Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 200
May 28, 2020
Does an Apple A Day Keep The Doctor Away?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
We’re all familiar with the advice, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” But where did the saying come from, and is there any truth to it? The first mention of this sage advice appeared in print in 1866 in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It had a slightly different ring to it, but contained the same basic message: “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.”
Fast forward 154 years, and the “apple a day” phrase has come under new scrutiny. Researchers conducted a recent study that largely debunks the phrase. They have demonstrated that consistently eating apples does not appreciably reduce doctor visits. However, these studies do still point to exciting benefits associated with noshing on the so-called forbidden fruit.
Let’s dive into the hype associated with apples as the antidote to medical doctors.
America’s Apple Problem
The predecessor of the “apple a day” saying originated in the United Kingdom. But it gained popularity in the United States during the early to mid-20th century. One of the primary reasons for this? The US government’s campaign to wean Americans off apple beverages.
You see, America had a drinking problem, and it went by the name of cider. In the early 19th century, when Ohio and Indiana were veritable frontiers, Johnny Appleseed dedicated his life to planting apple orchards. And he wasn’t alone in his zeal to “civilize” the west with these fruit-bearing trees.
Only the apple trees settlers worked so hard to cultivate didn’t bear the sweet, ruby-colored fruit we prize today. Instead, they produced “spitters.” The kind of sour apples that you spit out after one bite. This fact begs the question: what was this inedible produce for? Crafting hard apple cider.
The FBI Wages War on Apples
Hard apple cider comprised more than half (10.52 ounces) of daily liquid consumption among settlers. Considering the average American’s water intake today is around 20 ounces, settlers drank a lot of alcohol. Howard Means, author of Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story describes the average frontiersperson as living “through an alcoholic haze.” To make a long story short, as Prohibition gripped the country in the 1920s, the FBI had an apple problem.
In response, they waged physical war against the orchards once planted by Johnny Appleseed and others. They also forced apple growers to shift how they marketed their harvests. Suddenly, apples transitioned from being the source of bubbly, intoxicating brews to a nutritional snack. According to Means, “Apple growers were forced to celebrate the fruit’s… ability, taken once a day, to keep the doctor away.”
The FBI’s campaign proved highly successful. They crippled America’s homemade cider-making industry. And they repurposed apples as one of the world’s healthiest snacks. A food so powerful it negated the need for doctors. But is there any truth to this proverbial saying?
What Science Says About Apples
In 2018, a group of doctors decided to study the impact of daily apple intake. They published their findings in Jama Internal Medicine. According to Matthew A. Davis, Ph.D., MPH, DC, and lead author of the study, “To our knowledge, the association between daily apple consumption and use of health-care services has never been rigorously examined.”
So, the researchers analyzed data from 8,399 eligible adults who completed a questionnaire about their daily diets. The questionnaire was part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, administered between 2007-2008 and 2009-2010. The results? Of the group, 753 individuals self-identified as daily apple eaters.
Keep the Pharmacist Away?
Researchers decided to analyze the medical histories of daily apple eaters to see whether or not they experienced a reduced need for medical care. Since the average American receives one annual exam each year, they used this as the baseline for the study. They wanted to know if apple eaters proved better at avoiding two or more physician visits per year.
After adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, they reported no difference in the number of visits they took to the doctor (as compared to non-apple eaters). Apple eaters were also no better at avoiding overnight hospital stays or mental health checks. That said, the apple eaters had a slight advantage in one area. They required fewer prescription drugs.
The study’s findings have beneficial implications for public health. As Davis argues, “Although some may jest, considering the relatively low cost of apples (currently $1.13 per pound of Red Delicious apples), a prescription for apple consumption could potentially reduce national health-care spending if the aphorism holds true.” In other words, maybe it’s time to revise the saying to: “An apple a day keeps the pharmacist away.”
