AFF | Awesome Fun Facts

Myth: Duck’s quacks and wolf’s howls don’t echo.
First, it was commonly held that a duck’s quack didn’t echo. The earliest place I could find where this myth was debunked was by Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope in 1998. In his experiment, he and a few others took a duck to a place where it was easy to produce echoes and made the duck quack (after quite a bit of work as it didn’t want to quack at first). Sure enough, when it finally did quack, it echoed just as well as any other sound.
This myth was once again debunked, this time in a much more scientific manner, in 2003 by a team of researchers at the University of Salford. Not to be left out, Myth Busters threw their significantly less scientific hat in the ring, later that same year, and once again showed that a duck’s quack does indeed echo.
According to acoustic expert Professor Trevor Cox, who was part of the aforementioned 2003 Salford University study, this myth probably arose from the fact that the manor in which a duck quacks, with a long “aaaaaccckkkkk” at the end, often masks any echoes that are produced, making them harder to distinguish from the echo. So basically, as a duck is quacking and the sound is echoing and fading away, it simply sounds like one big long quack, instead of a quack and an echo, as you actually may be hearing.
Once that myth was thoroughly debunked, a new one popularly popped up, this time courtesy of the Animal Planet in 2003. In a show where they were touting “50 facts you never knew about animals”, they dropped the gem “A wolf’s howl doesn’t echo”. Presumably the person in charge of coming up with those “facts” ran out of interesting things to say, so just started making some up.
This is, of course, false. All sounds will echo, given the right environment, namely: a good medium with which to reflect off of that is close enough where the sound is still audible when reflected back and also far enough away that the echo is perceptible (must be a delay of over 1/10th a second for the human ear/brain to distinguish it from the original sound).
This myth was popularly spread, courtesy of the above show on Animal Planet in 2003, shortly after the debunking of the duck quack/echo myth. The previous origins of the wolf howl/echo myth probably come from the fact that wolves often howl in the forest. The forest doesn’t provide a good medium for producing echoes. Rather, sound tends to get absorbed, rather than reflected. Also, it could come from the fact that, when you are close enough to a wolf to be able to discern an echo from the source, you probably aren’t paying a lot of attention to echoes and the like. If you are not close enough, due to the way the wolf howls, you are very likely to think you are hearing multiple wolves, instead of just one. Put a wolf in a canyon or near a rock face and their howls echo just as well as any other sound.
In fact, wolves actually use this reverberation as a defense mechanism. They will often howl in wavering or modulated tones, rapidly changing the pitch. They use this trick to make neighboring packs, or anything else nearby they perceive as a threat, think there are more of them than there are. In this case, a few wolves in a small pack will howl all at the same time changing pitches very rapidly. This, combined with potential reverberation, will often make an enemy think there are more of them and, with the echoes, often that there are wolves all around.
During the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant once observed this when he reported thinking there were 20 or more wolves surrounding him, only to find out that it was just two wolves that were in front of him that changed their pitch rapidly; the echoes coming from all around him made it seem like he was surrounded.
So next time you hear anyone say “X animal’s howl/quack/cry/chirp/etc doesn’t echo”, it is a lie. All sounds echo. There is such a thing as destructive interference where colliding waveforms cancel each other out, but the odds of any animal being able to produce this effect with any regularity in varied environments is exactly zero.
Bonus Facts:

• Sound travels at about 1100 ft/s. So if you are standing next to the source of the sound and you hear the echo 2 seconds later, the sound is being reflected off something about 1100 ft away (one second there, one second back). About the closest echo that is humanly perceptible will be around 50-ish feet away. This number varies somewhat based on various factors, but that’s a good ball park number.
• The word “echo”, as we use it, comes from Greek mythology. Echo was a Nymph whose job it was to talk to Hera constantly while Zeus was having affairs, thus distracting Hera. When Hera found out, she cursed Echo to only be able to repeat what someone else had said, thus, the word “echo”.
• Wolves take howling very seriously. For instance, if lower ranking wolves in a pack (usually young ones) choose to join in on the howling at inappropriate times, they are punished severely for this, as it may put the whole pack in danger.
• Wolves often howl during a hunt to coordinate their efforts, such as to communicate where the thing hunted is or where each member of the rest of the pack is at any given moment. During a hunt, they are often all spread out over great distances. The typical low pitch and long duration of a wolf’s howl produces sound waves that are well suited for transmitting sound at great distances through even dense forests.
• The wolves also use their howls to help locate one another when they are lost or in an unfamiliar environment. Whenever a wolf is separated from their pack, they will typically begin howling right away to try to locate the pack as well as to let the rest of the pack know where they are. The problem, of course, is that neighboring packs also hear this howl and recognize the wolf howling as being outside of their pack. This is one of the reasons that the primary cause of death among wolves is being killed by other wolf packs. This is why, once the wolf knows where the rest of its pack is, unless it’s on a hunt or the like, it will typically stop howling. Also, even if it is on a hunt, if it detects an enemy pack nearby, it will stop howling and attempt to quietly slip off before it is noticed or located.
• On the flip side, young pups will howl at anything and will howl often. They haven’t yet learned to recognize the howls of their own pack, so respond to any howl they here. They also don’t realize the danger inherent in letting others know exactly where they are.
• Wolves never howl at the moon. As noted, howling can be dangerous for them, so they only do it when they must, for communication; finding out where they are, relative to the pack; and for scaring away potential threats.

That depends on what is meant by “seen” and “space” because the definitions of each determine whether or not the Great Wall of China can be seen from the heavens above.
First, let’s look at whether the Great Wall of China be seen by the unaided eye from space.  If we consider “space” to be a low Earth orbit–90 miles to 300 miles–it is possible for the Great Wall of China to be seen with the unaided eye… barely. Visibility of the Wall from this distance highly depends on ideal weather and lighting conditions.  The angle of the sun and the shadows produced by the Wall play a role in the visibility of the structure due to the fact that the eye most easily detects contrasting colors, especially from a distance. Visibility also depends on a person’s eyesight and whether or not he/she knows exactly where to look. Even then, only sections of the Wall may be visible. Since the Wall is made from stone, rock, and packed earth, it is similar in color to the soil surrounding it. Therefore, the structure can be extremely difficult to distinguish from its surroundings if searching for from space.
Since the Wall is very difficult to see from this distance, and because it is not the only landmark visible from within a low Earth orbit, it is easy for astronauts to mistake it for something else.  For instance, several astronauts claimed to have seen the Wall from Earth’s orbit, but it was later determined that what they actually saw was a river or the Grand Canal of China. So, yes, under perfect conditions, parts of the Great Wall of China are visible from a low Earth orbit, but it’s extremely difficult to distinguish and you need great eye-site. So practically speaking for most people and in most conditions the answers is no, but technically speaking, yes.
Obviously, if the idea of seeing the Great Wall of China from space is not limited to the unaided human eye, and a person uses the assistance of some sort of telescopic lens (binoculars/camera/satellite/etc.), then the likelihood of seeing the Wall from within a low Earth’s orbit, increases dramatically.
Now, if we consider space to mean a distance greater than the Earth’s orbit, like from the Moon, the answer for whether or not the Great Wall of China can be seen from space with the naked eye changes to a definitive “no”, despite what was often reported in the early 20th century. Since the Wall is barely visible from a low Earth orbit of 90 to 300 miles and the moon is located more than 225,000 miles from the Earth, it is impossible to see the Great Wall of China with the unaided eye from this distance. Some say viewing the Wall from the moon is like trying to see a single hair from two miles away. Astronaut Alan Bean is quoted as saying: “The only thing you can see from the moon is a beautiful sphere, mostly white, some blue, patches of yellow, and every once in a while some green vegetation. No man-made object is visible on this scale. In fact, when first leaving Earth’s orbit and only a few thousand miles away, no man-made object is visible at that point either.”
For many years before humans actually went to space, people believed the Great Wall of China was visible from space and that it was the only man-made structure visible from within a low Earth orbit. The origins of the myth are a little sketchy to determine, but one of the most notable sources supporting this theory was Richard Halliburton’s book, Second Book of Marvels – The Orient. The book was published in 1938 and stated: “Astronomers say that the Great Wall is the only man-made thing on our planet visible to the human eye from the moon.” Another source that supported the theory was Henry Norman’s, The People and the Politics of the Far East, from 1904: “Besides its age [the Great Wall of China] enjoys the reputation of being the only work of human hands on the globe visible from the moon.”
Considering the monumental event of sending the first person into space didn’t occur until 1961, no one could actually attest to whether or not the Wall could be seen from space before this, and people probably shouldn’t have accepted the theory so easily. However, given the size of the Great Wall of China (5,500 miles long, though with gaps, and 15-30 feet wide), it was probably easy for people to imagine such a large and significant structure being visible from hundreds and thousands of miles above Earth’s surface.  But once people started actually going to space and started searching for it, the myth was proved more or less false unless blessed by ideal conditions and eyesight.
Bonus Facts:

