Page 11 - Other Facts

Koffing and Weezing's original names made fun of NY and LA!

Koffing and Weezing’s names are plays on the words "coughing" and "wheezing", meant to related to symptoms caused by the noxious fumes they emit.

Originally, the characters were named "NY" and "LA" in the Englishv versions of the game, intended as homages to the heavy pollution of American cities New York City and Los Angeles.

Most Pokémon names are plays on words in one way or another, for example Bulbasaur comes from Bulb (a type of plant) and –saur meaning lizard. Pikachu is a Japanese play on word Pika- means sparks and –chu is the sound of the squeaking a mouse makes.

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The world actually produces enough food for everyone right now!

Although there are a number of countries where people are dying of starvation, there’s enough food to go around. If we were able to distribute calories equally, each person in the world would be able to get 2,720 calories per day!

As of 2010, there were 925 million hungry people in the world. The majority of them are in Asia and the Pacific with the next most located in Sub-Saharan African. This means that 13.1% or 1 in 7 people are hungry.

And yet, world agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago. That means there is enough to provide each person with 2,720 calories per day, which is often even more than what a single person needs each day.

The main reason that people aren't actually getting this food is because they don't have the land to grow or income to actually purchase enough food. Poverty is the most prominent cause of hunger.

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Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness!

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness killing between five and ten percent. Half of these deaths are by suicide and the other half are by way of medical complications.

Recognizing and treating the illness are crucial to prevent death, otherwise the illness can send someone so far down a rabbit hole that they can’t get out and end up dying.

If you think it’s only women who suffer it, you’d be wrong. Twenty percent of anorexics are men, and the number is rising. Men who face the illness struggle with the same issues that women facing it have, but their struggle isn’t recognize, they are vastly unseen and untreated.

There is also the stigma attached to the disease, and many men therefore refuse to see a doctor for the illness. Some treatment centers refuse to treat men, because they feel women will feel trauma or pressure to look a certain way and revert back to anorexia before they are finished with recovery.

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There is a sport called Banzai Skydiving. You throw the parachute out of the airplane first and then jump after it!

The sport of banzai skydiving involves throwing a parachute out of a plane and then jumping after it, the aim being to freefall with the parachute, strap it on and deploy the parachute before hitting the ground. The longest time ever recorded between skydiver and parachute leaving the plane and linking up is 50 seconds. Craig Glenday, editor of Guinness World Records, has used Banzai Skydiving as an extreme example of the book's policy to keep records for record categories in which only the life of the participant would be put at risk.

As a counter-example, he indicates that record attempts that might put another person or animal at risk, such as "fattest pet," are not allowed. Skydiving isn’t scary enough, so let’s try and catch the very parachute that could save our lives and if we can’t we’ll just flap our arms really hard. Now, that sounds like a stellar plan.

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Part of the theme song to X-Files was created by accident!

The theme, "The X-Files", used more instrumental sections than most dramas. The theme song's famous whistle effect was inspired by the track "How Soon is Now" from The Smiths' 1985 album Meat Is Murder.

After attempting to craft the theme with different sound effects, Snow used a Proteus 2 rack-mount synth with an effect called "Whistling Joe".

After hearing this effect, Carter was "taken aback" and noted it is was "going to be good". According to the "Behind the Truth" segment on the first season DVD, Snow created the echo effect on the track by accident. He felt that after several revisions, something still was not right.

Carter walked out of the room and Snow put his hand and forearm on his keyboard in frustration. The keyboard had an echo effect setting that had accidentally been activated.

The resulting riff pleased Carter; Snow said, "this sound was in the keyboard. And that was it. "The second episode, "Deep Throat", marked Snow's debut as solo composer for an entire episode.

The production crew was determined to limit the music in the early episodes. The theme song appeared first in "Deep Throat".

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