By Engrid Barnett, contributor for Ripleys.com
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May 27, 2020
Mexico’s Cave Of The Crystals Will Astound You
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Buried 984 feet below the Earth’s surface, you’ll find an otherworldly landscape of crystals dwarfing human visitors. Located in the subterranean depths of the Naica Mountain in Chihuahua, Mexico, this strange landscape has been dubbed the “Sistine Chapel of Crystals.”
Some crystals in the cave measure upwards of 36 feet long. And the heaviest ones weigh as much as 55 tons, Believe It or Not! Until recently, the natural processes involved in forming these larger-than-life crystals remained a mystery.
Here’s what scientists have since learned about how these crystals grew to such immense size.
A Natural Marvel Like None Other
Two miners working for Industria Peñoles discovered Mexico’s Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) by accident while excavating a new tunnel in 2000. They were amazed by the sight of the natural marvel and its massive crystal structures.
A cavity in the limestone rock, the Cave of Crystals is horseshoe-shaped. It measures approximately 30 feet wide by 90 feet long. Perfectly faceted, crystalline blocks cover the floor. Massive crystal beams jut out from both the floor and walls, creating a prismatic effect.
According to Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, from the University of Granada in Spain, “There is no other place on the planet where the mineral world reveals itself in such beauty.”
Journey to the Center of Crystal Cave
Yet, it would take years of scientific study before researchers determined how the giant-sized crystals grew. García-Ruiz and a team of researchers have labored away in the inhospitable environment of the cave for answers. Their working conditions proved brutal.
Temperatures in the cave reach upwards of 136 degrees Fahrenheit with 90 to 99 percent humidity. If that isn’t bad enough, the air in the caves is acidic. And, of course, there are no natural sources of light.
While these peculiar conditions have been ideal for generating crystals of epic proportions, they’re downright dangerous for researchers. As a result, García-Ruiz and his team wear special cooling suits each time they enter the cave. They also strictly adhered to no more than 45 minutes inside.
The Mystery of the Gigantic Crystals Solved
After studying tiny pockets of fluid trapped inside the crystals, García-Ruiz and his team concluded that the geological formations thrived for one reason: the strange environment of the cave. They remained submerged in mineral-rich water at the constant temperature of just below 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
CC: Alexander Van Driessche
About 26 million years ago, volcanic activity birthed Naica. It also filled the mountain with high-temperature anhydrite, a building block of crystals. Anhydrite is the anhydrous (lacking in water) form of gypsum. At 136 degrees Fahrenheit, anhydrite is stable. Below that temperature, it transforms into gypsum.
García-Ruiz and his team hypothesize that when the magma beneath the mountain started to cool, the temperature dropped. As a result, the anhydrite began to dissolve. As it slowly enriched the waters with calcium and sulfate molecules, these minerals deposited in the cave as giant selenium gypsum crystals.
An Ancient Masterpiece
As García-Ruiz notes, “There is no limit to the size a crystal can reach.” That said, the conditions to support such massive growth had to remain consistent for thousands of years. Just below the anhydrite-gypsum transition temperature. Researchers now believe the largest crystals inside the cave took more than 500,000 years to form.
Of course, the only reason humans have recently had access to the caves is because of the mining activity beneath Naica Mountain. It involves pumping the caves of their subterranean waters. The Naica mining complex contains some of the largest deposits of silver, lead, and zinc on the planet.
How to Preserve the Cave of the Crystals
How to preserve the Cave of Crystals has left the mining company in a quandary. If they stop mining operations and allow the caves to refill, then the crystals will again enjoy the ideal conditions for growth. If the caves remain drained, however, visitors can see these marvelous formations firsthand.
At present, the caves are closed to all but members of the scientific community. This decision is based on a variety of factors, including the cave’s extreme conditions. Without cooling suits, people who enter the mine could perish in a matter of minutes from overheating. However, it’s possible to see one of the crystals extracted from the cave, a 32-inch Selenite formation, at the Astro Gallery in New York City.
