fact
During the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, to help USA/USSR relations, astronauts and cosmonauts played smuggled audio recordings of glasses clinking, laughter, and many female voices. Houston radioed to ask what’s going on. “Oh nothing,” they said. “We finished work, just having a party up here.”
The post During the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission… appeared first on Crazy Facts.
After the Boston Tea Party, many Americans switched to drinking coffee during the Revolutionary War because drinking tea had become unpatriotic.
The post After the Boston Tea Party… appeared first on Crazy Facts.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton read a novel about a mad scientist who spread a virus in NYC. Concerned about this risk, he established the Strategic National Stockpile, which contains billions of dollars in medical supplies (many being used now).
The post In 1998, President Bill Clinton read… appeared first on Crazy Facts.
To all the teachers: you always do a great job and you’re really doing a great job right now during this worldwide crisis.
Since schools are closed for the time being, educators have to get creative about how they’re teaching kids over the Internet.
And these teachers all definitely deserve an A+!
My professor is 74 and he isn’t confident using Zoom so he’s prerecorded the rest of our classes. Today, I watched the first one. He has a Pinocchio doll in the front row because he isn’t comfortable teaching to an empty room. I’m social distancing for this man and this man only. pic.twitter.com/2HvG3xhrTt
— montana (@macho_montana) March 22, 2020
This pre k Zoom meeting with 22 four year olds is not very productive, but it’s super duper cute.
pic.twitter.com/aoBXjTwGOw
— Lindsay Kaplan (@lindsaykap) March 23, 2020
My family went on a little walk to take a break from work and school today. We heard horns honking all over the neighborhood! #lpsAD made me burst into happy tears with their faculty parade through the neighborhoods to wave hello to kids! #InThisTogetherLPS #lpsleads pic.twitter.com/K2HTHITK40
— Dr. Charity Stephens (@DrStephensEdD) March 23, 2020
Social distancing parade! Families in Canal Fulton were happy to see their teachers from Northwest Local Schools as they drove by in their cars led by Canal Fulton police before the Stay-At-Home order starts tonight. The teachers made signs to tell their students they miss them! pic.twitter.com/5YkC8A8S5m
— Alex Stokes (@alexstokestv) March 23, 2020
My favorite song off Megan’s new album is “Savage” and our first online lesson is about Arc measurements in circles. Don’t let this flop!
Tag @theestallion in the comments!
pic.twitter.com/0Dcf5g0fg8
— Mister, Mister
(@theloserteacher) March 20, 2020
@thesuburbanfarmhouseNo cap (did I use that right?) ##teacher ##teachers ##tiktokteacher ##teachersoftiktok ##teacherproblems ##videocall ##ButterGlossPop ##teachercheck♬ Notifications by 1xrio – 1xrio
@deeznuts9001NOBODY IS SUPERIOR TO MY PROFESSOR ##fyp ##coronatime ##coronavirus♬ original sound – deeznuts9001
@wow.salmaMy Roomate is having a zoom class and the teacher literally said “let’s have a 30 second dance party” ##zoom ##class ##online ##coronavirus ##wow♬ original sound – wow.salma
@mrchuntzRemote Learning Fire Drill ##teachersoftiktok ##remotelearning ##teacher ##mathteacher ##teacherlife ##firedrill ##mrchuntz♬ original sound – tyler.jaxon
Now we want to hear from you.
Whether you’re a teacher, a student, or a parent, tell us how you’re holding up and let us know how this “virtual teaching” thing is working out for you.
Talk to us in the comments!
The post These Teachers Are Doing a Great Job Educating Students During This Weird Time appeared first on UberFacts.
There are people out there who have been waiting a literal decade to find out how the Song of Ice and Fire books are going to end, and while I have read all of the ones available currently, it’s only been about 5 years since I finished book 5.
Like many fans, I have given up hope that the books will ever come to a conclusion, especially since Martin now has a) tons of money from the HBO series and b) the television series already gave the story an ending.