• In Chinese, the Great Wall of China is called “Wan-Li Qang-Qeng” meaning 10,000-Li Long Wall.
• The Great Wall of China is not actually one great wall like one might think, given its name. It is actually sections of individual walls joined together over time. The first sections of the wall were constructed during the Qin Dynasty between 221-206 BC. Through time, more sections of wall were built until they connected to form the Great Wall of China.
• The Great Wall of China was originally built to defend the Celestial Empire from enemies.
• The Great Wall of China is approximately 5,500 miles long, spanning from Shanhaiguan in east China to Lop Lake in west China. It consists of 3,890 miles of actual wall sections, 224 miles of trenches, and 1,387 miles of nature’s defenses including hills and rivers.
• During the next 20 years, more than 37 miles of the Wall is expected to erode away due to sandstorms in the Gansu province. Sections of the wall built from mud are more likely to erode than sections built from brick and stone.
• Rumor has it that nearly one million people lost their lives building the Wall.
• China has long prided itself on the supposed truth of the myth that the Wall can be seen from space. When Yang Liwei, the first Chinese person in space, stated he did not see the Wall in his 21.5 hour trip to space in 2003 when he orbited the Earth, China’s Ministry of Education decided to revise elementary school textbooks to remove the inaccurate information.

When Neil Armstrong set his left boot on the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969, becoming the first person to ever walk on the moon. He then spoke some of the most famous words in the history of mankind, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
So true, so brilliant, so inspirational yet…so contradicting? The word “man” and “mankind” are used synonymously, meaning that the oh-so-famous quote quite simply put was, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for man.” Huh?
A one-lettered indefinite article is all it would take to turn this quote into the inspirational words our brains all process when we hear them. That article is “a”- “One small step for “a” man, one giant leap for mankind.” That is how most people interpret his words and, according to Neil Armstrong, those are the words he intended to speak.
NASA’s official transcript of the quote still shows the “a” in parentheses, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” This is because the “a” is not audible in the broadcast. For years, both NASA and Armstrong insisted that static had obscured the “a”. Armstrong himself stated that he would never make such a mistake (omitting such an important part) but after listening to recordings of his quote, finally conceded that it’s possible that he may not have said the “a”. When he admitted this, he stated, “I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been”.
An Australia-based computer programmer named Pater Shann Ford conducted a digital audio analysis to support Armstrong’s claim that he did say “a” and concluded that he did, in fact, say “a man”, but the “a” was inaudible due to technological limitations of the time. However, linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote their own digital audio analysis of the infamous quote on Language Log blog and concluded that, “The acoustic evidence seems to be against Ford’s theory.”
But that’s not the end of the story. Support for Armstrong  has been found in a team of researchers from Michigan State University and Ohio State University who have concluded that Armstrong did indeed speak the words he claims to have spoken but static or technological limitations are not to blame for its apparent omission.  According to them, Armstrong’s Ohion accent is to blame y’all.
According to a Michigan State University specialist in communicative sciences, assistant professor Laura Diller, because of the dialect of his hometown, if Neil Armstrong did voice the word “a”, it was short and fully acoustically blended with the preceding word “for”.
The Acoustical Society of America’s article on this topic states that,