By Engrid Barnett, contributor for Ripleys.com
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Piecing Together The History Of Tetris
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Believe It or Not!, Tetris has been played by at least a billion people worldwide. It’s simple, straightforward, and even rookie videogame players can figure out its basic principles. Flip, fit, and repeat. But, it’s that “repeat” step that makes this game highly addictive, not just taking the world by storm in the 80s and 90s, but having an impact on quite a few interesting things from your sleep to the songwriter you can blame for Cats.
“Tetra,” the prefix for the number four, representing the corners of each block, plus “Tennis” equals “Tetris.” Tennis was Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov’s favorite game. The software engineer created Tetris in 1984 while working at a government-run research and development arm of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Nothing about that job sounds “fun,” but “fun” is why Pajitnov created the game.
Once he showed his new game to his co-workers, they were hooked. He was onto something, and the game was quickly shared and spread across Moscow on floppy disks. With private business illegal in the Soviet Union, Pajitnov was nervous about what his superiors might do if he attempted to make Tetris into a commercial piece of software. One of these disks made their way to Hungary, where it ended up on display at the Hungarian Institute of Technology, catching the attention of software company owner Robert Stein from the UK.
Stein tracked down Pajitnov in Moscow, but ultimately the game’s fate lay in the hands of a new Soviet agency, Elektronorgtechnica (or ELORG). They licensed the game to Stein, who licensed it to distributors, then other messy licensing deals for handheld devices and coin-op machines ensued with big companies like Mirrorsoft, Atari, Sega, and Nintendo. A lot of money changed hands, but Pajitnov wasn’t privy to missing out on approximately $40 million.
The game took off and its addictive qualities were very apparent. But, why? The addictiveness of Tetris is due to something called the Zeigarnik Effect. In the 1930s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed that a waitress had the ability to remember a dozen orders but immediately forgot all that information as soon as the orders were completed. She concluded that the human brain is hardwired to store up incomplete tasks, and then dispose of those memories once they’re no longer useful. Tetris continually creates unfinished tasks, holding the player’s attention. Each action only solves a fraction of the puzzle, and then once a row is full, they disappear—a consistent and never-ending cycle.
The game also naturally appeals to the problem-solving part of our brains, which is why avid players tend to have Tetris dreams. This has been dubbed the “Tetris Effect” or “Tetris Syndrome”. Players who game for extensive periods often begin seeing Tetris shapes not only in their sleep but sometimes in the world around as well. In both scenarios, they begin to imagine how to clear these falling shapes by fitting them together. Real-life Tetris that they can’t turn off.
The side-effects of Tetris Syndrome seem to be harmless, however, some scientists have claimed that there may be several benefits from playing Tetris. These range from helping patients recover from post-traumatic stress, helping smokers quit nicotine, to suggestions that Tetris strengthens a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex. It’s also thought that Tetris can improve spatial awareness in those who play it regularly.
Decades since Pajitnov developed Tetris, it’s still one of the most popular games in the world, available for just about every system and platform imaginable—from phones to gaming consoles. But the popularity of this game didn’t stop there! Musical theater legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, had a top 10 Tetris-related hit.
Webber, the man behind The Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, and, of course, Cats, released a dance remix called “Tetris” in 1992. It reached number two on the UK charts!
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Quarantine Drives Man To Take His Cat’s Paw In Marriage
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This Week
[May 17-23rd, 2020] Marital duels, cuddle curtains, cat weddings, and the rest of the week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Watch Ripley’s Weird News Happy Hour from RipleysBelieveItorNot on www.twitch.tv
And the Corrugated Crowd Goes Wild!
The Korean Baseball Organization kicked its season off this month after a five-week delay due to the coronavirus. With fans safely supporting from home, some stadiums have resorted to strange ways to fill seats. Supporters of South Korea’s NC Dinos can be present via life-sized cardboard cut-outs of themselves in the stands. The club said more than 60 fans participated, sending their own pictures in and even pics of their pets. With Major League Baseball on hold, you can now catch KBO cut-outs on ESPN.
the KBO has cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands and it’s kind of genius
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