Author: Headlight

Sunday

They may not look it, but bears are fast. With top speeds over 35 mph, bears can easily outrun even Usain Bolt and match horse running speeds.

Monday

The sleepy state many bears enter through the winter is technically torpor, a state similar to true hibernation but different in that the bear can still wake up quickly to respond to danger. In either case, it is a very deep sleep, and the bear lives off fat reserves and does not eat, drink, or pass waste while sleeping for months at a time.

Tuesday

The teddy bear was named for President Theodore Roosevelt following a 1902 Mississippi hunting trip when the president refused to shoot a black bear that other members of his hunting party had stunned and tied to a tree, believing such a kill would be utterly unsportsmanlike. The episode was featured in a cartoon showing the adult bear as a cub, and a Brooklyn couple sewed and started selling “Teddy’s bear” plush dolls in their penny shop after getting Roosevelt’s permission. After growing interest, they soon made a fortune selling the bears exclusively.

Tuesday

With males weighting an average of about 1,000 lbs., polar bears are the largest bear and largest land carnivore in the modern world. However, they would have been dwarfed by their extinct Ice Age ancestor the giant short-faced bear, which stood 12 feet tall, weighted over 1500 lbs, and (amazingly) ran 40 mph.

Thursday

One female polar bear was observed to swim for 9.67 days straight in the Beaufort Sea, covering over 400 miles.

Friday

Panda bears are usually a big draw for zoos, but at a steep cost. The Chinese government retains ownership of the pandas and typically charges one million US dollars annual “panda rent” to the institutions exhibiting and researching them.

Saturday

Although red pandas and koalas seem quite bear-like, they aren’t true bears. The unique red panda is the only member of its animal family, and koalas are actually marsupials, like kangaroos.

Sunday

Diamonds originated about 100 miles underground, formed from carbon hundreds of millions of years ago under the phenomenal heat and pressure of the earth’s mantle. The natural channels of volcanic pipes bring the diamonds closer to the surface for mining.

Monday

Though we often see clear diamonds on jewelry, natural diamonds come in almost all colors. The color comes from “impurities” within the carbon structure (trapped nitrogen makes yellow diamonds, for example), and in some cases the diamonds are even colored by radiation exposure.

Tuesday

The regular and uniform seeds of the carob tree were used for centuries as the standard for weighing gems before a 1908 international standardization. The Greek name for this tree is keration, which is where we get carat, the measurement of diamond weight. Diamonds smaller than one carat are measured in points, and there are 100 points to a carat.

Wednesday

The largest diamond ever found was discovered by a mine superintendent in 1905 in Pretoria, South Africa. It weighed 1.33 lbs., or 3,106 carats, and was dubbed the Cullinan after the mine’s owner. Cut into over 100 smaller diamonds, the three largest are now among the British royal stones, and the “Cullinan I” AKA “Star of Africa I” is the largest cut fine-quality diamond in the world.

Thursday

Only about 30% of diamonds mined are gem quality, so the remaining diamonds often find industrial uses because of their exceptional hardness, including cutting, sanding, boring, and coring.

Friday

Most diamond mines are obviously privately-owned, but Murfeesboro, Arkansas, hosts Crater of Diamonds State Park, the world’s only public diamond digging facility. Visitors may search a 37-acre field for diamonds they can keep. For inspiration, consider that the Uncle Sam Diamond, the largest diamond ever found in the US at 40+ carats, was found here.

Saturday

Money may not grown on trees, but diamonds might rain on other planets, research indicates. 1000 tonnes of diamonds a year may be created on Saturn alone.

Sunday

Buttons were used for decoration since at least 5000 years ago, but only began being used for fastening clothing during the Middle Ages after the development of the button hole.

Monday

Snaps for clothing were first patented in Germany in 1885 and are known as “snaps” or “poppers” thanks to the sound they make when fastened.

Monday

A basic zipper design was patented in 1851 by the inventor of the sewing machine, but the zipper as we know it wasn’t patented until 1917. Though the US Army used them in gear and uniforms in WWI, zippers didn’t start to achieve their widespread status on clothing until mid-century. And if you’ve ever wondered what the seemingly-ubiquitous “YKK” on zippers stands for, it is Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, or Yoshida Company, Ltd.

Tuesday

Velcro’s invention was inspired by a Swiss engineer’s 1941 walk in the woods, during which his dog got some burrs in his fur. Studying the burrs under a microscope, Georges de Mestral saw the tiny seed pods held strong thanks to hooks in their tips, and after many years he perfected the hook-and-loop design for clothing and shoe fasteners. “Velcro” derives from the French words for “velvet” and “hook.”

Wednesday

Shoelaces are old. A leather cord lacing system has been found on moccasin-style shoes dating back 5,500 years.

Thursday

In the men’s shirt market, cufflinks were somewhat of a transitional fastener between strings, which tied together men’s ruffled cuffs in the early 1500s, and buttons, which replaced cufflink holes on most mass-market dress shirts in the late 20th century. In they heyday of their popularity, they could be very ornate and show wealth and prestige, and are still found on tuxedo and other high-end dress shirts today.

Friday

The buckle was known to ancient Greece and Rome and used for fastening armor, but for much of its life was also an device to ornament or show wealth. Because of the fastener’s reliability, medieval Europe saw more than just the wealthy and elite adopt buckles as new manufacturing techniques made them more available.

Saturday

While the stretchy usefulness of natural rubber has been known for centuries, chemical experiments in the early 1800s improved rubber’s stability and durability. Soon after, elastic strips in clothing began growing in popularity. In 1959, DuPont chemists developed a product created from synthetic material, and spandex and the availability of stretchy clothing expanded (pun intended).