Mongolians have a tradition of giving unpleasant names to children born to couples whose previous children have died, to confuse evil spirits. Ex: Muunokhoi – “Vicious Dog”.
In 1974 the Soviet Union launched Salyut ….
In 1974 the Soviet Union launched Salyut 3, a crewed military satellite armed with a 30mm ‘self defence’ cannon. It was fired several times and even used to destroy a test satellite in orbit. It remains the only armed, crewed spacecraft ever flown.
67% of millennials see their pet…
67% of millennials see their pet as part of the family and refer to them as a “fur baby.” They would like to take leave from work to care for a new pet if their employer offered it. Millennial dog owners spend an average of $1,285 per year on their pet.
These Foods Do Not Belong in Your Pantry
Open your pantry doors and you might just realize you have a storage problem.
Stuffed side by side you can often find boxes, jars, cans and everything in between. It’s a mess!
But that’s not what we’re talking about. While your pantry may or may not have sufficient space to store your favorite snacks and cooking staples, that doesn’t mean every item belongs on those shelves.
Here are five foods that should not be stored in your pantry, at least not if you want to maximize their flavor and longevity.
Bananas
Photo Credit: Free Images
There’s a major difference between a banana that’s perfectly ripe and one that will squish at the slightest touch. Once your bananas are ready to eat, whatever that means to you, store them in the fridge. Leaving them in the dark in your pantry is a recipe for disaster (or perhaps banana bread).
Whole-Grain Flour
Photo Credit: Pixabay
When it comes to whole-grain flour, it deserves different treatment than its all-purpose cousin. This healthier alternative contains bran and wheat germ, and their oils can turn sour rather quickly. The secret to preserving its freshness is to store it in the freezer.
Fresh Herbs
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Incorporating fresh herbs in your cooking can add not only flavor but also health benefits. But while basil is best stored in your pantry, other greens such as rosemary and thyme need to rent room in your refrigerator. Even softer herbs used for garnishes and extra depth, such as dill and parsley, should be stored in plastic bags in the fridge rather than your pantry.
Opened Red Wine
Photo Credit: Pixabay
A glass of red wine after a long week (or day) of work can relax your weary mind and body. But if you don’t manage to finish the bottle in one sitting, the best way to preserve the wine’s flavor is to re-cork it and stick it in the fridge. The cold temperature slows the oxidation process and ensures that your second glass will be just as refreshing as the first (at least, if you get to it quickly enough…wine does spoil).
Tortillas
Photo Credit: Free Images
The next time you buy tortillas for Taco Tuesday, make sure to think ahead about where you’re going to store the leftover wraps. Just like bread, tortillas grow mold rather quickly when left out at room temperature for more than a week. Storing them in the fridge will help ensure your crispy quesadilla satisfies your midnight snack craving.
The post These Foods Do Not Belong in Your Pantry appeared first on UberFacts.
A Couple’s Gender Reveal Party Ended With A Plane Crash
Gender reveal parties are getting way out of hand, and this hard-to-believe story about a gender reveal party that ended with a plane crash is proof.
A couple in Turkey, Texas, rented a crop-duster plane and pilot for their over-the-top gender reveal party. The plan was for the plane to fly over the guests and drop pink water — for a girl, duh! The water would turn into pink mist and float all over the guests. And even we can admit the Instagram photos would have been pretty amazing…if the plane hadn’t, uh, crashed.
Photo Credit: iStock
The plane stalled out after dumping its 350 gallons of pink water, possibly due to a shock to its system. It was going “too slow,” CNN reports, and subsequently crashed into the ground. Luckily, it was flying at low altitude for the stunt — but still, a plane crash is a plane crash.
One passenger on the plane had minor injuries, but the pilot made it out without a scratch. The plane was apparently designed to carry only one person, so it’s not clear why there was a passenger in the first place.
Photo Credit: iStock
This disaster is just one in a long string of gender reveal parties gone horribly wrong. One led to a wildfire, while another resulted in an accidental pipe bomb that exploded and killed a grandmother.
