3, 2023

Post author By Headlight
Post date October 31, 2023

Wonder Week, Ancient Version

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as described by 2nd Century BC Greeks, are:

Sunday

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, in what is now southern Iraq, were supposedly built about 600 BC and described in many narratives, but the nature of these gardens, and even their exact location, has been debated for decades.

Monday

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, built over the course of 33 years starting in 280 BC, was for centuries the tallest man-made structure after the pyramid at Giza. Ships entering the harbor at Alexandria, Egypt were guided by the fire atop and a reflective bronze mirror until 15 centuries and multiple earthquakes finally took their toll on the lighthouse.

Tuesday

The Colossus of Rhodes, a 110 foot tall statue of the sun god Helios, was built about 280 BC to celebrate the city’s survival of a extended siege. Though a earthquake broke it off at the knees about 60 years later, even the fallen statue continued to be an attraction to visitors for the next 800 years.

Wednesday

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, 40 feet tall seated and made of gold and ivory by the same sculptor who oversaw the Parthenon and Acropolis’ construction, amazed onlookers for nearly 1,000 years.

Thursday

The massive and opulent Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was named for Mausolus, the ambitious 4th century governor in what is now Turkey, who started its construction during his life. About 140 feet in height, the building lasted 17 centuries, with parts of it still to be found in exhibits.

Friday

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was described as twice the size of the Parthenon and both longer and wider than a modern football field, not to mention made entirely of marble. This enormous temple to the Greek fertility goddess took 120 years (or by one account, 200 years) to complete.

Saturday

At forty-five centuries old, weighing in at 5.75 million tons and made of 2.3 million massive blocks of limestone and granite, the Great Pyramid at Giza is the only wonder of the ancient world still largely intact. Built for the pharaoh Khufu over 20 years by between 20,000 and 100,000 workers, it sits in a complex that includes smaller pyramids and with sides that align with the cardinal directions and was called “perhaps the most colossal single building ever erected on the planet.”