Noise-canceling headsets are having a moment right now, and once you know how it works you’ll appreciate it even more. Microphones in the headset actually pick up low-frequency noise and neutralize it before it reaches the ear by generating a sound that's phase-inverted by 180 degrees to the unwanted noise, The Guardian reports. It basically creates an 'opposite' sound and results in the two sounds canceling each other out!
While many think it’s because of osmosis, this strange phenomenon is actually caused by blood vessels below the skin that constrict, which scientists believe have the evolutionary advantage of making it easier for us to pick up wet objects.
It doesn’t go back as far as people think. In most of the first half of the 20th century, pink was actually assigned to boys, and girls had blue. Jo B. Paoletti, historian and author of the book ‘Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America,’ told Smithsonian that color designations were arbitrary until the 1940s, when manufacturers tried to interpret the preferences of North American consumers.
Menthol, an organic compound in mint, cross-reacts with and decreases your stimulus threshold for cold-sensitive thermoreceptors, so when you breathe in or drink water with mint gum, for example, it feels colder than it really is.
When you hear your own voice, a significant part of the waves hitting your ear are traveling through your skull. When you hear a recording, that aspect is removed, so it sounds shockingly different.
Cats big and small love to climb in a box that can fit them, and apparently they do it to feel safe, so that nothing can sneak up on them. It’s recommended to keep a small space for a pet cat to go when they need some alone time.
The same surface of the Moon always faces toward us because the Moon’s rate of spin is tidally locked with Earth and synchronized with the time it takes to complete one orbit, meaning that the Moon rotates exactly once every time it circles the Earth.
Hiccups might actually be an evolutionary relic from our amphibian ancestors, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The muscles we use to inhale contract while our vocal cords are shut by the tongue, similar to tadpoles when they’re breathing underwater during the stage when they have both lungs and gills. In both humans and amphibians, the hiccup signal also reportedly comes from the brain stem.
The standard color is officially called “national school bus glossy yellow,” and it dates back to a 1939 conference of transportation officials of each state in the US. Yellow was chosen because it’s visible at all hours and the black lettering atop is clear. By 1974 all the school buses in the US met the standard.
As adults, we are well aware we’re not hearing the ocean in a seashell, but it sounds really close. What you’re hearing is actually a result of the seashell’s shape capturing and reflecting ambient noise, amplifying certain frequencies that sound similar to the ambiance of waves.
It has nothing to do with actual cheese, but saying the word cheese makes you appear to smile. It was reportedly mentioned as early as 1943 in a Texas newspaper article.
The tradition of wearing a wedding band on your fourth finger apparently dates back to ancient Egypt, when the ring signified eternity and many believed there was a “delicate nerve” that ran from the ring finger to the heart—which was thought to be the center of our emotions. Ancient Greeks and Romans followed and passed on the tradition as well.
While the ancient Egyptians are credited with inventing the concept of celebrating a birthday, the ancient Greeks took that and added a sweet. They reportedly made Moon-shaped pies to honor Artemis, and added candles to make the cakes glow like the Moon. But in modern mainstream culture, the tradition became popular around the Industrial Revolution when ingredients were easier to acquire.
Bunnies famously do not lay eggs, but the Easter bunny is thought to hearken back to an ancient Anglo-Saxon myth about the fertility goddess Ostara, who changed a bird into a rabbit that then proceeded to lay colored eggs that she presented to children as gifts. At some point, the myth was co-opted by Christians, and it was recorded first in 16th-century German texts.
Blackboards were originally black, back when students would use individual-size painted wood or slate boards. But once teachers needed bigger boards, companies started making them out of steel plates coated with green porcelain-based enamel to be lighter, less fragile, and thus easier to ship.
This seemingly sweet gesture comes from a dark history in medieval England when bakers didn’t have accurate scales and would have rolls or loaves of different sizes—they would be punished if they were accused of cheating people out of their money, so for their own safety they threw in an extra.
The telephone was originally constantly open, like a walkie-talkie, but there was a need to signal when someone wanted to start a conversation. Thomas Edison reportedly suggested that callers say “hello” when they wanted to let the other person know that they were ready to talk. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, is said to have thought "ahoy" would be better.
