Eminem and Pablo Picasso were alive at the same time.

The human mind is funny in a lot of ways. Getting into all of them is well outside the purview of a single Fun Fact Friyay, so this edition is just about the spectacle of losing our sense of time and when certain events took place.

There are all kinds of deep scientific explanations for forgetting things or disassociating from our sense of history.

Unsurprisingly, things you actually experienced can resonate more strongly in that head of yours. For example, I can recall an absurd amount of sporting events I’ve been to, like when Wisconsin defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in Chicago during the first round of the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

Do I remember this game because it was exciting that the Islanders, a very heavy underdog, jumped out to an early 10-0 lead against Wisconsin? Is it because I attended the game with my dad, who has been consistently supportive of my basketball enthusiasm throughout my life? Were the self-described degenerate gamblers behind me more entertaining than the final minute of the game, when they simply needed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to make one more basket so they could cover the spread?

(Texas A&M-Corpus Christi did not make that basket. The gamblers were devastated.)

I recall that game more vividly because of all of those details. My weird knack for obscure basketball games notwithstanding, that’s generally how most memories work. We remember what happened, or at least the gist of it, but we can’t always remember when it happened, or some of the more supporting plot points.

This is especially true for things and/or people that had their moment before we were born. Unless you happened to memorize the entire list of U.S. presidents for a quiz in second grade, you probably couldn’t name when Benjamin Harrison, our last bearded president, was in office.

“Sometime in the 1800s,” you might guess. And you’d be correct! But he was a lot closer to the 1900s than the 1700s, serving as president from 1889 to 1893.

That less certain sense of history is why it’s always intrigued me to compare people who have overlapped in life, even though they seem to be from completely different eras.

Pablo Picasso was born in 1881—before ol’ Benny Harrison was president. Meanwhile, a classmate teased me for not knowing all the words to Eminem’s “My Name Is” when it came out in 1999. Yet these two people were alive at the same time.

Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, was born on October 17, 1972. Pablo Picasso died half a year later, in April 8, 1973.

So, no, they did not do any collaborations, but that still feels like two timelines that would not cross at all.

They’re not the only ones, of course. Let’s look at a few others:

• Adele was born on May 5, 1988, briefly sharing the world with Salvador Dalí, who died on January 23, 1989.

• Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born in 1929.

• Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. He died in 1922, about seven months after Betty White was born.

• Wyatt Earp was in the shootout at the OK Corral in 1881 and lived until January 13, 1929, shortly after a young Dick Van Dyke had turned three years old. (Dick Van Dyke is currently 100 and thriving, if you’re scoring at home.)

• My book is alive at the same time as Moo Deng.

All of these overlapping lives is a good reminder to show some grace to the people around you. You never know whose path you might be crossing!

A group of hummingbirds can be called six different names: a charm, bouquet, shimmer, glittering, hover, or tune.

As humans, we get the short end of the stick in terms of large quantities of us. A group of people? A bunch of pals? A coterie of homo sapiens? They’re all…fine, but not as cool as other species.

Birds, for instance, have a phenomenal collection of descriptors. An earlier edition of Fun Fact Friyay explored flamingoes. A group of them is called a flamboyance.

“I’m frolicking with a flamboyance of flamingoes, Felipe!” you might say to your friend Felipe (or to someone not named Felipe, if you want to confuse them).

Hummingbirds apparently cannot get their stories straight, because they come with MANY names.

“Charm” is the most common, which is a bit ironic, since hummingbirds are not always so charming. When they’re feeding on nectar or insects, they might become aggressive towards other hummingbirds (or humans) who get in their way. I suppose that’s no different than being hangry, though.

Hummingbirds tend to have a lot of energy and can come in a vibrance of colors, so “bouquet” is another frequent term for them. I just hope no one is throwing a bouquet of hummingbirds at a wedding.

The “glittering” and “shimmering” monikers come from hummingbirds’ iridescent feathers. The sun glitters and shimmers off of them, and they look super cool. “Hover” is used less frequently and is likely a nod to the birds flittering while feeding, as if they’re hovering.