All this, despite the inventor of gender reveal parties literally begging people to stop the madness!
Let’s stop, shall we?
The post A Couple’s Gender Reveal Party Ended With A Plane Crash appeared first on UberFacts.
These Memes are for People With Anxiety Who Need a Laugh Today
What’s the point of life if you don’t have a sense of humor? It helps us deal with the truly awful stuff.
Anxiety is definitely one of those tough things that basically everybody has to deal with, but isn’t that unifying?! Yeah it is!
These 12 memes will make you laugh and give you at least a moment’s break from your anxiousness.
1. Oh yeah. I forgot about those…
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
2. Works every time!!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
3. If only…
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
4. I’m pretty sure they don’t hate me THAT much, right?
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
5. Ahhh… just like always!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
6. Somebody actually got this!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
7. They grow up so fast!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
8. You know what anxiety? You need to SHUT UP!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
9. Yep, checks out!
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
10. Every. Single. Day.
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
11. Do I have to use it all at once, or…
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
12. You’re gonna make me care, aren’t you???
Photo Credit: Pizza Bottle
Feeling less anxious? No? Me neither, but… I’m laughing. And maybe I’ll be able to live with myself tomorrow.
Probably not. We’ll see.
Which of these are your faves? Let us know in the comments!
The post These Memes are for People With Anxiety Who Need a Laugh Today appeared first on UberFacts.
Goodwill Workers Reveal the Item They Wish People Would Stop Donating
You know that feeling you get when you finally sort through your belongings and take your old crap to Goodwill? Well, you might have to rethink that. Not every used item is a good candidate for Goodwill (or any other thrift store), and nobody knows that better than the employees who have to sort through all your old stuff.
A Reddit user asked Goodwill store workers for the one item they wish people would stop donating. Some employees had trouble choosing just one!
1. Broken, dirty, or chewed-up items.
“So so many things. I have to say these shops are not somewhere you should dump your trash. No one wants broken toys and chewed books. We are not ungrateful but it costs us to dispose of these things. I do not want to handle your dirty torn underpants.
I almost had a serious injury when one donor wrapped up blades from a blender in a towel and dumped them in a bag full of clothes. Please don’t do that.”
2. VHS tapes.
“I remember about ten years ago reading that charity shops were stopping accepting VHS tapes because there was such a glut of them.
One person complained that they’d enjoyed getting five VHS tapes for £1… which was pretty much missing the point. VHSs are large and bulky, take up storage space and the staff still have to process them- all for 20p each. Nice for him, not so good for the workers and charity that’s supposed to be benefiting, and probably why they stopped accepting them.
Not to mention that half those tapes probably would have gone unsold and cost money to dispose of.
‘Course, nowadays most of those worthless, mass-market VHS tapes are probably landfill, and it’s 10-to-15-year-old DVDs that my local branch of CEX is selling for 50p each…”
3. Mismatched items.
“Shoes with no fellow, items that don’t work right, clothes that are badly stained.”
4. Sentimental items.
“Folks, go through your stuff before you donate – I once found a memorial album someone had made for a woman who had died, and another time I found an old friendship book full of names and addresses. Really made me wonder what the people who worked in the charity shop were thinking.”
“Someone accidentally donated an urn, complete with cremated ashes.”
“Personalized items. I’m talking about wedding things, shirts, and anything with names on them. I found a memorial shirt one time and I was wondering why someone would donate something like that.”
5. Literal garbage.
“I haven’t worked there in over a decade, but: garbage. People would dump bags and bags of garbage in front of the store overnight, and I mean shit that no reasonable person would ever consider to be anything but garbage.
Busted up concrete. Rusty metal. Basically shit they didn’t want to pay to have hauled away, and couldn’t be fucked to take all the way to the dump.”
6. 50 Shades of Grey.
“I remember a while ago I saw a side news story covering how a bunch of charity places were asking people to stop donating book copies of Fifty Shades of Grey. I seem to recall one store had enough copies they made a book fort out of them.”