While we might have tea-stained paper in the past for school projects, the yellowing effect of paper is actually due to oxidation. Being exposed to air and sunlight causes a chemical process that allows paper to absorb more sunlight and darken from white to yellow.
Denim is simply a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile, but we associate it with the color blue because of a special property of blue dye. Unlike other colors’ ability to permeate thread fully, blue dye only stuck to the outside of the threads, meaning that with more wear and washes the color would fade and the threads would loosen, giving it a worn-in and softer effect.
While they seem completely pointless now, they’re a relic of a time in the late 1800s when they were originally a place for men to store their pocket watches. Levi’s first-ever pair of jeans had them, which hit the market in 1879.
Everyone has been blasted with air upon entering a store or restaurant, and it's not to cool you down. It’s actually creating a secondary door made of air that keeps the temperature inside steady by preventing air from leaving or entering. It also prevents bugs and trash from getting swept in.
The fluttery feeling can be nervous or excited, but these feelings in the brain are reportedly interpreted as stress and activate your fight-or-flight adrenaline, which then increases blood flow to the heart, lungs, and muscles. That then decreases blood flow to the gut, which gives you a slightly nauseous sensation.
These blank pages aren’t a mistake or a waste of paper, but actually a result of a common printing process. Pages for books are usually printed on very large sheets of paper—called “signatures”—allowing groups of 8, 16, or 32 pages to be printed together, and subsequently folded and cut. Since most written work doesn’t divide perfectly by eight, there will often be spare pages from the process.
It happens to all of us, yet not many know why. Hair gets its natural color from pigment cells known as melanocytes, which produce chemicals that pass melanin to cells that create keratin (the main ingredient of hair). As you age, your melanocyte cells slow and degrade, causing the keratin to receive less pigment.
The cerebellum in your brain, which monitors motor control, predicts the tickle you try to give yourself and doesn’t bother to set off any alarms because it knows the source and expects the sensation.
Lightning bolts are jagged because the electrical discharge follows the path of least resistance in the air—which is not typically conductive itself—and so depending on the pollutants, temperature, and humidity, the bolt will zigzag its way down the easiest route.
The tracks are filled with specific kinds of stones, or “track ballast,” whose sharp edges interlock with each other and prevent the railroad ties from sliding. They also help bear the load of railway ties, drain water quickly, and inhibit vegetation.
Modern airplanes now have antenna fins on their fuselage that detect signals from ground-based cellular towers or satellites, depending on whether they’re flying over land or water, even 35,000 feet in the air! And because the plane is moving incredibly fast, the antennas are also programmed to detect signals and automatically connect to the nearest tower.
It’s a remarkably bad taste, and it’s apparently the foaming agent, sodium lauryl sulfate, used in most toothpaste, that causes it by dampening sweet receptors in your mouth. The agent also simultaneously destroys phospholipids, which usually make bitter tastes less strong, so you’re getting less sweetness and more bitterness.
Though people these days have all kinds of pets, there’s something special about dogs. It involves a long history of companionship and domestication which experts think dates back over 23,000 years ago in Siberia.
Sources: (Reader’s Digest) (Listverse) (Reddit) (Unbelievable Facts) (The Guardian)
See also: How dogs became man’s best friend
There are so many things in our everyday lives that we take for granted, partly because we don't have time to learn how everything works, and partly because we never had to think too hard about it. But when you start paying attention, you're sure to find many questions and not many answers.
Centuries of developments, technologies, and phenomena have informed the experiences, gadgets, and large-scale cultures of today, and it's absolutely fascinating to try to wrap your head around the reasons why things are the way they are—especially when the answers are so unexpected!
Curious? Click through to see all the things you've ever (or never) wondered about, explained.
Mind-blowing answers to things you’ve always wondered about
And explanations for the things you haven’t even thought of yet!
LIFESTYLE Curiosities
There are so many things in our everyday lives that we take for granted, partly because we don't have time to learn how everything works, and partly because we never had to think too hard about it. But when you start paying attention, you're sure to find many questions and not many answers.
Centuries of developments, technologies, and phenomena have informed the experiences, gadgets, and large-scale cultures of today, and it's absolutely fascinating to try to wrap your head around the reasons why things are the way they are—especially when the answers are so unexpected!
Curious? Click through to see all the things you've ever (or never) wondered about, explained.