The Ouija Board “works” due to the Ideomotor Effect, where your brain tricks your muscles into doing whatever your brain wants to happen.
It’s like how my brain tricks my muscles into opening the fridge when I’m hungry.
It is wrong to assume that your first answer is more likely the better answer. 60 studies consistently showed that going with your initial response or answer is not a good strategy if you start second guessing yourself. Typically, people who changed their answers more when they were unsure scored higher.
Apparently thinking with your brain is better than going with your gut. Wild.
Cell phones cannot cause cancer. Only x-rays, UV light, and gamma rays are strong enough to break the covalent chemical bonds in your body.
But if you use a cell phone will getting x-rayed, or tanning, or floating around near a quasar, yeah, I guess you could get cancer.
In November 1962, Mr. Clean was assigned a first name, “Veritably Clean,” as a result of the “Give Mr. Clean a First Name” promotion. If “Veritably” won, I am guessing only one person entered the “Give Mr. Clean a First Name” contest. Someone named Veritably.
Ping Pong originated in Britain during the 1880s as an after-dinner parlor game. It was then referred to as “wiff waff.” This is quite possibly the most pompous, snooty post-dinner party British name ever.
The claim that Daddy Longlegs are the most poisonous spiders (they supposedly don’t have a good means to transfer the potent venom) is false.
The fact that the name “Daddy Longlegs” gets creepier and creepier the more I think about it is true.
Etymologically “hamstring” comes from “ham” (the fat behind the knee) and “string” (a tendon). It’s all highly medical, science jargon. I can barely understand it.
Often when a radio station changes ownership or format, they use Christmas songs, often out of season, to capture listeners’ interests.
Then the listener can make an active decision to avoid that particular station.
When a movie is aired on a TV station and a curse word is dubbed over with a more appropriate word, the new word is usually not spoken by the actual actor on screen. Just someone that sounds like him. I am doing 20 facts today. So to me, that counts as a fact.
Dreadlocks get their name because supposedly people with the hairstyle feel “dread.” But not in a bad way apparently; Rastafarian “dread” has a positive sense as in a “fear of the Lord.”
Which doesn’t sound very positive.
The term Eskimo typically umbrellas three groups: Yupiks, Inuits, and often the Aleuts.
So when people try to be super politically correct by calling all “Eskimos” Inuits. They’re just being doofuses.
The Christmas Creep is the phenomenon in which merchants and retailers exploit the commercialized status of Christmas by moving up the start of the holiday shopping season. One way they do this, is by playing Christmas music earlier and earlier.
I always thought the Christmas Creep was that one uncle that always goes for the kiss on the lips when you see him at holiday family gatherings.
The Rump Parliament was the name of the English Parliament after it took over the Long Parliament on December 6, 1648. Among many things, the puritanical Rump Parliament sought to abolish the celebration of Christmas. It’s just like a Christmas movie!
Except people died.
And of course something called the “Rump” Parliament would be miserable. This is just what you would expect from a “Rump” Parliament.
Lamarckism or Lamarckian inheritance is the idea that an organism can pass on traits that have been acquired during its life to its offspring. This idea generally isn’t too popular anymore in terms of genetic evolution. I am really bored.
The Rastafari movement is a monotheistic new religious movement that was started from Christian culture in Jamaica back in the 1930s. Its adherents worship Haile Selassi I of Ethiopia, the former emperor of Ethiopia, as a God incarnate.
I know I’ve personally always worshiped this particular emperor of Ethiopia, so it’s cool to know I’m not alone.