But… a light at the end of the endless tunnel, perhaps?
Now that Martin has as much time on his hands as the rest of us do (or most of us, anyway), he’s hinting that perhaps he might use that time to actually, you know…write books again.
On March 17th, George R.R. Martin posted an update on his blog, detailing how his many enterprises are handling the coronavirus outbreak.
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
He’s shutting things down out of an abundance of caution, even though his businesses aren’t huge.
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
If you want a reason to love him, even though he’s not finishing these books, he’s still paying employees.
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
Oh, and if you want signed books – he’s still got those coming out to you!
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
As for the author himself, he’s holed up on an island with a single support person who is running errands – all while GRRM spends time in Westeros.
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
Where things are still grim (obviously), but where we’re mostly all hoping things turn out differently than they did in the HBO version.
Image Credit: GeorgeRRMartin.com
Because that was not the best.
Like me, most fans have their doubts as to whether or not these books will ever actually find their way into reader’s hands.
That said, we always have hope, I guess.
And that’s something we surely didn’t think the coronavirus was going to give us.
The post George R.R. Martin Might Finally Finish ‘Game of Thrones’ appeared first on UberFacts.
Maybe you’ve heard this one before: a major snowstorm or blackout blankets a city.
Hundreds of thousands of people are told to stay indoors and hunker down for a day or two until things return to normal.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Nine months later, newspapers report that local maternity wards are seeing an unusual spike in births, complete with a whole bunch of fun little innuendos about how people must have passed the time during the storm.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
This idea of “blackout/blizzard babies” first took hold after the New York Times printed a story in 1966 suggesting that a one-day blackout on November 9, 1965, led to sharp rise in births at local hospitals in the summer of the next year.
The article spoke to several doctors and sociologists – the latter of whom felt that a blackout was a “rich mine for behavioral, sociological and psychological discovery.”
In the end, the article concluded that the blackout was almost certainly to blame.
Essentially, when the lights went off, people started getting it on.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Since then, it’s been the kind of story that seems to do its rounds anytime a major storm or blackout happens.
Take, for instance, the case of the Buffalo hospital reporting a mini “baby boom” after the region experienced a record 70 inches of snow!
Besides blizzard babies, there have also been reports of hurricane babies and even federal government shutdown babies!
Photo Credit: Pixabay
At a surface level, this makes a lot of sense.
Two healthy, willing, able-bodied adults trapped together in the relative comfort of their own home. TV and electricity might be out, leaving very little to do. Lights might be out too, so you light some candles.
There’s a certain sense of impending doom that lends a sense of urgency to the situation and… well…… things happen.
Let’s face it, people have hooked up under wayyyyy less romantic circumstances, and there’s actually Tinder data to prove that people spend more time swiping for “blizzard buddies” during snowstorms.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
But while some steamy, stormy fun makes for a pretty convincing narrative, we don’t deal in compelling narratives here – we deal in facts.
So what does the actual science say about these post-calamity-baby-booms?
It turns out that shortly after that initial New York Times article, a public health scholar named Dr. J. Richard Udry, decided to examine these claims. After closely examining the data from several area hospitals, he found no evidence of any spike in birth rates following the blackout.
As a matter of fact, his findings actually put the number of babies born in 1966 as being lower than two of the previous four years!
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Still, as is often the case with scientific research, Udry’s study only helped fuel the disaster-birth theory even further.
In the years that followed, newspapers continued to report on disaster babies – something that wasn’t hard to do since they could just cherry-pick the hospitals that would verify their claims and just ignore the others. These reports led many other scholars to turn their attention to the matter, and not all of them came to the same conclusions.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Most notably, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Population Economics examined a much larger sample size of 47 communities around the East Coast over six years.
They found that the severity of the disaster plays a critical role in which way the births are affected.
