Fun facts – 24th Jan 18

Natural contraceptive 

Ancient Romans had an effective natural contraceptive: a plant called silphium. The shape of the seed is where we get the traditional heart shape that we all recognize as a symbol of love.

The Romans harvested so much silphium that it went extinct, and now we’re not even sure exactly what type of plant it was.

The wild things

Maurice Sendak’s classic kid’s book Where The Wild Things Are was originally supposed to be called Land of Wild Horses. That is until Sendak realized he didn’t know how to draw horses. His editor suggested he change it to the more ambiguous “wild things,” and the rest is history.

The one and only

Stephen Hawking is the only person to have appeared on Star Trek playing himself! Well, technically he played a hologram of himself: In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data is shown playing poker with holographic versions of Hawking, Sir Isaac Newton, and Alfred Einstein. When given a tour of the set, Hawking paused at the “warp core” and remarked, “I’m working on that.”

Silver stealers

The reason why the USA never adopted the metric system may have been because of pirates! Thomas Jefferson (who at the time was Secretary of State) heard about the new system of measurement and requested a small 1 kilogram weight be sent from France to serve as the new standard of weight. While crossing the Atlantic, the weight—and Joseph Dombey, the man carrying it—was hijacked by pirates. The pirates took Dombey captive, and the weight was auctioned off somewhere along the way.

 

Back in a jiffy

The word “jiffy” is an informal term for a short period of time, but the word has a more precise meaning as well. In electronics, a jiffy refers to the period of an alternating current (AC) power cycle. This is usually 1/60 or 1/50 of a second.