Category: –

Sunday

At about 78%, nitrogen is easily the largest component of Earth’s atmosphere, colorless and odorless to people. Although our bodies don’t require atmospheric nitrogen like we do oxygen, many essential nutrients contain nitrogen after plants have made it usable to us.

Monday

Fortunately for most living things, oxygen in the form of O2 is the next most abundant gas in the atmosphere at about 21%. It is also colorless and odorless to us, but quite essential.

Tuesday

The next most abundant gas in the atmosphere is A\argon at 0.93%. Compared to its gassy friends, argon is quite aloof as one of the “noble gasses,” doing very little bonding or reacting as it floats around.

Wednesday

Among the most variable components of the atmosphere is water vapor, the amount of which in the air can vary widely with temperature and location. Warm air holds more moisture, so water vapor can compose 4-5% of the air in the tropics, but 0.2% in the Arctic.

Thursday

Carbon dioxide currently makes up about 0.4% of the atmosphere. This molecule is breathed in by plants and is essential in the carbon cycle, but is also produced by burning fossil fuels, and its heat-trapping nature now makes it a major cause of climate change.

Friday

What’s left after these bigger components are minute amounts of the trace gasses, among them helium, neon, methane, hydrogen, ozone, nitrous oxide, and krypton. Some trace gasses actually come from human activity.

Saturday

Most atmospheric gasses are at greatest concentrations closer to the ground, which explains why air is thinnest at great altitudes. Helium and hydrogen, being so light, can reach great heights, however.

Sunday

To “let your hair down” means to be more uninhibited and honest, and traces back to the days when women kept their hair up except in the privacy of their own home or among intimate company.

Monday

Regardless of where it is bought, the vast majority of real human hair used in wigs and extensions comes from the East, especially India, China, and Eastern Europe.

Tuesday

A “hairpin turn” gets that name for its resemblance to a metal hairpin, so usually involves a very sharp 180 degree (or nearly so) turn.

Wednesday

The care of hair (and scalps) is huge business. Despite Covid, this global market was $80.81 billion USD in 2020, and does not include the sale of actual hair products, such as wigs, weaves, and extensions.

Thursday

“Bigwig” indicates importance because men of influence and rank used to wear large wigs.

Friday

Cats cough up hairballs because they clean themselves by licking their fur, and typically swallow some of that fur which is later vomited up.

Saturday

People with naturally blond hair tend to have the most total hairs on their head at about 150,000, redheads have the fewest at about 90,000, and folks with naturally brown or black hair are somewhere in between.

Sunday

abs = abdominal muscles

Monday

typo = typographical error

Tuesday

polio = poliomyelitis

Wednesday

fan = fanatic

Thursday

con = convict (as in “Ex-con”), confidence (as in “con-man” or “con game.”)

Friday

chaps = chapjaros

Saturday

recap = recapitulation

Sunday

Seashells are the hard exoskeletons of otherwise soft invertebrate sea creatures.

Monday

A “shell game” involves putting an object under something that conceals it, like a cup or shell, then moving that and similar empty cups around, hoping the betting party will lose track of where the object is and thereby lose the game and wager. Deceit is often involved, and in the financial sense, this term often refers to asset-hiding schemes.

Tuesday

The idiom “to come out of his/her shell” means to become more outgoing and social, and is a reference to a shelled animal like a snail or turtle who remains alone in there for protection.

Wednesday

A shell company, as the name implies, is typically a legally-created business entity, but one that does not do any sustained business operations or own significant assets long term. These are often created for tax purposes, concealing the identity of stakeholders or assets, fundraising or merger purposes, and sometimes illegal business.

Thursday

“She sells sea shells by the sea shore” is both a classic tongue twister-turned-song and a training tool for those learning English and practicing the “s” sound.

Friday

Hermit crabs are among nature’s great shell recyclers. Vulnerable to predators and the baking sun without them, hermit crabs have elaborate methods of moving into new, size-appropriate shells as they grow, with smaller crabs moving into the old shells sometimes simultaneously.

Saturday

The shell in “shell shock” is artillery shells, and the term refers to types of battle fatigue, with physical and mental conditions now commonly described as PTSD. The term was first coined in World War I to describe the conditions of many soldiers returning from battle.

Sunday

They used to say, “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” and it shows in modern Independence Day celebrations, where over 50 counties annually celebrate gaining independence from the UK.

Monday

The most popular date to celebrate independence is January 1st. Brunei, Cameroon, Cuba, Czech Republic, Haiti, Samoa, and Sudan all celebrate their independence on this day.

Tuesday

However, the most common month for celebrations of independence is August, with 26 countries celebrating in this month.

Wednesday

Several nations celebrate several independence days during the year, since they gained autonomy from more than one country in their histories.

Thursday

Only two countries in the world do not celebrate a national day or independence day: Denmark and England.

Friday

1991 was a big year for first independence days due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, although countries outside of Eastern Europe marked independence this year too.

Saturday

The most recent independence day is South Sudan, which became a country in 2011, and the oldest is Japan, which has a “Foundation Day” when the country united from the defeat of rival clans in 660 BC.

Sunday

PFD = personal flotation device, or, if you live in Alaska, permanent fund dividend, which residents get yearly from state oil revenues.