Specifically, they found that while lower-severity storms and hurricanes did indeed have a small positive effect on birth rates, more severe storms (such as Hurricane Sandy, which killed 157 people) led to a decline.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Richard Evans, one of the researchers, explains,
“With low-level, low-severity storm advisories, we actually found an uptick in births nine months later.
So, it was about a 2 percent increase with tropical storm watches. […]
The other thing we found — that is also intuitive, but no one had ever detected this before — was that, with the most severe storm warnings … you get almost an equal decrease in births nine months later.”
These findings are considered by many to be the most definitive study to date on disasters and fertility, and they make the most sense.
More interestingly, the study also found that the increased fertility effect of a disaster was much more pronounced in couples who already had one or more children.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Being the economists that they were, the researchers speculated that “This suggests that the elasticity of demand for children is relatively inelastic for first children but becomes more elastic after couples have their first child.” Essentially, a minor disaster isn’t making couples rush into unprotected sex if they don’t have kids, but if they’ve already got kids, they’re more likely to take the risk of conceiving another one.
So, do blizzards and blackouts really cause more babies?
Yes, but only if it’s nothing too serious and you’ve already got a kid.
Just know that, because babies are good for paper sales, news reports of these events are almost always greatly exaggerated.
The post Are Blackouts and Blizzards Really the Cause of Baby Booms? appeared first on UberFacts.
Successfully decoding the human genome is one of the most amazing advances in modern science.
It’s allowed for a number of exciting advances, but perhaps one of the best-known innovations has been personalized genetic testing which allows people to learn more about their ancestry as well as detect health anomalies and risk factors for genetically-carried diseases.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Today, there are various DNA testing services out there, each promising to reveal the secrets of your genes. All you’ve gotta do is send in a DNA sample (usually saliva, sometimes hair) to the company using a tube that they provide.
Several weeks later, they send you a lovely packet of results with lots of colorful charts and maps and numbers.
Photo Credit: Ancestry.com
While it all looks and sounds very scientific, just how reliable are the results?
Sadly, it turns out there’s a lot of wiggle room.
You see, there’s no one standard procedure to conduct DNA tests, and each company has its own methods that can lead to you very different results. For instance, Inside Edition had triplets send in spit samples to 23andMe and Ancestry.com and got wildly different results from each.
What’s crazier still is that neither service gave each triplet the same results as each other, which is odd considering they all came from the same womb at the same time.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
This is partly because DNA tests rely on using genetic markers – small variations in your DNA.
Different companies can analyze anywhere from 12-700,000 different markers to give your results, and while using more markers can help improve the accuracy of your results, there’s no single, “perfect” method.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Your results from different companies can also differ because of the size of the database being used.
When you send in your DNA, the markers from your sample are actually compared to all the other samples in their database (i.e. all the other clients of that company) in order to generate your results. This means that a given testing company’s ability to give you the best results possible is very much hinged on the number of customers they’ve already analyzed – the more people in the database, the more thoroughly vetted your results will be.
Not surprisingly, these databases are very Euro-centric, since many of the people tested so far have been of European descent. There are also much better historical and genealogical records of European populations than there are for other regions of the world. As long as the majority of your ancestry is from Europe, you’re likely to get fairly reliable results.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
But if you’re any other ethnicity – particularly something that doesn’t have much of a traceable genealogy (descendants of former African slaves, for instance) – you might have a hard time getting the kind of result that would provide any real closure about your ethnic identity.
Speaking of which, there have been allegations that these companies sometimes adjust results to make them more appealing to customers who were clearly looking for something specific. More amusingly, it’s also been alleged that they sometimes add “less than 1% African ancestry” to the results of racist clients. While the testing companies have vehemently denied these rumors, stating that they value scientific integrity far too much to do anything like that, it’s definitely a little worrying to think about.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Even more concerning, however, is the thought that these companies aren’t really very well-regulated (if at all). You’re basically just handing over your DNA to a private company which, by the very nature of how it does its business, will keep your information in their database going forward. In this day and age of personal data being bought and sold by big companies hundreds of times a day, that’s a sobering thought. While I’m not saying that DNA testing companies have engaged in any shady behavior with your data, it’s also not something I’d put past anyone anymore.