7. Old-school TV stands.
“Cleaning out my senior parents’ place we tried to donate a very expensive built in tv stand made of oak. Turns out flat screens don’t fit in them and they never get sold.”
8. Outdated electronics.
“Generally if your electronic device is older than 10ish years the store is probably not going to be able to sell it, 5ish for TVs. The exception is very well-kept and well packaged game consoles.”
9. Personal hygiene items.
“Don’t donate used (honestly don’t donate new) makeup, mouthwash, cleaners, or pretty much anything liquid.”
10. Vintage magazines.
“Do not donate your stack of old Readers Digest magazines from 1994-1998 that was in your bathroom collecting poo particles for years.”
11. Unwashed clothes.
“You know the stank that most Goodwill stores have? They don’t wash donations before putting them out. They just go straight on the racks.”
12. Light bulbs.
“Compact fluorescent light bulbs: please stop. How nice you switched to LED, but nobody buys used CFLs, and since they are classified as hazardous waste due to mercury, we are back to your ‘donation’ actually costs the charity money since we have to properly dispose of them.”
13. Clothes with stuff in the pockets.
“Be sure to check the pockets in your clothes before donating. Around this time of year we find a metric crapton of used tissues and cough drops hidden inside pockets. Our employees get sick pretty frequently from handling so much product, please don’t make it harder on us.”
14. Used undergarments.
“You would be really surprised by the number of people who think it’s okay to donate used underwear. I honestly didn’t realize that people would even consider doing that, but apparently they do.”
“It happens pretty frequently. Another big thing is women who donate pants they’ve worn without wearing underwear to protect the clothing from vaginal fluids. People don’t realize that’s a thing most of the time.”
15. Bootleg DVDs.
“I used to work for the Salvos, and early on in my tenure there, we would get loads of these bootleg DVD’s people would pick up in Bali. Those always ended up in the bin because the packaging was just a flimsy plastic envelope and the label printing quality was awful.”
The post Goodwill Workers Reveal the Item They Wish People Would Stop Donating appeared first on UberFacts.
Amazon Prime Offers TV Programs for Your Cat
Amazon Prime has a brand new solution if you feel guilty about leaving your pets at home: TV for cats.
This is real.
The streaming service is full of videos to entertain indoor cats, featuring footage of birds, chipmunks, squirrels, and more birds. The service could keep cats from getting bored while you’re at work all day — or you could even throw the TV on for your indoor cat while you’re home.
The videos include such riveting titles as “Movies for Cats – Forest Birds and Chipmunks,” “Songbirds and Squirrels on a Tree,” and “Baby Robin’s Day Out.” The videos mimic the experience of looking out the window, watching the birds and other critters.
The only potential side effect of cat TV? Your cat may end up attempting to hunt your television. This genre gives “reality TV” a whole new meaning.
Photo Credit: Amazon Prime Screenshot
If you don’t have Amazon Prime, your cats can still enjoy the same experience, because YouTube is full of videos for cats for free. In fact, these free videos were the inspiration behind Amazon Prime’s Cat TV service, according to a blog post.
Amazon Fire TV software engineer Sue Kim says her cat Ruby adores these videos.
“I simply leave the video playing when I leave for work, and that occupies Ruby until her nap,” Sue writes. “She also doesn’t get so upset when I leave.”
Dogs would likely enjoy watching cat TV too, especially the shows with squirrels or chipmunks. Bonus: The nature-oriented videos seem pretty darn calming for humans, too!
The post Amazon Prime Offers TV Programs for Your Cat appeared first on UberFacts.
This Is What Happens to Mosquitoes in the Winter
The greatest thing about winter is the lack of bugs. No pesky mosquitoes making you itch every time you go outside at night! It’s such a relief — but, like, what even happens to mosquitoes in winter? Do they fly south, like birds?
Not quite, according to Mental Floss.
