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10 Random Facts - January 2020 Edition

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1. Not all paper is made from wood. Cai Lun is thought to be the inventor of paper, and his was made out of scraps of cloth and pieces of hemp material. Nowadays some paper is still made from cloth. For instance, banknotes are made out of cotton fibre, and they are more durable than paper made out of wood. 2. Swiss cheese doesn't always have holes. Swiss cheese without holes is referred to as a "blind" cheese since the holes of swiss cheese are called "eyes". It does taste better if there are holes though, and the bigger the better. You see, the eyes get bigger if the cheese has more time and heat to form. 3. Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway. Okay so not the Anne Hathaway we know (I'm a big fan of the Princess Diaries), but that was her name and she was a farmers daughter. They got married when he was 18 and she was 26. It all happened very fast because she was already 3 months pregnant. 4. Jupiter has the shortest days of any of the eight ...

Ignaz Semmelweis: "Savior of Mothers"

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Childbirth is a dangerous business, but it used to be even more so before Ignaz Semmelweis came up with a precautionary measure that would save mothers from succumbing to puerperal fever ("childbed fever"). The Hungarian physician suggested that simply washing your hands before assisting with birth would cut down on mortality rates. So in 1847 he proposed that obstetrical clinics should have higher hand washing standards. Unfortunately, his theory wasn't accepted by the medical community until after his death. But thanks to his work many lives have been saved since. Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818, in Buda, Hungary (which would later become Budapest). He was the fifth child in a family of ten, and his parents were wealthy grocers. He began to study law in the fall of 1837 at the University of Vienna, but he switched to medicine the next year. He received his doctorate in 1844. He was then became assistant at the obstetric clinic in Vienna. At the time most women ...

5 Fun Facts About the Oak Tree

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The oak tree, it's pretty iconic but is there really anything interesting about it? The answer is yes, so here are a few fun facts about America's National Tree. 1. There are three main types of oaks. Let's start with the basics, the three main types of oak trees are the White Oak, Red Oak, and the Black Oak. You can identify what type of oak you're looking at in the way you'd expect, the bark of a white oak would be grayish in color, while a red oak's bark would be dark reddish brown, and black oak bark would be black. 2. The oak tree isn't only the national tree of America.  Various types of oaks are the national trees of many other countries, including England, Estonia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Jordan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Wales. 3. Oak tree acorns are poisonous. If fed in large amounts to livestock, the acorns and leaves of oak trees are poisonous and can lead to serious side effects like kidney damage and gastroenteritis...