Dilley and her colleagues, who include MSU linguist Melissa Baese-Berk and OSU psychologist Mark Pitt, thought they might be able to figure out what Armstrong said with a statistical analysis of the duration of the ‘r’ sound as spoken by native central Ohioans saying ‘for’ and ‘for a’ in natural conversation. They used a collection of recordings of conversational speech from 40 people raised in Columbus, Ohio, near Armstrong’s native town of Wapakoneta. Within this body of recordings, they found 191 cases of ‘for a’. They matched each of these to an instance of ‘for’ as said by the same speaker and compared the relative duration. They also examined the duration of Armstrong’s ‘for (a’) from the lunar transmission.
The researchers found a large overlap between the relative duration of the ‘r’ sound in ‘for’ and ‘for a’ using the Ohio speech data. The duration of the ‘frrr(uh)’ in Armstrong’s recording was 0.127 seconds, which falls into the middle of this overlap, though it is a slightly better match for an ‘a’-less ‘for’. In other words, the researchers conclude, the lunar landing quote is highly compatible with either possible interpretation, though it is probably slightly more likely to be perceived as ‘for’ regardless of what Armstrong actually said. Dilley says there may have been a ‘perfect storm of conditions’ for the word ‘a’ to have been spoken but not heard.

Bonus Neil Armstrong Facts:

• While he was studying for his aeronautical engineering, the Korean War broke out, in which he flew 78 combat missions. He was just 20 years old when he was made a naval aviator. His plane was shot by anti-aircraft fire once, while in a low-height armed reconnaissance flight, but he managed to escape, leaving the wreckage behind. In recognition of his bravery and skill, he won Air Medals for 20 air missions.
• He got his flight certificate at the age of 16, before he could even get his driver’s license
• He went on his first space mission on March 16, 1966 as the command pilot of Gemini VIII. He docked the Gemini VIII successfully with an unmanned Agena target craft. Although the docking was smooth enough, while the spacecrafts were together, they started to roll. Armstrong then managed to undock the Gemini, and regained control of the spacecraft by using the retro rockets. However, this resulted in the astronauts having to make an emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean.
• Neil Alden Armstrong died on August 25, 2012, at the age of 82 in Cincinnati, Ohio due to complications from coronary artery bypass surgery