Finally, a “tune” is probably the least common group name, largely because if you wrote “a tune of hummingbirds,” people would just expect that to be followed by some sweet music. And yes, some hummingbirds do actually produce tunes!

There are over 300 species of hummingbirds across North, Central, and South America (Quito, Ecuador is an excellent hotspot for sightseeing). The birds are pretty territorial and often prefer rolling solo. But if you happen to see a group of them nearby—perhaps all going after treats from a bird feeder—it’s nice to know you have five different options for what to yell.

Sir David Attenborough is the reason tennis balls are yellow.

At some point in your life, you’ve certainly heard the soothing voice of Sir David Attenborough.

This man has been a presenter for EIGHT DECADES. He’s narrated the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet, The Life Collection, and countless other series. He’s also the only person to have won BAFTA Awards for his work in black-and-white, color, high-definition, 3D, and 4K resolution. He is exactly five weeks away from turning 100 years old.

In fact, I’m getting worked up covering all these impressive accolades. Let’s take a quick breather.

In the late 1960s, two things were happening. One was that color television had been invented. The other was that more people were interested in tennis.

Back then, tennis balls were either white or black. Until a blossoming TV exec for the BBC realized something: white tennis balls were kind of hard to see on Wimbledon’s grass court. Viewers were getting lost in the action.

That executive was David Attenborough. He proposed the solution of coloring the tennis balls, so they’d pop more easily on television. The International Tennis Foundation agreed, and they set out finding the best color that would be visible on all different colors of courts.

They eventually settled on what’s officially called “optic yellow.” Here’s the hex color for it in case you want to design something with this specific shade.

The optic yellow balls were officially introduced in 1972, and fans everywhere delighted in being able to see what was going on.

Curiously, Wimbledon, the inspiration for the color change in the first place, didn’t change to optic yellow until 1986. Spokespeople for the grandiose event said that the white balls were turning green after frolicking in the grass, so they finally acquiesced and allowed people who can’t attend courtside to still enjoy some tennis.

Side note, in college, I attended the Sony Ericsson Open one year for a class. My story was on the ballkids that fetch the balls when a player hits it into the net or erratically out of bounds.

In between matches and practice sessions, players are just wandering around the area, which feels a bit like Disneyland, only if every single attraction were related to tennis. I saw James Blake finishing up a session and thought it was the perfect time to ask a question that I had always wondered about:

A tennis player usually gets two or three balls tossed to them, and they’ll keep one while returning the others. Why is that?

If Blake thought it was a stupid question, he certainly didn’t show it, which I appreciated. Instead, he told me that he’s looking for balls with a minimal amount of fuzz on them, since they’re more aerodynamic and can move faster on serves.

Less fuzz is also good if you happen to be house-training a puppy who likes chewing on tennis balls. They tend to rip the entirety of the fuzz (which is technically called “the nap,” how quirky) off the ball, leaving a weird grayish brown lump behind.

Anyway, if you ever want to play a game of tennis, you just let me know. Maybe we’ll even be lucky enough to have a legendary voice like Sir David Attenborough calling the game.

The University of Central Florida Knights have a mascot named Knightro.

We’ve only just started March Madness, and there’s already lots of excitement going on. On Day 1 of the men’s tournament alone:

• Nebraska won its first-ever game in the NCAA Tournament, despite the basketball program existing since 1897. Hooray for Nebrasketball!

• High Point guard Chase Johnston made a game-winning layup in the closing seconds of his team’s win against Wisconsin. It was the first two-pointer he’s made all season long. Nearly all of his shots are threes.

• Siena went all but ten seconds of its game against Duke without making a substitution. A team going a full game without subbing hasn’t happened since 1979 (the year, not the Smashing Pumpkins song, or the lesser-known Good Charlotte song of the same name)

• We had a rare ram vs. ram mascot battle with VCU’s Rodney the Ram squaring off against North Carolina’s Rameses. VCU and Rodney emerged victorious in overtime.

