Category: –

Sunday

Goats can be taught their name and learn to respond when called.

Monday

Goats and sheep are very similar, and some sheep even have horns, but they aren’t the same. Three quick and easy ways to tell the difference are that sheep have wooly thick hair, but goats don’t, sheep tails are longer and point down, but short goat tails point up, and sheep stick to eating clover and low grasses while goats eat taller-growing plants and otherwise have a more adventurous diet.

Tuesday

The depiction of Satan and demons with goat or ram-like horns only goes back several hundred years. Satan’s features aren’t described in the Bible, and during Christianity’s first millennia, he was more often depicted with snake, dragon, fallen angel, or other features.

Wednesday

Mountain goats are among the world’s best climbing animals, able to scale near-vertical rock surfaces, in part due to a hoof design that effectively locks each step in place with minimum slippage.

Thursday

Since young goats are called kids, goat birth is called kidding. This is not a joke.

Friday

Goats, like horses and sheep, have pupils which are not round but long and horizontal. It turns out this gives them a wider field of vision, perfect for spotting predators even while they’re grazing. They can also take in more light for better vision overall, yet not be blinded when the sun is bright.

Saturday

The domestication of goats is among the most historical of any animal. Evidence of their domestication goes back about 11,000 years.

Sunday

There are three types of craters:  Impact craters are formed when meteorites strike the surface of a planet or moon, or, less commonly, when other moons or planets strike the surface. Volcanic craters are formed by the outward bursting of volcanic activity, but should not be confused with calderas, which are the collapse of a volcano’s magma chamber. Finally, explosion craters can be formed by explosions either natural or artificial.

Monday

The Vredefort Impact Structure in South Africa is the world’s largest at 186 miles wide, though 2 billion years of natural surface changes have made the bowl-shape of this massive meteorite strike less distinct. Notably, this area is also one of the world’s largest gold sources.

Tuesday

If an impact crater is big enough – at least 300 km wide – it graduates to the title of “basin.” On Earth, only Vredefort qualifies, but other planets and moons have plenty. Mercury’s Caloris Basin is 1,525 km wide, while or our own moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin is a whopping 2,400 km wide.

Wednesday

Without wind, water, weather, lava, and shifting plates to erase them, even small impact craters don’t go anywhere. Our moon still bears all the marks of meteorites which have struck it throughout its life, including some 4 billion+ years old.

Thursday

On Mexico’s Yucatan Penninsula, the ring of underwater caves, or centotes, marks the edge of the impact crater from the massive meteorite whose effects are suspected of killing all the dinosaurs (and many other creatures) 66 million years ago.

Friday

Craters, whether formed by volcanoes or the occasional meteorite strike, often make beautiful lakes if they fill with water. These are not always safe for recreation, however, since volcanic crater lakes have been known to be highly acidic and belch toxic gasses.

Saturday

Enormous 160 ft.-deep craters recently found in Siberia and known as “giant escape craters” appear to be from explosions caused by methane escaping the permafrost thawed by climate change.

Sunday

In the UK, the first generation of castles was made of wood, which was cheaper and easier to build with. However, being vulnerable to rot and fire, wood was eventually replaced by stone, and most surviving castles are of this material.

Monday

Germany leads the word in number of castles, with about 25,000. However, the crown for castle density goes to Wales, with the most per square mile of any country.

Tuesday

The word “dungeon” derived from the French term for “great tower,” since the tower was the most secure part of the castle. Royalty and valuables resided there. Eventually, the nobles opted for nicer personal quarters and prisoners were eventually kept most securely down below, though many modern scholars dispute that dungeons were quite as crowded and miserable as popular culture suggests.

Wednesday

England’s Windsor Castle has the title of being both the largest occupied castle and the longest occupied castle, having been one of the royal residences since being built in the 1070s.

Thursday

Neuschwanstein castle in Germany’s Bavarian Alps is likely the most “fairy tale” looking castle, inspiring the “Sleeping Beauty” castle at Disneyland. However, it is a mere 154 years old, and was not built for defense, but as a private and very pricey refuge for a reclusive king who drowned before it was completed.