Monday

GOAT = Greatest of All Time

Tuesday

PPE = personal protective equipment

Wednesday

RV = recreational vehicle

Thursday

LCD = liquid crystal display, or lowest common denominator

Friday

RPG = role playing game, or rocket propelled grenade

Saturday

MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sunday

Common dust is made up of many different components, including ash, smoke, dirt, sand, salt, pollen, bacteria, bits of textiles and paper, human and animal hair and skin particles, and even meteorite particles.

Monday

A surprising amount of dust rains down from space in the form of “micrometeorites,” on the scale of 14-50 tons per day. This is roughly 1-3 garbage trucks worth of space dust daily.

Tuesday

The massive Sahara Desert is the largest source of mineral dust in the world, with airborne Saharan dust regularly reaching Europe, the Amazon, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas.

Wednesday

The old myth about household dust being mostly dead skin is not true. Most studies on indoor dust composition show that the largest part of household dust comes from sources outside the house.

Thursday

You are, however, still a major source of dust. Your endlessly-regenerating skin layer sheds nearly a million dead cells daily.

Friday

Dust makes up that gross layer on top of your fan blades…and some of the largest structures in the universe. Nebulae, those clouds of gas and dust which often came from exploding stars and can eventually congeal into new ones, can be millions of light years in diameter.

Saturday

Unfortunately, dust can be bad news for those in certain occupations. Pneumococcus, the umbrella term for extensive dust-caused scarring in the lungs, affects people working in mining (“black lung”), drilling, textiles, agriculture, shipworking, sandblasting, and other dust-intensive jobs.

Sunday

The first bicycle had neither pedals nor chain. The “hobby horse” was propelled by pushing against the ground with your shoes, like a skateboard.

Monday

To take back or soften what you’ve already said is called “backpedaling.” However, only on a fixed gear bike would you go backward by pedaling so, since the modern freewheel only drives the wheel forward while pedaling forward.

Tuesday

There’s intriguing brain science in the fact that people almost never forget how to ride a bike. The coordination of movements involved becomes a “procedural memory,” which, it turns out, is a more permanent kind of memory than a factual “declarative memory” (unfortunately for creators of fun fact websites).

Wednesday

The Tour de France is the most-watched sporting event in the world, garnering over 3.5 billion viewers.

Thursday

Worldwide, the Netherlands has the most impressive bicycling resume. Seven out of every eight people age 15 or older own a bike, and an impressive 30% of all trips made in the country are on a bicycle.

Friday

The famous feminist quote “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was itself inspired by an earlier quote about religion.

Saturday

A “peloton” is the name for a group of bicyclists riding in a pack to conserve energy.

Sunday

Before it was a common term for accomplishment, a “feather in your cap” was a mark of achievement in several cultures. Among them, native Americans who wore a feather for each enemy slain, medieval knights wore plumes for bravery, Hungarians signified a killed enemy Turk, and hunters showing game bird feathers.

Monday

Bird feathers are hollow so as to be very light for their strength, allowing (most) birds to fly…

Tuesday

…and this hollowness made feathers great writing instruments in the quill pen days, and still do among feather pen enthusiasts. That hollow core was a natural reservoir for ink.

Wednesday

Tarring and feathering has been a humiliating and painful punishment since at least 1189 when Richard the Lionheart decreed it for thieves caught aboard his ships. Old fashioned tar, however, was made with pine tree sap, and so differed from the petroleum-based tar of the modern era. When the traditional ingredients were in short supply, syrup and cattails have also been used.

Thursday

To “make feathers fly,” as in arguing, is a reference to birds (and especially chickens) losing feathers while fighting with each other. “Make/watch the fur fly” conveys the same meaning.

Friday

The term “horsefeathers” was coined just a few years before the famous Marx Brothers’ movie of that name, and means nonsense (and by some accounts refers to horse poop).

Saturday

Just as showy plumage feathers are not used for flight, a bird might have seven different types of feathers on its body, each with a different function.

Sunday

“The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf,” that timeless cautionary tale to liars and false alarmists, traces all the way back to Classical antiquity.

Monday

Fans of werewolves (or maybe Harry Potter) know they are sometimes called “lycanthropes.” This derives from the grizzly Greek mythological Legend of Lycaon, who angered the god Zeus by serving him a meal made with the remains of a human boy. Lycaon was punished when he and his sons were turned into wolves.

Tuesday

They’re called “werewolves” because the obsolete Old English word “wer” meant “man,” so “werewolf” means “man wolf.”

Wednesday

Domesticated sheep are famously mild and docile, and wild wolves (who often eat livestock) are less so, so the image of a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” whether literally or as a metaphor for deceptive people, appears in both Aesop’s fables and the New Testament.

Thursday

The scientist who coined the term “alpha wolf” for the leader (or leading couple) of the pack later abandoned the term. What was called the alpha male and alpha female are the sole breeding pair in the pack, and did not necessarily get the job by fighting or physical dominance, as the name implies.

Friday

You might have heard of a defeated or embarrassed person said to “slink off with his tail between his legs.” Tail position communicates a lot in the animal world, especially with wolves, where down-pointing and tucked tail position is used by the lowest-ranking pack members.

Saturday

For all the fear of wolves, fatal wolf attacks are exceedingly rare. In all of North America, for example, there have been only two documented deadly wolf attacks since 1970.