Friday also has Arizona playing Long Island in a double-iced tea matchup. And the first round of the women’s tournament tips off, so we have TWICE THE MADNESS.

I’ve attended many an NCAA Tournament game over the years, and I always try to get a picture with the mascots of the participating teams.

Yet one who has eluded me (namely, because the school hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament very often) is Knightro, the mascot of the University of Central Florida.

UCF went through several mascots before discovering Knightro. And if I’m being objective here, nearly every name is an absolute banger.

When the school was still known as Florida Technical University, it tinkered with a few mascot ideas. Citronaut, a literal orange with an astronaut’s head, only lasted for one year, making way for Vincent the Vulture. You can see both here.

By 1970, the university selected “Knights of Pegasus” out of over 80 submissions, shortening it to the less-of-a-mouthful “Knights.”

Early Knight names included Sir-Wins-a-Lot, Puff, and Mack the Knight. Puff is easily the worst name of the three, but it was a dragon donated from Disney (UCF is near Orlando), so that’s something.

All of these other mascots were merely treading water until Knightro, however. In November 1994, the then-unnamed knight started making appearances around town. Cheerleader and Student Guild Association member Trey Gordon helped design the mascot, and later wore the outfit himself. In the fall of 1995, Knightro officially had his name.

Even better, for a short while, Knightro had a girlfriend named Glycerin. If that’s not the best mascot duo, I don’t know what is.

Knightro got a renovation in 2007, and he continues to host Knight camps with his fellow mascot friends. Look at how cute they all are together!

The shortest film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture is Marty, which runs 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, also known as “they’re playing me off?!” is celebrating its 98th edition of the show.

It’s a time to honor the people (and occasionally animals) who make the movies we know and love, and sometimes the movies we’re discovering for the first time.

Making a movie is time-consuming, costly, and involves many, many people, so it’s cool to see people geeking out over their victory. Occasionally, you’ll get someone like Adrien Brody, who criticized the show for playing the “please wrap it up” music, and then proceeded to continue rambling for approximately 98 minutes.

In fact, you would not be faulted for thinking that Brody’s speech lasted longer than the 1955 film Marty, which, per IMDb, holds the record for the shortest film to ever win an Academy Award at an even 90 minutes.

That’s a full 59 minutes shorter than Marty Supreme, a movie about a table tennis player that’s up for Best Picture this year.

Timothée Chalamet, the star of the movie, recently made a comment that no one cares about the ballet or opera, and the Internet was outraged. Granted, Chalamet was trying to say that ballet and opera were once very popular and are now more niche, but context and social media do not go together all that well.

Though to be fair, it IS kind of a dumb comment. People care about lots of things. You could find a group of folks who are passionate about lava lamps shaped like kangaroos (Wait a minute, that sounds awesome.), and it’s lovely when people follow their passions.

I have admittedly never seen Marty, but it sounds like a delightful romp that, despite being released in 1955, captures many of the emotions of the present. Ernest Borgnine stars as a Bronx butcher who meets a schoolteacher, played by Betsy Blair. You’ve got themes of loneliness, dating, and societal quirks, and we discover a little bit of heart along the way.

It turns out the Oscar-winning movies were inside of us the whole time. What a treat.

In case you were curious, Gone with the Wind has the longest runtime for Best Picture, clocking in at a robust three hours and 58 minutes. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I need at least two bathroom breaks during a movie that long.

Enjoy the Oscar festivities this weekend, should you choose to partake. Whether you’re wearing a stunning ballroom gown or rocking the “sweatpants with a leftover meatball stain” line from Ross, you’re award-winning in my book.

In front of the Franz Kafka Museum in Prague, you can text a message and two statues will spell it out by peeing onto a Czech Republic map.

Whenever I travel, I love finding strange sculptures within the city. For instance, Kansas City has a massive array of badminton shuttlecocks on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Copenhagen has a set of six wooden giants just chillin’ out next to a farm, under a bridge, and in other areas on the outskirts of town.

