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(05/22/14 8:46pm)
In case you were wondering, the wearing of a “cap and gown” goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, when students wore robes to class. The mortarboard is a variation of a hat popular in the 15th century. It seems strange to think of the graduation ceremony when we still have 16 whole days to go, when we have finals to take and theses to turn in, but I have always been a fan of pomp and circumstance. I’ll get a cool hat with a tassel and they will call my full name, Catherine Elizabeth, a name I only whip out for momentous occasions such as graduation or possibly my coronation as ruler of a small European principality. I’m going to throw my hat up in the air, because when I was in high school I was denied the opportunity to don traditional academic garb. At my prep school, girls had to wear white dresses and carry flowers. In protest, I swore that I would never wear a white dress again, and then of course I joined a sorority, and said dress got taken out and worn several times a term. I know that the gowns are polyester, and it’s going to be hot, and that mortarboards are not exactly the most flattering headwear, but I am graduating college, damn it. I want to look the part. If you can’t tell where this is going or have just completely ignored the cover that says “Senior Issue,” this is my last column before I graduate. I was told that this column could be more reflective, and had no need of the normal intro with a random fact, but I have been supplying facts weekly for the past three terms, so I will carry on until the bitter end.
(05/08/14 7:46pm)
In case you were wondering, the very first electric washing machine was called “Mighty Thor” and was manufactured by Hurley Electric Laundry Equipment Company in 1908. Though we now live in an age where you can track your laundry’s progress online, I still believe that “Mighty Thor” is one of the best product names ever. Washing machines were also a boon for whoever did the laundry back in the day: scrubbing clothes by hand was time-intensive and difficult. Even though we live in the modern era where doing laundry means putting your clothes in the machine, pressing a button and returning in 45 minutes, people still manage to mess up. Because I have limited time left, I am quickly running out of things to complain about. But before we seniors leave forever, there are some words of wisdom that I need to pass on. In short, there is a right way and a wrong way to do laundry.
(05/01/14 9:52pm)
In case you were wondering, the Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis), also known as the tree lobster, was declared extinct in 1918, only to be discovered 80 years later in 2001 on a hunk of rock called Ball’s Pyramid, which is 13 miles of open ocean away from Lord Howe Island. The tree lobster is also one of the most hideous creatures in existence — half a foot long and armored, not thin and graceful like other phasmid relatives. The future of the tree lobster species was uncertain: the whole species consisted of 24 individuals living under a single bush. To conserve this species, scientists had to climb a sheer rock face in the middle of the night, surrounded by shark-infested waters. This story has a happy ending. Since a breeding pair was recovered in 2002, the tree lobster population has grown to over 900.
(04/24/14 8:54pm)
In case you were wondering, one of the first uses of the word “spoiler” to pertain to ruining something by revealing the ending was in a 1971 issue of National Lampoon, in an article that revealed the endings of several movies. The word came into common usage with the rise of the Internet, and even distinguished movie critics like A.O. Scott and the late Roger Ebert have used the term. Trolls have since coopted the term, intentionally ruining things for other people because trolls delight in others’ misfortunes.
(04/17/14 8:08pm)
In case you were wondering, the first prototype of a bicycle was called the “dandy horse.” Invented in 1817, the dandy horse was comprised of a wooden frame, handlebars and two wheels. Pedals were conspicuously absent, so the dandy horse was powered by the rider’s own legs, in “Flintstones”-esque fashion. How this is an improvement over simple walking is hard to say. The dandy horse was short-lived, falling out of fashion two years later, after riders began receiving two-pound fines for riding them on pedestrian paths.
(04/10/14 8:17pm)
In case you were wondering, the traditional American breakfast of “bacon and eggs” was a marketing ploy invented by Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) in the 1920s, aimed to increase the market share of Beech-Nut bacon. The breakfast combination had been around before then in England, of course, but the majority of Americans at the time started their days with toast and coffee. Bernays convinced doctors to testify about the health benefits of a “complete breakfast,” and America’s love affair with bacon began. While Bernays undoubtedly exaggerated the health benefits of a bacon and egg breakfast, I am grateful for his work. Without bacon and eggs, there would be no impetus to invent the breakfast sandwich, which in my humble opinion, is the pinnacle of all breakfast food.
(04/03/14 8:26pm)
In case you were wondering, Isaac Newton’s Principia, which set the groundwork for Newtonian physics, almost didn’t see publication, since the Royal Society’s finances were depleted after publishing “De Historia Piscium” or “The History of Fish.” Despite being a charming collection of engravings, the text sold poorly. You can find parts of the book on the Royal Society’s website — I’m particularly fond of the entry for the flying fish, which displays in precise detail the spines of its wing-like fins. The flying fish shows its total bewilderment, as if it’s not quite sure how it ended up in the pages of the book that’s most famous for nearly thwarting the publication of Newton’s laws. But luckily for Newton, and for physics in general, Edmund Halley (of Halley’s Comet) stepped forward and agreed to fund the publication of Principia out of his own pocket. The Royal Society, according to an April 2012 article in The Guardian, thanked Halley by paying him in unwanted copies of the fish book.
(03/27/14 9:42pm)
In case you were wondering, my spring break can be summed up by one scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003). I unashamedly consider the movie to be one of my all-time favorites and a great achievement in filmmaking. It’s got romance and pirates and Johnny Depp and pirates and sword fights and pirates. Did I mention it has pirates? In this scene, we find a fresh-faced Keira Knightley playing an indignant Elizabeth Swann, accosting the bemused, rum-toting Jack Sparrow (a role that, lest we forget, got Depp nominated for an Oscar). Incredulous, Elizabeth asks, “So that’s it, then? That’s the secret, grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow. You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum.” To which Sparrow replies, with a sexy little chest shimmy, “Welcome to the Caribbean.”