There are several different types of birthmarks. What causes them is an excess of pigment cells (Melanoctyes), or an excess of blood vessels confined to one area of the skin.  Birthmarks caused by an excess of pigment in certain areas of the skin are known as pigmented birthmarks. The color of your skin is a result of the amount of melanin in the bottom layer of your epidermis. When there is an abnormal level of melanin per square millimeter of skin, the resulting color creates a visible mark on the skins surface. These marks come in three different classifications. Congenital Melanocytic Nevus (which is a type of mole), Café-au-lait spots, and Mongolian Spots (known as Dermal Melanocytosis).
Moles (known as nevi) are usually brown or black, can be either large or small, both raised and flat. They can appear anywhere on the body and almost everyone seems to have a few. (ah the sexy marks of Cindy Crawford) Any mole that is present at birth is considered a type of birthmark. The moles that can develop later in life are not (seems common sense). Some types of moles will fade away over time and most come with no complications. The moles present at birth, however, are thought to be more likely than others to someday become cancerous. So should your birthmark begin to change shape, color or size, or begin to take on a life of its own, get it checked! No one likes skin cancer!
Café-au-lait spots (French for “Coffee with milk”) are usually oval-shaped and create a darker area of your skin. Should you be lighter toned, this area will usually be light brown. For the darker folks, the spot will usually be black. These types of birthmarks generally create no problems and, like a bad tattoo, will usually fade over time, but won’t go away completely.
Mongolian Spots are flat bluish to bluish gray skin markings that commonly appear at the base of the spine, the buttocks, back and on the shoulders. These are common among darker skinned peoples, such as Asian, East Indian, and African and are benign and not associated with any conditions or illnesses. They are thought to be due to the entrapment of melanocytes in the dermis that have failed to reach their proper location in the epidermis of a developing fetus. Typically these marks will disappear by age 4.
Birthmarks caused by an excess of blood vessels confined to one area of the skin are known as vascular birthmarks. They also come in three different types: Macular stains (also known as salmon patches), Hemangiomas, and Port-wine stains.
Macular stains are the most common types of vascular birthmarks and can sometimes be called “angel’s kisses” when appearing on the forehead, eyelids, nose or upper lip.  These types of birthmarks are small, flat and red or pink. They do usually go away within a few years, but some are known to last in to adulthood. Luckily, they don’t cause problems or need to be treated, because who wants to tell their child that they have to wipe off their angels kiss?
Port-wine stains (naevus flammeus) are named for their maroon-colored wine appearance. They are present at birth (obviously or they wouldn’t be called birthmarks) and usually appear on the face or head. The mark itself grows as the child grows. Unlike other types of birthmarks, they do not go away and become thicker and darker red or purple as the person ages. Once into adulthood the marks can develop bumps or nodules that will bleed should you decide to poke at them too hard. Mikhail Gorbechev had a port-wine stain that became famous, if only because most of the industrialized world wanted to scrape it off his head!
The last type of vascular birthmark is known as Hemangiomas (Greek for “blood vessel tumor”). There are two types, superficial and deep. The superficial are close to the surface of the skin and are usually a vibrant strawberry red, thus their nickname as “strawberry mark”. The deep Hemangiomas tend to be bluish-purple because the abnormal blood vessels are deeper under the surface of the skin. These types are likely to show up after birth, grow large and bulge in the first 9 months. Whether deep or superficial, most usually start to shrink after the first year and 90% are gone by age 10. For the most part they leave minimal or no visible marks. Larger hemangiomas however can leave visible skin changes due to the severe stretching of the tissue or damage to surface texture. If treatment is preferred, there are several options, such as steroid therapy and beta blockers like propranolol. If instant gratification is more your speed then laser treatment and good old fashioned surgery also can be considered.
Birthmarks are just that, marks on the body at birth. Since most seem to go away on their own, those of us born with these evolutionary blemishes will not have our egos permanently scarred. Should you be one of the unlucky individuals whose marks stay throughout their life, take comfort in the knowledge that at least you’re not the leader of a large country whose legacy in life will be more for his water-colored head then his deeds as a person.
Bonus Facts:

• Birthmarks are called voglie in Italian, antojos in Spanish, and wiham in Arabic; all of which translate to “wishes” because, according to folklore, they are caused by unsatisfied wishes of the mother during pregnancy.
• Hemangiomas occur 5 times more often in females than in males and occur predominantly in Caucasians. Lowbirth weight infants (less than 2.2 pounds) have a 26%chance of developing a hemangioma.
• On average, each adult has about 30 moles. The number of moles and liver spots are an indication of the risk of skin cancer: those who have more than 50 of them, are more susceptible to the disease.
• 1 in 10 children are born with a vascular birthmark. Of those, one percent of them will require medical intervention.
• It was once widely believed that the expectant mother’s mental state not only caused vascular birthmarks, but also influenced their shape and location. For example, should a pregnant woman crave or eat excessive amounts of strawberries, her child might have a vascular birthmark resembling a strawberry. Should she be startled by something and touch her face in fright, a vascular birthmark would appear in the same place on her infant’s face.

