Page 57 - Other Facts

There are naturally occurring ice vortexes that form in bodies of water.

The name sounds a little silly, but the “ice vortex” is a real thing. It’s a phenomenon usually seen in extremely cold climates where, as the name implies, ice forms in water that rotates in a vortex. From the surface, it looks like a massive spinning circle of ice. While it’s not known for sure how these ice vortexes occur (they are pretty rare), it’s thought that they’re formed when ice gathers in the middle of a body of water.

If hit by a current, the ice slowly rotates until it forms a spinning circle of ice. While they are normally only observed in the most cold areas, in at least one instance they have appeared in the UK.

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The Astronaut you see in almost all Apollo 11 photos is NOT Neil Armstrong, but Buzz Aldrin!

The way people talk, you’d think that Neil Armstrong wasn’t just the first man on the moon, but the only man on the moon. When really, the first lunar expedition contained two more astronauts; Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.

Collins piloted the command spacecraft alone in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the “magnificently desolate” lunar landscape. Together Armstrong and Aldrin collected 47.5 pounds of lunar material for Earth. But what trip would be complete without a couple pictures. Not only was Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon, but he was probably the first person to use a camera on the moon.

He took a majority of the lunar pictures that we see today, including all those “astronaut portraits.” Now remember, this was back in the day when it wasn’t socially acceptable to flip your camera around and snap a picture of yourself, so the man in the “astronaut portraits” is Buzz Aldrin.

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Which is the one country in the world has a female majority in Parliament. Lock in your guesses!

And the answer is…Rwanda. For those of you who haven’t watched that excellent Denzel Washington movie, Rwanda is a small sovereign state in central and eastern Africa that was torn apart by a genocide in 1994. Since then, the country has slowly and steadily been healing itself.

In 2008, it made history when 56% of the politicians it sent to parliament were women- surpassing the national quota by 30%! Women lead a third of Rwanda’s ministries, the head of tax authority and auditor generals are women, every police office in Rwanda has a “gender desk” to take reports on violence against women. Rose Mukantabana, speaker of Deputies of Rwanda, says “This motivates our small daughters; our sisters. They know they can do whatever our brothers can.”

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The Tobacco Industry codenamed Lung Cancer 'Zephyr,' to cover up any connection between the two of them!

ZEPHYR was invented by British American Tobacco in the UK, to be used in its internal memos. An example from a 1957 BAT memo: "As a result of several statistical surveys, the idea has arisen that there is a causal relationship between ZEPHYR and tobacco smoking, particularly cigarette smoking."

In 1952, a British scientist, Richard Doll, published a seminal study in the British Medical Journal showing a “real association between carcinoma of the lung and smoking.” The industry then hired public relations company Hill & Knowlton to put a more “positive” spin on this entire phenomenon.

ZEPHYR was one of their suggestions. Another suggestion was undermining the connection between ZEPHYR and cigarettes. One Phillip Morris document written in 1976 says; “Anything can be considered harmful. Apple sauce is harmful if you get too much of it.”

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In ancient Greece throwing an apple at a woman was considered a marriage proposal.

If you try to propose like that now, you pretty much already know what the answer is going to be. The practice stemmed from an ancient Greek myth in which the goddess of discord, Eris, was irked that she wasn’t invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. In retaliation, she through a golden apple inscribed “for the most beautiful one” into the wedding party.

Three goddesses lay claim on the apple; Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Paris of Troy was selected to choose the recipient. He was bribed by all three goddess, but accepted the bribe of Aphrodite who promised him the most beautiful woman on Earth, Helen of Sparta.

Since then, the apple was considered to be “sacred to Aphrodite.” Throwing an apple was the symbolic way of declaring love, and catching an apple the symbolic way of accepting love. It should be noted though, that Paris of Troy rewarding the apple to Aphrodite indirectly caused the Trojan War.

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