01/07/2022
21Instead of saying "cheese" before taking a picture, Victorians said "prunes."
Man taking photo with vintage camera
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We say "cheese" because the word leaves us with a big smile on our faces, but if Victorian-era folk were to see our gleeful expressions, they'd scoff. Once upon a time, smiling in photos was considered undignified and reserved for the poor and the drunk. To retain a more serious look in their photos, they would say "prunes," a word so dull, the chances of it inciting a smile were slim to none.
22Roosters have built-in earplugs.
Rooster at sunrise
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Considering a rooster's call can reach 140 decibels or louder, it might leave one to wonder how the rooster itself keeps from going deaf when that noise is coming right out of its beak. It turns out, the farm fowl have built-in earplugs. Researchers found that when a rooster opens its beak to crow, its external auditory canals close off, preventing sound from coming in and doing any damage.
23The Netherlands is so safe, it imports criminals to fill jails.
The bars of a jail cell
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The Netherlands has enjoyed a steady drop in crime since 2004, and has become so safe that it's closed down one jail after another—23 prisons shut their doors since 2014. To help mitigate the job losses that this has created, the country has taken to importing prisoners from other countries, bringing 242 inmates from Norway in 2015.
24One journal published a fake paper about Star Trek.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek
CBS Television Distribution
To help expose how easily false or flawed research could make its way into supposedly peer-reviewed journals, an anonymous biologist managed to get a paper about one of Star Trek's most infamously silly elements accepted by four journals and published in the American Research Journal of Biosciences. The biologist explained that he did so "to expose predatory journals that claim to offer peer-reviewed open-access publications but will publish anything for a fee."
25The world's largest pyramid isn't in Egypt.
The Great Pyramid of Cholula
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The Great Pyramid of Cholula, located in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, is the largest pyramid in the world and—with a base four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza—also happens to be the largest monument ever constructed. Part of the reason it's not better known is that it's partially buried under a mountain.