(03/06/14 10:30pm)
In case you were wondering, Douglas Tompkins and Kenneth Klopp established The North Face brand in the 1960’s. For the first 10 years or so, the company only made tents, backpacks and mountain-climbing gear. It then branched out into high-performance outerwear designed to withstand the freezing temperatures on Mount Everest. All of this makes me wonder how exactly Dartmouth students kept themselves warm and stylish before North Face introduced the iconic Denali polar fleece jacket.
(02/28/14 1:33am)
In case you were wondering, the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929. Some speculate that Rin Tin Tin, a German shepherd, received the most votes for best actor that year but could not win the award because the Academy decided it should be limited to humans.This is not a cool fact, minus the dog part, since anyone who can do basic math knows that if the 86th Academy Awards are being televised this weekend, the first ones would have occurred in 1929.
(02/20/14 10:59pm)
In case you were wondering, the Dubia cockroach, or Blaptica dubia, has the ability to move, twitch and stay very much alive even after you put a pin through its head, cut off its legs with scissors and rip out its digestive tract. This is a fact that a large chunk of biology majors at Dartmouth are well aware of, though I seem to be the only one bothered by it.
(02/13/14 10:30pm)
In case you were wondering, Feb. 13-15 used to mark the Roman feast of Lupercalia, during which two young Roman men would sacrifice a dog and two goats, dress in goatskin and run around the city whacking people with bloody strips of skin from the aforementioned goats. If you happened to get hit by a bloody goatskin strip, you would avoid infertility and pain in childbirth.
(02/06/14 8:35pm)
In case you were wondering, a hangover is an affliction caused by your body metabolizing alcohol, and no one knows exactly how to cure it. Some quacks suggest water, oxygen and Gatorade, but that will only help a little. You just have to wait until your liver — that much abused yet beloved organ — processes it. What with it being Winter Carnival, I know that a fair few of you are now miserable due to both the cold and pounding headaches.
(01/31/14 1:04am)
In case you were wondering, the snooze button is a terrible invention that only makes you more tired. Though this was initially a terrible and sad discovery, it makes sense, if you think about it. When you wake up naturally, your body starts doing its wake-up thing about an hour before you actually open your eyes. When you are jolted awake by a blaring alarm clock, you don’t get all those nice wake-up hormones, and you feel sleepy. So you hit the snooze button, which only serves to make you more tired because you’re falling back asleep, which restarts your sleep cycle, and then consequently makes it harder to wake up 10 minutes later when the alarm goes off again.
(01/24/14 1:02am)
In case you were wondering, toothpaste, or what we recognize as toothpaste, was first invented by Washington Sheffield in 1892. Various other tooth-cleaning agents had been used before then, including but not limited to crushed bone, salt, charcoal and pulverized brick.
(01/17/14 3:04am)
In case you were wondering, the coldest recorded temperature on Earth was minus 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 93.2 degrees Celsius for the metric folk among us. No, this was not in Hanover, though that may be hard to believe given our current state of affairs. It was on the East Antarctic Plateau on Aug. 10, 2010, which is the middle of winter down there in the Southern Hemisphere.
(01/09/14 11:44pm)
In case you were wondering, we have now marked approximately 2,014 rotations of the earth around the sun since the birth of some guy in Bethlehem. I say “approximately” because evidence suggests that Jesus was born between 7 and 2 B.C., so the count’s a little off. We could just call it “Common Era,” satisfying all non-Christians, though I know Dionysius Exiguus, the monk who coined “anno Domini” in 525 A.D., would be just a tad disappointed.
(11/14/13 8:55pm)
In case you were wondering, ping pong, or table tennis, is probably older than you think it is — some form of it has existed since the mid-1800s. Modern paddles and balls have been around since the 1950s, and by all accounts, some variation of pong has been played at Dartmouth since then. I could have made my last column of the term be something deep and insightful, but instead I have chosen to write a treatise on pong.
(11/07/13 9:50pm)
In case you were wondering, daylight savings time, which ended last Sunday, was first proposed by Georges Vernon Hudson in 1896, not, according to popular belief, by our buddy Ben Franklin. Back in Ben’s day, precise time-keeping was not really an issue, since train schedules hadn’t been invented yet. Daylight savings time was first implemented in Austria in 1916 and has been used on and off throughout Western Europe and the Americas. It remains vague to me, because having extra light at night seems cool, but then it’s dark in the morning, and there are few things more depressing than waking up in the pitch black. Research shows daylight saving time saves little to no energy, but apparently people go out and buy more stuff when it’s lighter in the evening, because sunlight inspires in people the primordial desire to go out and buy stuff. But I’m always in favor of daylight savings time when it ends. As I pleasantly discovered last Sunday, you get an extra hour of sleep.
(10/31/13 10:10pm)
In case you were wondering, in 2004, British explorer Ben Saunders became the youngest and possibly last person to solo ski to the North Pole. This piece of knowledge is inspiring, crazy and somewhat sad. Traversing 204 kilometers of frozen wasteland on skis by yourself seems incredibly brave and lonely. The sad part is that Saunders’ expedition may be the last overland adventure to the North Pole because the rapidly decreasing sea ice will soon make such a feat impossible.