Lina Medina was born on September 27^th, 1933 in Ticrapo, Peru. At age 5, her mother, Victoria, brought her to a hospital because her stomach was increasing in size. Her parents originally thought Lina was possessed by evil spirits, but upon examining her, Dr. Geraldo Lozada found she was approximately 8 months pregnant. A month and a half after her diagnosis, on May 14, 1939, Lina gave birth via caesarian section to a baby boy.
Lina was able to become pregnant at such a young age due to a rare condition known as precocious puberty, basically, an early onset of sexual development. Most girls begin showing signs of puberty around 10 years old. The majority of boys tend to go through puberty starting around the age of 11-12. People with precocious puberty tend to begin puberty around the age 7. Shockingly, according to her mother, Lina, on the other hand, began having menstrual cycles at age 2 ½ and her breasts were developed by age 4. When the doctors examined her at age 5, she was found to already have fully mature sexual organs.
Lina Medina’s son, Gerardo, was named after Lina’s doctor and grew up believing that his mother was his sister. It wasn’t until the age of 10 that he found out who his mother really was. He died in 1979 at 40 years old of a bone marrow disease. Lina never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. According to a 1955 article reviewing the case, done by Luis Leon of the Associated Press, “Some pointed out there were frequent festivities celebrated by Indians in Andean villages, like the one where Lina was born. These often ended up in orgies in which rape was not uncommon.”
While this is hardly something one would want to hold the record for, for a so many reasons, it would seem that Lina is unlikely to lose this record any time soon (or one would at least hope so!)  So, for now, the current record for youngest human being to give birth to another is 5 years, 7 months, and 17 days, which means she was probably impregnated a month or two before her fifth birthday.  Disturbing…

Bonus Facts

• At age 70, Rajo Devi Lohan became the oldest person to ever give birth to a child.  Eighteen months later she announced that she was dying from complications from the pregnancy.
• There are several theories as to what factors might cause precocious puberty, such as: increased caloric intake; foods rich in artificial hormones; and various environmental factors like pesticides, such as DDT. Most recently, researchers have pinpointed a gene (a protein called GPR54) that regulates puberty.  Mutations in this gene have been shown to cause deviations in sexual development.
• Precocious puberty in boys, defined as development before age 9, is quite rare (1 in 10,000 in the United States), but when it does occur is often associated with central nervous system problems that need treatment.
• A study done in Denmark from 1993-2001 showed that the incidence of precocious puberty in girls less than 2 years of age was 0.5 per 10,000. From this first epidemiological study based on national registries, it was estimated that 0.2% of all Danish girls and <0.05% of Danish boys had some form of precocious pubertal development.
• According to the American Medical Association, sexual violence and rape in particular, is considered the most under-reported violent crime.
• A 2007 government report from England says “Estimates from research suggest that between 75 and 95 per cent of rape crimes are never reported to the police.” The most common reasons given by victims for not reporting rapes are the belief that it is a personal or private matter and that they fear retaliation from the assailant.
• It is estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read. The South African Police Service readily admits that even though there is now a greater awareness of the problem, more stringent penalties, and better policing, the vast majority of rapes and attempted rapes still go unreported and unpunished.
• Wednesday has more births on average than any other day of the week, 15.4% more then any other day. Sunday is the slowest day.
• C-Sections account for 31.1% of all births in the United States, rising 50% over the last decade.  Induced labor accounts for 22.5% of births in the U.S.

Indeed, according to Dr. John Guillebaud in his book Contraception: Your Questions Answered, some of the lowest birth rates in history pop up around cultures whose primary method of contraception is the pull and pray method.
This method, also known as “Coitus Interruptus” or the “withdrawal method”, was once one of the most popular methods of preventing pregnancy, but in recent times has been cast aside in many cultures.  It turns out though, as long as you get the “pull” part right, there really isn’t much praying necessary.  According to research done in 2008 at the Guttmacher Institute in New York, the withdrawal method, when executed perfectly, is 96% effective for preventing pregnancy.  For comparison, using a condom, when done perfectly, is 98% effective and oral contraception has a “perfect use” rate of 99.7% effective.
Now this is when all three methods are done “perfectly”, so what about in actual practice with everyday people?  The pull and pray method is roughly 82% effective while using a condom is roughly 83% effective, so you are only getting a 1% improvement for your money and effort.  The pill, in contrast, does offer a much better “actual use” rate of about 96%.
So what gives?  Why is withdrawal working just as well as condoms?  It turns out that, according to recent studies, pre-ejaculate almost never contains any sperm.  The few times sperm did show up in the studies, they tended to be immobile and clumped together, so basically dead or completely incapable of impregnating anything.  This is because the only way sperm can get into the pre-ejaculate is if it was already in the urethra from a previous ejaculation, due to the fact that the Cowper’s gland contains no sperm.  Thus, as long as the man has either peed since the last time he ejaculated or it has simply been a while since that time, which probably means he’s peed at some point anyways,  the withdrawal method is extremely effective as a birth control method.
It’s also arguably easier to execute this method “perfectly”, achieving closer to the 96% effective rate, than it is with condoms, with the failure rate of condoms typically coming from the condom breaking.  The primary cause of failure with the pull and pray method lies in the cases where the person executes the praying part perfectly, after the fact, but didn’t manage the “pull” part of the method, which is of course the most important bit; though on failure of that, the praying probably doesn’t hurt.
Bonus Facts:

• Worldwide about 3% of couples rely on the withdrawal method as their primary means of contraception, though almost 52% of women report that they have used the withdrawal method at some point in their lives and among the surveyed 21% said they had used this withdrawal method in the last month.
• Previous to the Roman Empire, evidence suggests that the withdrawal method was the primary form of contraception used.  This fell out of popularity with the Romans who favored other methods available at the time, most of which have been lost to history.  After the fall of the Roman Empire around the 400s, all methods of contraception fell out of practice in the western world due to Christianity who saw it as sinful.  Around the 1800s, however, the withdrawal method saw a huge resurgence and was the primary form of contraception in the world until methods such as the condom and the pill were introduced in the 20th century.
• The oldest documented use of the withdrawal method to avoid pregnancy was the story of Onan in the Torah, believed to have been written around 2500 years ago.

Myth: Helen Keller was born blind and deaf.
In fact, Helen Keller was born able to see and hear just fine and continued to be able to do so until she was about one and a half years old. At that time, she became sick with some type of illness. What that particular illness was isn’t entirely known. However, it is thought that it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis, with the symptoms being described as “an acute congestion of the stomach and brain”. Whatever the case, after she recovered her health, unfortunately, she now couldn’t hear or see.
Another common myth is that she had no way of communicating with her family until her teacher arrived around her seventh birthday. In fact, she had a very limited communication method involving about 60 home signs that she used, mostly in communicating with Martha Washington, who was the child of the Keller family’s cook and was Keller’s playmate.
In 1886, when Keller was six years old, her mother read Charles Dickens’ American Notes, which were accounts of his travels through North America in 1842. The particular bit of those writings that intrigued her was a part about a deaf-blind woman that was successfully educated, something she had previously thought wouldn’t be possible. She then sought to find a teacher for her daughter. Her search eventually led her to famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time was a teacher of deaf children (incidentally, his wife and mother were both deaf). Bell then recommended Helen’s parents to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, in South Boston. Once there, a 20 year old visually impaired woman by the name of Anne Sullivan was asked to become Keller’s instructor and eventually governess and constant companion. Their relationship lasted in this way for nearly 50 years.
Bonus Facts:

• Despite being deaf and blind, Keller managed to learn to speak and could even read lips by touching people’s lips as they spoke. She could also similarly “read” sign language with her hands, as well as use it to communicate with other deaf people. Her ability to speak particularly aided her as she would frequently give various lectures and speeches as an adult. She also became an accomplished writer.
• Helen Keller’s father at one time was a captain in the Confederate army. Further, her grandmother on her father’s side was the second cousin of Robert E. Lee. On top of that, her grandfather on her mother’s side, Charles Adams, was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.
• Keller also had an ancestor from Zurich, Switzerland that was the first teacher of deaf people in Zurich.
• At the age of 30, Keller’s eyes were removed and replaced with glass eye-balls. The motivation behind this was primarily cosmetic and was at the encouragement of her family as, while one of her eyes looked normal, the other bulged out significantly, marring an otherwise reasonably attractive face. For this reason, most pictures of Keller before the operation were taken from the side, hiding her bulging eye.
• The first thing Anne Sullivan taught Keller was the word “doll”. When she arrived in 1887 at the Keller’s home, she brought the gift of a doll for Helen. She then placed it in her one hand, while tracing the letters of the word doll in Keller’s other hand repeatedly. The learning process was exceptionally slow at first, because Keller didn’t really understand things like objects having names and the like. After around a month, though, when she realized the tracings on her hands were indicating the name of what was in her other hand, she immediately became like a sponge for information and didn’t like to take any breaks, but wanted to know the names of everything around her.
• Keller was good friends with Mark Twain, the two having originally met when she was 16. Twain played a key role in her life, introducing her to Henry Huttleston Rogers, an extremely successful self made business man, making his millions when the oil industry began to boom. At the encouragement of Twain, Huttleston saw to it that Keller had plenty of money for her education, which allowed her to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a degree. He also gave her a monthly stipend throughout most of her life.
• Interestingly, Huttleston Rogers was a descendant of Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower. Not only that, but his childhood sweetheart, who eventually became his wife, was also descended from Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower.
• Besides being a close friend of Mark Twain’s, Rogers was also extremely close friends with famed African American leader and teacher, Booker T. Washington. The two’s friendship was originally kindled after Rogers saw a speech given by Washington in 1894 in Madison Square Garden. After that point, Washington frequently guested with Rogers in Rogers’ 85 room mansion and on Rogers’ yacht. Through this friendship, Rogers was inspired to fund around 65 schools for African Americans, as well as providing much of the funding for the Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes.
• Mark Twain wasn’t Keller’s only famed correspondent. She also met every U.S. President between Grover Cleveland and Lyndon B. Johnson. She also became friends with Alexander Graham Bell and Charlie Chaplin. Further, she frequently corresponded with famed Austrian philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem, who encouraged her writing talent.
• Keller wrote 12 books in her lifetime, along with a series of articles on various topics. Interestingly, the first story she ever wrote at the age of 11 was called “The Frost King” and was extremely similar to the story The Frost Fairies, by Margaret Canby, despite the fact that she had only been exposed to this story as a baby, which she didn’t consciously remember.
• Keller eventually suffered a series of strokes beginning in 1961, which stopped most all of her public appearances. She died on June 1, 1968 in her sleep. She was cremated with her ashes placed beside her two great friends and constant companions through life, her teacher Anne Sullivan, and her later friend and caretaker Polly Thompson.
• Four years before her death, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Keller with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. One year later, she was elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
• Other famous deaf-blind people include: Sanzan Tani, who by the time he reached adulthood was fully deaf and blind, though he overcame this and continued to function as a teacher; Laura Bridgman, who was the first American child to be fully educated around 50 years before Keller; Robert Smithdas, who became the first deaf-blind person to receive a Master’s degree, specializing in vocational guidance and rehabilitation of the handicapped and for a time worked with Helen Keller; and Heinrich Landesmann, who was an Austrian poet and philosopher, who developed a form of tactile signing that now is named after him.
• Robert Smithdas is actually still alive today, only retiring in 2008 at the age of 83 years old. Interestingly, his wife Michelle is also deaf-blind. This leads one to wonder how exactly the two do things like locate one another in their home; presumably, something to do with using vibrations in the floor or the like. In any case, it would be fascinating to read about such things as this concerning the two.
• Like Keller, Laura Bridgman was also born fully able to use her vision and hearing. However, while only two years old, her family contracted scarlet fever, which resulted in the death of her two sisters and brother. It further left her not only blind and deaf, but also without the ability to taste or smell. She was soon very rudimentarily taught by a friend of the family, who enjoyed taking her out for walks and the like, though he himself was not able to teach her any language. Interestingly, despite the lack of language in her early years, she became quite skilled at knitting and sewing.
• Perkins School for the Blind is the oldest school for blind people in the United States, being founded in 1829. It was named after one of its founders, who was a very wealthy visually impaired shipping merchant.