Thursday

Gunpowder was one of several factors which led to the decline of the castlebuilding era.  By the 15th and 16th centuries, the gunpowder-propelled iron balls used for cannon shot could wreak such damage on stone castle walls that this type of fortification became increasingly obsolete, even as new designs were developed to better withstand cannon fire.

Saturday

In our modern era, castle renting is big business, from the familiar Medieval-era grey blocky structures to chateaus and villas. Some castles are even staffed and catered.

Sunday

Despite being quality face insulation, beards grow faster in the spring and summer. March-July are the peak growing months, according to a study.

Monday

Why yes, there is a World Beard Day. It is the first Saturday in September.

Tuesday

“Pogonology” is the study of beards and facial hair.

Wednesday

A study into beards and racial backgrounds concluded that men from Mediterranean countries tend to grow the thickest beards. Chinese men tend to have more facial hair around the mouth, and Caucasian men having comparatively more hair on the cheeks, chin and neck.

Thursday

The first fifteen US presidents were beardless until Abe Lincoln. He was famously encouraged to grow one by an 11-year old girl who thought his thin face would look better bearded and thus get more votes. All presidents since William Howard Taft have been beardless.

Friday

Various religions have positions or traditions as to beards. Orthodox Jews believe that they are forbidden in Leviticus to shave the “corners of the beard,” hence the long sideburns. Amish men, once married, never shave their beards again, but do shave mustaches. Muslims, Rastafarians, and Sikhs all grow beards as symbols of devotion, as Greek Orthodox priests traditionally do. Meanwhile, observant Mormons and Buddhists are customarily clean-shaven.

Saturday

Alexander the Great encouraged shaving by his own troops before one major battle, and beards are indeed largely discouraged or forbidden in today’s militarizes, though sometimes with religious exceptions. One of the modern reasons against beards in the military is that they’d prevent a tight seal of gas masks.

Sunday

“Per capita” means “by the head.”

Monday

“Sic,” often used to indicate the error is in originally quoted text, means “so” or “thus.”

Tuesday

“Versus” doesn’t mean “against,” but “in the direction of.”

Wednesday

“Nota bene,” often abbreviated as “N.B.,” means “note well,” or “pay attention to this” in text.

Thursday

“Non sequitur” means “it does not follow” and usually indicates a conclusion not supported by the premise.

Friday

“Mangum opus” means “great work,” but usually indicates a given artist’s greatest work, AKA masterpiece.

Saturday

“Veni, vidi, vici” means “I came, I saw, I conquered,” the report Julius Cesar sent to the Roman senate after winning a decisive battle against King Pharnaces II in what is now Turkey.

Sunday

Beans are old and varied. They’ve been part of the human diet for about 12,000 years, and there are about 400 different types of of beans.

Monday

Why yes, there is a National Bean Day. It is January 6th, the day when Gregor Mendel died in 1884, that methodical monk who used beans and peas for much of his pioneering genetics work. ”Mendelian genetics” describe the laws of inheritance he revealed.

Tuesday

You can find a pulse in both your wrist and cabinet. Beans, peas, and lentils are known as “pulses,” which are the dry edible seeds of legume plants.

Wednesday

Beans are great and cheap nutrition. They are rich in low-fat, cholesterol-free, high-fiber protein and lots of other vitamins and minerals, including folic acid and antioxidants.

Thursday

Mexican jumping beans (which have counterparts in other continents) are actually moth larvae within a seed pod. They “jump” (roll around) when picked up because the larvae senses the increased heat and shifts in an attempt to get to the shade or a more hospitable temperature.

Friday

Bean bag chairs were never really stuffed with beans. Being invented in the 1960s, they’ve typically contained some type of foam filling instead. The smaller ancient cousin of these chairs, bean bags, were pouches filled with dried beans or pebbles used in recreation (including hackey-sack style games) or martial arts training.

Saturday

Aptly nicknamed “The Bean,” this 33 foot x 66 foot downtown Chicago sculpture is bigger and shinier than any edible morsel.  But unbeknownst to most selfie-snapping tourists there, the sculpture’s real name is Cloudgate.

