{"id":37877,"date":"2014-12-20T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-20T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=37877"},"modified":"2014-12-19T16:30:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-20T00:30:55","slug":"weekly-wrap-volume-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/12\/weekly-wrap-volume-68\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Wrap Volume 68"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\"Clement_Moore\"<\/a>The Anonymous Publishing of \u201cThe Night Before Christmas,\u201d and Other Interesting Christmas Staple Origins<\/a><\/p>\n

On December 23, 1823, the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, better known today as The Night Before Christmas was first published. The poem first appeared in the New York Sentinel with no author listed, having been delivered for publication by a friend of Clement Clarke Moore, who was a professor of Greek and Oriental literature and who is generally considered today to have been the author. Before this poem was published, traditions surrounding St. Nicholas were numerous with no real set, near universally accepted idea of \u201cSanta Claus\u201d like we have today. Elements of the… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"peanut-butter-and-jelly\"<\/a>What Makes Peanut Butter Sticky?<\/a><\/p>\n

Arachibutyrophobia is a proposed humorous name for the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the top of your mouth, coined by Charles M. Schulz in a 1982 edition of his famed Peanuts comic strip. But why does peanut butter have such a tendency to get stuck in your palate when so many other foods don\u2019t? As it so happens, peanut butter contains a perfect storm of ingredients seemingly designed with the express intent of creating a peanut flavoured choking hazard. For starters, peanut butter, shockingly enough, contains a lot of peanut oil, which makes it incredibly difficult for your saliva to perform its normal task of helping in this first stage of processing food; as we all know, oil and water don\u2019t really like…(more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"QF-846\"<\/a>The Connection Between Saddam\u2019s and Hitler\u2019s Bunkers, Why Your Friends are Likely to Have More Friends Than You, and More, in Yet Another 10 Quick Facts<\/a><\/p>\n

Quick Fact 841: If you\u2019ve ever felt like your friends are more popular, happier, and wealthier than you\u2026 well, on average, you\u2019re probably right.\u00a0 This all comes down to something known as the Generalized Friendship Paradox.\u00a0 The Friendship Paradox was first proposed in 1991 by sociologist Scott L. Feld, who demonstrated that your friends, on average, will have more friends than you.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 Because most people have a very small number of friends, but a small percentage of the population has a relatively large number of friends and you are likely to be friends with at least one or more of these super-popular people precisely because they are very popular. Thus, the average number of friends each of your friends has will be more than the number of friends you have. Similarly, your followers on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks will, when averaged, have more followers than you.\u00a0 This has since been shown to also apply to things like the number of sexual partners your partners over your life have had; it will, on average, be more than the number you\u2019ve had.\u00a0 Further, Young-Ho Eom of the University of Toulouse and Hang-Hyun Jo of Aalto University demonstrated mathematically that this also applies to your friends, on average, being wealthier and… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"tiny-tim\"<\/a>What Was Wrong With Tiny Tim?<\/a><\/p>\n

In the well-loved A Christmas Carol (it has never been out-of-print since it was first published in 1843), the protagonist (so to speak) is Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly boss of Bob Cratchit, who lives with his family in poverty while Scrooge enjoys an easy life. One member of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, struggles with a crutch and has iron bars on his legs, but the name of his illness is not given. As the story progresses, Scrooge is visited by four ghosts who show him the error of his miserly ways. During the last of these visitations, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge (among other things) that Tiny Tim has died of his ailments.
\nUltimately… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"now-you-know-answers1-340x286\"<\/a>Is it Safe to Eat Moldy Bread or Moldy Cheese?<\/a><\/p>\n

For the quick answer to your question: no and sometimes. While not all molds are bad for you to eat, many are, and unless you want to whip out a microscope and meticulously identify the mold present on your food (note: there are 300,000 known types and counting), as a general rule it\u2019s better to avoid moldy foods. Not all molds that are bad for you will cause apparent symptoms right away either. For instance, many molds produce Aflatoxin which is a substance that will up your chances of getting cancer and may cause a variety of other health problems for you, though not necessarily right away. That being said, sometimes it is OK to cut off the mold and eat what\u2019s underneath. As to when it\u2019s OK to eat moldy foods and when it\u2019s not… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Bonus<\/span> Quick Facts:<\/strong><\/p>\n