Mosquitoes have difficulty surviving in any temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but their strategy depends on their sex. Males simply die off, though not directly due to the cold — instead, the winter just happens to coincide with the end of their life cycle, when they’ve already finished mating. They actually only live for about 10 days anyway.
Females, on the other hand, enter what is called diapause, a rested state similar to hibernation. They find a hollow log to burrow into, slow their metabolism, and hunker down until the cold is over. Females can stay in diapause for up to six months, thanks to the large reserves of energy that they hoard beforehand — they eat up to 10 times their normal body weight in blood to prepare for this stage.
Photo Credit: iStock
After warm weather returns, females leave their burrow and return to their normal metabolism. Then they must search for more food (blood) to nourish their eggs, and the whole dreadful cycle starts all over again.
Photo Credit: iStock
Unfortunately, there are some exceptions to all this. Some types of mosquitoes can actually breed underground in the winter and forego food, allowing them to stay alive all throughout the cold months. A species called Culex pipiens molestus invaded a poor Manhattan neighborhood in exactly this manner.
Bummer.
The post This Is What Happens to Mosquitoes in the Winter appeared first on UberFacts.
Meet Perdita, Called the “World’s Worst Cat”
“World’s Worst Cat,” of course, is an honorary title, like “World’s Greatest Dad” or “Best Sister In The World.” It’s not like there’s an actual competition or even an official poll one has to win before wearing one of these superlatives like a badge. Someone just has to be of the opinion that you’re the “best” or “worst” before bestowing it on you.
So, I suppose it must follow that someone who met Perdita the Cat must have believed whole-heartedly that she was the actual worst.
Her adoption photograph and biography on Mitchell County Animal Rescue’s Facebook page begins with the ominous line, “We thought she was sick, turns out she’s just a jerk.”
Meet Perdita, not for the faint of heart. LIKES: staring into your soul until you feel as if you may never be cheerful…
Posted by Mitchell County Animal Rescue, Inc-North Carolina on Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Now, shelters usually try to paint their animals in as positive a light as possible, but they also don’t want cats like Perdita being returned by adoptive owners who learned a little too late what, exactly, they’ve invited into their homes.
The News & Observer reports that the 4-year-old cat arrived at the animal rescue on Christmas Eve after her owner had died, and the rescue acknowledges that Perdita has plenty of reasons to be angry.
Not that she needs reasons, of course.
Amber Dale Lowery, the shelter’s director, said they “understand that she has earned every right to be a jerk and meant to the post as tongue-in-cheek. We adore her strong personality and hope that by shedding light on her ‘cattitude,’ the perfect home will step forward to adopt her.”
Add Catnip to her list of likes…she may need to learn moderation.
Posted by Mitchell County Animal Rescue, Inc-North Carolina on Friday, January 31, 2020
The adoption listing went on to say that adopting Perdita would not be “for the faint of heart” – apparently, Perdita likes “staring into your soul until you feel as if you may never be cheerful again,” “lurking in dark corners,” and “being the queen of her domicile.”
She does not appear to enjoy “the color pink, kittens (yuk they are so chipper), dogs, children, The Dixie Chicks, Disney movies, Christmas, and last not NOT least…HUGS.”
Perdita is lucky; she got so much attention on Facebook – people have called her their “soulmate kitty” and said that even though they don’t like cats “I want this cat!” – that she found a home!
Perdita’s newfound celebrity as the “world’s worst” hasn’t changed her at all, according to the shelter.
“Perdita is not fazed by her fame. Just this morning she allowed me to scratch her head, admire her good looks, and then promptly growled at me,” reported Lowery.
Today is a bittersweet day. Perdita has brought so much joy to the staff here at MCAR. We have loved getting to know her…
Posted by Mitchell County Animal Rescue, Inc-North Carolina on Saturday, February 1, 2020
In her new home, Perdita and her owners will share (their own) space and the occasional how-do-you-do, and perhaps, when Perdita deems it acceptable, a scritch or two.
Cat ownership bliss.
The post Meet Perdita, Called the “World’s Worst Cat” appeared first on UberFacts.