Dylancholy's Submissions - Interesting Facts and Fun Facts

Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Cap'n Crunch used to include a prize whistle that unintentionally allowed people bypass international calling fees.

If you’re old enough, maybe you’ll remember this one yourself. Back in the early seventies, Cap’n Crunch came with a cleverly named “Cap’n Crunch Whistle” as a prize inside. The sound the whistle makes (which you can hear at the source) is very similar to a 2600 Hz tone. That tone just happened to be the same tone involved in long distance phone calls. A 2600 Hz tone told the At&T long lines that, basically, the long distance call had been authorized and added to the customer’s bill.

Somehow someone discovered the similarity between the tone on the phone and that on the whistle. The whistle then, when blown into the phone, would sidestep the billing system (back then, long distance calls were expensive). Obviously, the whistle didn’t last long. But before you run out and try to buy one on eBay, you might want to know for many years now long distance calls have been handled by digital phone switching, so this no longer would work.

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Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Magpies hold funerals for their dead.

Dr. Bekoff, a professor at the University of Colorado, studied magpies and managed to elaborate on this strange phenomenon. Bekoff said the rituals the magpies hold prove that the birds normally seen as aggressive have a compassionate side.

Magpies aren’t unique in this behavior in the animal kingdom. Gorillas, elephants, and dolphins have all been noted to mourn the dead. What magpies typically do when they discover a corpse is first peck at it to make sure it is dead. Then they fly off to find grass and lay it by the corpse.

After that, the magpies will stand by the dead one for a few moments before flying off. It’s pretty bizarre, but it shows that, at the very least, magpies do react to the deaths of others.

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Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Dr. Seuss cheated on his wife while she was sick with cancer for 13 years. She committed suicide because of his infidelity, and he later married his mistress.

Probably not the most uplifting story for one of the most beloved children’s book authors of all time, but there it is. Seuss’ wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, suffered from a long series of illnesses including cancer over a period of 13 years. Eventually, Helen learned of her husband’s adulterous relationship with another woman. Given that and the constant illnesses she suffered, Helen decided to commit suicide through an overdose of barbiturates.

She wrote a suicide note to Seuss that said “Dear Ted, what has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure... I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ..."

Dr. Seuss was very distraught at his wife’s suicide in 1967, but he later married the woman he had been cheating on his wife with only one year later!

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Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

During WWII, Ford went from producing one B-24 bomber per day to one per HOUR!

World War II was in no small part a major arms race. US President Franklin Roosevelt had promised to make 50,000 military aircraft per year, which was more than existed in the entire world at the time. Factories were working as hard as possible as a result to make one B-24 bomber a day- that meant thousands of people putting together a 100,000 part aircraft every single day.

Consider that they had no computers to help them, and most of the people who were used to building such things were off fighting the war. On top of that, consider that a 100,000 part aircraft being built in 24 hours means 4,166 parts being put together every single hour.

Then Charles Sorenson, VP of production for Ford, produced a gaffe that lead to him needing to produce one such bomber every hour (he had made a snide remark about how bad the aircraft building process was, and boasted he could do better by the morning). Did he do it? Well you wouldn’t be reading this article if not.

Sorenson spent all night drawing up plans for how to make a bomber in one hour, and the final result was the Willow Run plant, which, as promised, produced one bomber every hour.

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Dylancholy submitted this to OMG Facts

Stephen Colbert asked that a video of his colonoscopy be submitted to the Congressional Record!

Though Colbert was very serious about pleading his case on behalf of migrant workers in the US, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect him to do something comedic and outlandish in the process. And that is exactly what he did. Colbert was appearing with 15 other people participating in the UFW “Take Our Jobs” campaign, which was launched in 2010 to challenge US workers to replace immigrants in farm work.

In addition to asking that a video of his colonoscopy be submitted to Congressional record, Colbert mocked common anti-immigration statements, saying "I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American. And sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan, in a spa, where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.”

He also added “America's farms are presently far too dependent on immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables...The obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables. And if you look at the recent obesity statistics, you'll see that many Americans have already started." In a more serious tone, Colbert said "I like talking about people who don't have any power. It seems like some of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work, but don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave. And that's an interesting contradiction to me."

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