Fascinating Fact Fridays

Every December, Christmas joy sweeps the streets of Tokyo. Storefronts glow with twinkling lights, trees are decorated, and standing proudly among it all, draped in red and white, is a jolly old man preparing his Christmas bounty. But this isn’t Santa Claus. Oh no—this is Colonel Sanders. And in Japan, he is Christmas. In a delightful twist of holiday fate, Japan’s jolliest Christmas tradition doesn’t involve mistletoe or chestnuts roasting on an open fire—it involves a party bucket of fried chicken, a side of coleslaw, and a Santa suit-wearing statue of the Colonel standing proudly outside every Kentucky Fried Chicken. This phenomenon began in the 1970s, when Takeshi Okawara—the enterprising manager of the very first KFC in Japan—overheard foreigners longing for a traditional Christmas turkey. Sensing an opportunity, he whipped up a substitute feast and called it the “party barrel.” He then launched a national ad campaign with a catchy slogan: Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii — “Kentucky f...

Most eukaryotic organisms have protective caps at the end of their chromosomes called telomeres. Telomeres gradually wear down and shorten over time as the cells in your body divide, leading to the aging process and eventual cell 💀. So it stands to reason that the longer your chromosome’s telomeres are, the longer your cells can divide before they start aging, leading to a longer lifespan right? WRONG! (How embarrassing if you actually thought that…). Mice have much longer telomeres than humans do, so why do they have such relatively short lifespans? It may surprise you to hear that even though mice only live about 2-3 years, they rarely ever die from old age. There are two main factors that contribute to this. Mice are prey animals so their lives are often tragically cut short due to being delicious to most predators. But even pet or lab mice don’t tend to live too much longer than their wild counterparts, which leads us to the second factor. While longer telomeres do allow cells to ...

Hedy Lamarr was not only a Hollywood icon–very much the Marilyn Monroe of her generation–she was also a brilliant inventor. During WWII, Hedy and composer George Antheil took inspiration from player pianos to develop frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. What is that you may ask? Well of course I’ll tell you! At the time, German U-boats were wreaking havoc in the Atlantic, sinking Allied ships with deadly efficiency. Torpedoes were guided using radio signals, but there was a major flaw—enemy forces could jam those signals, throwing torpedoes off course. Hedy, horrified by the destruction and wanting to aid the war effort, devised a solution: if the signal constantly "hopped" between frequencies in a coordinated pattern, it would be nearly impossible for the enemy to intercept or block. The U.S. Navy initially dismissed the idea, shelving it for years. But decades later, her technology became the foundation for Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Despite her groundbreaking inve...

  Mankind's ambition has long extended past our own solar system, envisioning voyages to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Stories of interstellar exploration have filled the pages of science fiction, with humanity embarking on thousand-year journeys, all made possible by a single, tantalizing concept: cryostasis. The idea of placing humans in a state of suspended animation—essentially hitting pause on life itself—has captivated dreamers, scientists, and storytellers alike. Yet, despite our technological advances, cryostasis remains confined to the realm of fiction. Human physiology is stubbornly resistant to the freezing process, with ice crystals threatening to destroy our cells and tissues long before any spaceship could reach its destination. The challenge is immense, and the solution seems just out of reach. But that may one day change, thanks to an unlikely amphibian phenomenon. In the frozen forests of North America, a small, unassuming creature has already mastered what w...

Beyond the bezels of this screen, outside the boundaries of this world, past the celestial giants and dwarves, and further than our comprehension reaches, there lies a single immutable truth: It would be pretty cool if we could teleport, bro. Think about it. No more sitting in traffic with people who  must  know how to drive correctly but simply choose not to. No more enduring draconian airport security lines, awkwardly untangling yourself from belts, shoes, and dignity. No more fretting over whether your luggage has mysteriously decided to vacation in a different country. In a world where teleportation exists, convenience would reign supreme, and humanity could finally experience a life free of logistical nightmares. After miraculously recovering from their space-deaths, these are the thoughts that must have been running through the minds of Ashlee and Laura as they eagerly ordered the newly announced Toshiba People Faxer 5000—the world's first teleportation device. * * * * *...

For thousands of years, humanity relied on some pretty creative benchmarks for measurement. The foot? It was literally the length of a royal foot—thank you Henry I. The meter was once defined by a physical bar stored in France but is now based on the distance light travels in a vacuum during a specific time interval. Similarly, the second transitioned from being measured by Earth's rotation to being defined by the vibrations of cesium atoms. But amidst all this new-fangled scientific razzle-dazzle, one lone measurement clung to its physical form: the lonely kilogram. Le Grand K ( Pronunciation: [sting-kee cheez])  was manufactured in 1879 and stored in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, France. This shiny platinum-iridium cylinder was chosen to be the kilogram, replacing older, less glamorous standards like the mass of a liter of water or random hunks of metal. Housed in a bell jar, Le Grand K was the VIP of weights—the one and only star aro...