Some mythical creatures which still come up in modern life:

Sunday

The Kraken is an enormous ship-attacking octopus / squidlike creature mentioned in Scandinavian folklore, with similar creatures in other nations’ mythology. More recent discoveries and studies suggest that the (less threatening) giant squid is the inspiration for the Kraken, which is currently the namesake for a pro hockey team, a rum brand, and makes appearances in many modern fictional films.

Monday

The Cyclopses were one-eyed man-eating giants best known from Greek mythology, though other folklores also described such creatures. The Greeks described three cyclopses with deity parents, and Polyphemos was the one famously confronted by Odysseus in The Odyssey.  Today Cyclops is the namesake of one of the X-Men comic book characters, among other things.

Tuesday

The Chimera in Greek mythology was a creature with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a snake in the most common description. In modern biology, a “chimeric” describes a creature or tissue comprised of two or more sets of DNA.

Wednesday

The phoenix, the bird famously reborn from its own ashes, began in ancient Arabia and Egypt before passing through Greek and eventually Christian and even Jewish traditions, and similar birds show up in Persian, Russian and Chinese folklore.

Thursday

The half-human, half-fish creatures we know as mermaids are strikingly global characters in folklore. Though they vary in form, there are mermaid counterparts in African, Greek, Roman, Irish, Chinese, Scottish, Brazilian, Philippine, Southeast Asian, and Eastern and Western European folklore traditions.

Friday

Although stories of large, man-like wild creatures have been a part of various global cultures for a long time, the “Bigfoot” legend familiar today started with a 1958 newspaper article about loggers in Northern California discovering unusually large footprints in the forest. The story generated unexpected interest, and the legend grew from there. “Sasquatch” derives from “sasq’ets,” the term for the creature in the language of the First Nations peoples of southern British Columbia.

Saturday

References to a unicorn-like creature turn up in the mythology and artwork of Mesopotamia, India and China as well as in Greek narratives. Catching the creature is quite difficult, so the legend goes, and cups made from its horn protect against poisoning. Narwhals and rhinoceroses were more likely the source of these magical “horns.” A unicorn is not to be confused with a Pegasus, the immortal winged (but hornless) horse, and in the modern world, a “unicorn” is a private startup company now valued at $1 billion or more.

Sunday

ABBA = an acronym made of the band members’ first names: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid.

Monday

DIY = Do It Yourself

Tuesday

DOA = Dead on Arrival

Wednesday

IMO = In My Opinion

Thursday

CFO = Chief Financial Officer

Friday

AARP = American Association of Retired Persons

Saturday

OTC = Over the Counter (as opposed to prescription medicine)

Sunday

The fifteen enormous tectonic plates which form the surface of the earth meet at fault lines, and stress from the pushing, pulling, sinking, and swelling of these plates often releases stress which we feel as earthquakes.

Monday

There have been many destructive earthquakes in recorded history, but those in China have claimed the most lives. In the last two millennia, nearly 1.3 million are estimated to have died in Chinese quakes.

Tuesday

Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg were the seismologists behind what is now known as the Richter scale, a measure of earthquake strength. The scale is not linear but logarithmic, meaning a 7.0 earthquake, for example, releases about 31 times more energy than a 6.0 quake.

Wednesday

About 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur underwater in a very active seismic region known as the “Ring of Fire” which surrounds the Pacific Ocean. It is actually horseshoe-shaped and runs along North America’s Pacific coast, along the Aleutian Islands, through Japan and down to New Zealand.

Thursday

Earthquakes, as well as man-made shocks like large bombs, help scientists deduce what is deep below the crust in the center of Earth by the way the shockwaves are received on opposite sides of the earth.

Friday

Earthquakes are far more common than you might think, with about 55 measurable quakes happening every day. Fortunately, very few of these cause observable damage.

Saturday

Most tsunamis are caused by strong underwater earthquakes. Tectonic plates shifting position, particularly upward, push up on the water above, which can cause distant tsunamis as the shockwave of displaced water travels away from the source.

Sunday

The tradition of putting a light in a carved pumpkin actually started with lighting up 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 Illinois at all, as anyone noticing mountains in the background might suspect. It was filmed entirely 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 specimen, as of time of writing, is 2,819 lbs., grown by twin brothers in the UK.