Now, all this isn’t meant to completely scare you off DNA testing, however. While it’s true that ancestry results aren’t always as accurate as they could be, the medical results obtained from such a test could be extremely valuable. It could reveal if you have risk factors for certain diseases (especially ones that are hereditary), allowing you to adjust your lifestyle to hopefully be healthier. In some cases, early detection can be critical to being able to treat a condition.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
It’s also important to realize that the DNA testing companies aren’t actually lying to us.
Most of them do state pretty clearly that your results aren’t set in stone, and are really more of a range of possibilities based on the best information available than a concrete answer. A big part of the problem is that people tend to get blinded by the science – we have a tendency to see all those charts and numbers in our results and give them a lot more weight than they actually carry.
Photo Credit: Imgflip
Results also tend to have a section that says what level of confidence the testers feel about a given result.
For instance, you might get a “50% Swedish” ancestry result, but if the confidence interval for that result is only about 30%, there could be a high chance that another test finds a totally different result regarding your Scandinavian heritage. Alternatively, having a high confidence level in a particular result means it’s likely that that result is fairly accurate.
For those looking to find a particular ancestry that maybe didn’t show up the first time, lowering the required confidence interval of your results could get more variety in them, at the cost of accuracy.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Lastly, it should also be noted that trying to find out your ancestry can get pretty tricky considering just how long people have been wandering around this world of ours. Whether it was conquering armies raping and pillaging or just some good old-fashioned, consensual interracial lovin’, people have been mixing around their DNA for a long time with very little regard to difficult it might make life a little easier for their descendants trying to learn about their ancestry.
Just about everyone’s got a mixed bag, and it’s only going to get more jumbled up as international travel gets easier, and more and more people have the means and desire to see the world.
Frankly, I think that’s a beautiful thing.
The post Is Getting Your DNA Tested Worth It? appeared first on UberFacts.
Foxes look like little dogs, they’re fluffy, you can see in their eyes that they’re curious and smart, and as long as you don’t own chickens, they probably don’t cause you much trouble.
And in a world intent on ramping up my anxiety every day, looking at pictures of foxes hanging out together in a little village definitely takes the edge off.
This magical kingdom on earth is called Zao Fox Village, and you can find it in the Miyagi prefecture.
They charge visitors 100 yen for admission and a small bag of food, though since the foxes are not domesticated pets, you shouldn’t attempt to hand feed them.
And you know, if your kids aren’t much bigger than chickens, you might want to wait until they are.
In addition to being seen as tricksters (as they are in the west), Japanese mythology sees them as having mystical powers.
They might even be messengers of Inari Okami, the Shinto deity of fertility, prosperity, and rice.
Fox Village is home to many red foxes, who sleep, eat, play, and wander their days away while delighting humans of all ages.
There’s also a rare silver fox or two, if you’ve got a keen eye!
They’re just so fluffy, you guys. I literally have never had a major desire to visit Japan before now, but I think it needs to go on the list.
Because of the foxes.
Here’s a video to whet your whistle.
Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that the Zao Fox Village will join zoos and animal parks all over the world in putting their animals online!
What’s your favorite animal? How far would you go to hang out with them? Tell us in the comments!
The post Japan Has a Village of Foxes and These Pictures Are Great appeared first on UberFacts.
Do you have some time on your hands and have already binged everything that looks interesting on Netflix?
As luck would have it, many terrific shows both new and old on the Travel Channel are available to stream for free. You don’t even need cable.
And, lately, the channel has added some eerie shows that’ll make you jump–perfect for taking your mind off of you-know-what.
Take a look at these:
Seasons five through ten are available now for streaming. Follow Zak Bagans and his team as they explore haunted spots, here and abroad, and interview eyewitnesses to give you all the spooky details. The biggest chills come when the crew confront the menacing spirits.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
See seasons two and three to join Amy Bruni, Adam Berry and Chip Coffey as they work on shocking mysteries set in frightening locations.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
See season one, either again or for the first time, and follow Jack Osbourne and Katrina Weidman as they investigate possible supernatural gateways.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
Get caught up on the paranormal investigations of the sinister kind by Amy Allan and Steve DiSchiavi from seasons one through four.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
You’ll never want to be in the woods again after dark after you hear these true accounts of people chased out by not-so-friendly ghosts.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
Go on frontier adventures with brothers Jesse and Josh Feldman as they hunt for buried treasures.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
Get immersed in Bourdain’s universe through these classic episodes where nothing was off the table, especially amazing food discoveries, fascinating conversations and many new friends.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
Few people are as single-minded as Todd Carmichael when it comes to coffee. Watch as he globetrots on risky endeavors to find the perfect cup.
Photo Credit: Travel Channel
From scary to adventurous, these shows are primed to take your mind out of your four walls and around the world. You may even find new places you could explore on your next voyage.
But no ticket, passport or reservations are required to start streaming them now.
The post Travel Channel Shows You Can Stream for Free Right Now appeared first on UberFacts.
A sticker price isn’t always the most accurate way to tell how “expensive” an item is. Sometimes it’s worth it to spend more money upfront for an item that will last for a long time or save you money in the future.
On AskReddit, a user asked: “What expensive purchase have you made that has paid for itself many times over because you saved money in the long run?”
The answers may help you make some adjustments to your wish list!
“23 years ago, I bought a used 1991 Toyota 4-cylinder truck. Paid it off early. Its now 29 years old, and refuses to die. Good gas mileage, low insurance. I change the oil myself…”
“New windows on our house. Replaced the old single pane metal framed windows. It was like a waterfall of cold air coming off of them and the noise from the street was obnoxious. Heating bill was cut in half.”
“When I moved back to my home town over a year ago I bought a 27′ sailboat to live on because rent here is outrageous. Boat cost $4,500 to buy, and moorage at a decent marina is about $170/month. Rent for a studio apartment or 1br here is $900-$1300; every month I save between $600 and $1100, so the boat paid for itself in 4-9 months.”
“Quality cold weather gear.
Not only does it work better and look better, I’ve had a couple jackets for over 5 years now that see heavy use. Meanwhile I have a couple friends that basically buy and throwaway cheap gear every season. Works like shit, looks like shit, ends up in a landfill, costs more in the long run. Lose, lose, lose, lose.”
“I bought a 500.00 bicycle to use as my main transportation. 500 doesn’t sound like a lot but when you’re only making 8 an hour, it took some time to save up for it. With public transportation being 2.50 a ride the bike paid for itself in about 3 months. I used that bike for about 3 years. I still have it but I moved so I can’t use it for the same purposes.”
“I have a bike. Not even an expensive one, just a regular bike that I use to go to work every day. It’s an half hour ride. I no longer use public transportation or a car so I save money on gas or metro tickets. Cycling an hour a day is enough to keep in ok shape so I don’t need to go to the gym.
Best money I have ever spent.”
“F*cking rechargeable batteries. Xbox players save millions.”
“Laser Printers are expensive up front, but they will save you lots of money by no longer needing cartridges. Also is less wasteful because of it.”
“When my wife and I first started dating she wanted to learn to cut hair and wanted a pair of scissors that cost $25, which was a lot for us then. She offered that if I bought her the scissors she’d cut my hair for free as long as we were together. She lied. After 25 years she declared that she’d repaid me for the scissors and was going to stop cutting my hair. Still not a bad deal.”
“A very expensive suit.
This was the late 90s and I was 20 years old getting paid by the hour to do glorified help desk work. I had dropped out of college a couple semesters in because I needed to work. A recruiter called me out of the blue saying they needed someone right away. Could I interview the next day. The employer was the largest privately held company in the US and they had a reputation for being a VERY conservative suit and tie operation.
All I had was a poor fitting sport coat I got when I worked at circuit city. I called my father and he said go to Nordstroms, explain the situation and they’ll get one done for you. So that’s what I did and $600 later I’d emptied my bank account and was walking out the door with a new suit freshly altered that night.
I did the interview and just hit it out of the park. They offered me $55K starting salary to do app support. Which in the 90s was a crap ton of money for a guy going from making not a lot of money.”
“A really good waterbottle and to go mug. Stainless steel and insulated, not the most expensive purchase but expensive for cups. It’s so worth it.”
“I have 6 acres of land with a fair amount of trees on it. I spent about 25k for a backhoe that has saved, and will save me tons of back-breaking work.
It’s amazing the amount of stuff I can do that would take huge amounts of energy without the backhoe.
Need a tree taken down and the stump removed? Give me an hour. Need a dead horse buried (true story)? Give me about 2 hours. Need a 100 foot long trench dug for water or power? Give me an hour. Need a 15 foot deep hole dug for who knows what nefarious reason? Give me about 2 hours. Need to flip a car? Give me about 2 minutes. Plow something? Completely destroy your yard? Move that dirt? Drag something heavy? Unstick something stuck?
It was a sh*tton of money for me, but incredible what I can do.”
“I live in Minnesota and am a single woman. One winter I missed two shifts at work because my car wouldn’t start and I didn’t have anyone who could jump it and road side assistance couldn’t be there for hours. After that I went out and spent a little over $100 on a portable car starter. It is a small black box that connects to the battery and jumps the car without needing someone else’s car. This has saved me so much time and money. Also being a single girl who at the time worked at night, I didn’t have to worry that some stranger stopping to help might have ulterior motives. I feel much safer and always keep it in my purse. Added bonus, I can charge my phone with it too. I’ve been singing its praises ever since!”
“Bidet – Not super expensive, but saves on toilet paper. I’ve used it for about a year and I love it.”
What do you think about those? Have a similar experience with something you bought that REALLY paid off in the long run, even though it was pretty expensive to start?
Let us know in the comments!
The post Expensive Items That Pay For Themselves in the Long Run appeared first on UberFacts.
Does anyone have a favorite POV character in the Song of Ice and Fire series that you can't wait to get to? I love Sansa's POV as well as Tyrions. 
#follow #Bookstagram #book #booklover #bookstagrammer #newtobookstagram #new #tea #read #ilovetoread #fiction #literature #newtoinstagram #mug #books #bookworm #bookaddict #bibliophile #like #potd #readersofinstagram #readmorebooks #booksofinstagram #bookcommunity #gameofthrones #fairytales #georgerrmartin #got #asongoficeandfire #readingtime
Nearly 100 foxes of six different breeds live in the Zao Fox Village located in the mountains near Shiroishi, Miyagi Prefecture. 
This ‘Fox Village’ is one of the best places in Japan to go and see foxes. The foxes freely roam around in an open preserve which visitors can enter with an entry fee of 1000 yen. 
There are also options to feed the foxes, as well as other animals, such as bunnies, miniature horses and goats that you can pet. 
: @kuritamochiko
#hygunphoto
. Did you know that “The Fox” was released 7 years ago? . . #fox #zaofoxvillage #whatdoesthefoxsay #a6600. . . #retrip_nippon #retrip_miyagi #animalelite #animal_fanatics #nature_perfection #nature_special_ #best_japanpics #special_spot_ #lovers_nippon #deaf_b_j #art_of_japan_ #total_animal #pashadelic #japan_daytime_view #animals_captures #raw_japan #もふもふ部 #ふわもふ部 #誰かに見せたい風景 #ファインダー越しの私の世界 #けしからん風景 #動物好きな人と繋がりたい #アニマル写真部 #oimys #蔵王きつね村 #行くぜ東北