Yet of all the places I’ve been to, the weirdest collection of sculptures seems to live in Prague. That’s largely thanks to David Černý, who has an eccentric group of statues in several busy pathways around the Czech Republic capital.

One of those statues is outside the Franz Kafka Museum. Kafka is a Czech author. He wrote one of my favorite short stories ever, The Metamorphosis. In fact, that book was one of the inspirations behind my own collection of short stories!

He wrote some other stuff, too, but remained relatively unknown during his lifetime. After his death, his works became more popular—popular enough that he now has a museum in Prague.

If you head toward that museum, you might notice two statues standing in front of it. These statues are peeing an endless stream of water onto a map that’s shaped like the Czech Republic. Černý built the bronze sculpture, officially named “Proudy,” in 2004.

He told The L.A. Times that the inspiration behind the sculpture was a Czech idiom about “peeing over somebody.” In English, that roughly translates to “getting one over on someone.” Černý said that’s how the country behaves—a lot of trickery and sneaky activities.

These fellas have hips that rotate and spell out famous Czech sayings on the map. Visitors can send a message via SMS, and the sculptures will begin transcribing the message.

And unlike the men’s bathroom at most bars and the puppy I’m fostering, these statues are much more accurate with their streams. We’re all grateful for that.

In case you need a bit more wackiness today, here are some other bonkers statues in Prague.

The fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

One of my favorite low-energy shows is “The Floor” on Fox, also streamable on Hulu.

It’s got a very simple yet entrancing presence. 100 people enter, each with an “expert” category. Many of these categories are based on pop culture, such as Harry Potter, famous crime-fighting duos, or celebrities on the red carpet.

But there are also incredibly basic categories like “junk in the trunk,” which is literally a list of things you might have in the trunk of your car.

A player is randomly selected, then chooses who to battle. They play the expert category of the player who was chosen, going back and forth to try and identify the person or item, or complete the phrase they see on the screen.

Whoever wins then earns that spot on the floor. If the challenger wins, they keep their expert category; if the defender wins, they obtain the expert category of the challenger. The goal is to have the largest chunk of the floor at the end of each episode for a $20,000 prize, or to be the last person standing at the end of the game, which is a cool quarter-million dollars.

It’s fun and easy to play along with, and the cutaways of host Rob Lowe’s disappointment after a particularly bad wrong answer leads to someone passing (and losing valuable time) are delightful.

Was that far more exposition than you needed for this context? Yes, but sometimes it’s nice to have a show you don’t have to think so hard about.

Side note: The show has many versions, and at least the U.S. installment is filmed in Dublin, a city with many quirky sightseeing activities. Doesn’t this Irish tea truck look so cute?

One category during the most recent season was “phobias.” The board would name the phobia and show a related picture, and the contestants had to identify what it was a fear of. This soon turned into identifying what was in the pictures. I doubt someone knows that a fear of stairs or steep slopes is called bathmophobia, but seeing a picture of stairs makes identifying that phobia easier.

I legitimately cannot remember if the phobia we’re about to get into was on the show (I told you, very little brain activity is happening while we’re watching). But here we go!

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia—sometimes spelled hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, with a bonus p in the middle—is the fear of long words. These can be long, niche words or multisyllabic common words, with the phobia changing based on the individual.

Symptoms include fear and anxiety over reading or speaking long words. Some people even avoid reading altogether to minimize the risk of coming across a hefty word.

The phobia’s etymology is primarily a cruel prank. The first two portions are a reference to a hippopotamus and a monster, two big, scary things.

The “sesquipedalo” section stems from the Latin word “sesquipedalis,” literally translating to “a foot and a half long,” or “half a yard.”

Put everything together, and you’ve got “hippopotamus monster foot and a half long fear.”

Sesquipedalia dates back to the first century BCE, when the Roman poet Horace criticized writers for using long words. The longer use of hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is far more recent. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is credited with coining the term in the year 2000.

In formal writing, the term is often reduced to “sesquipedalophobia.” Still a mouthful, but at least a more manageable one.

The musician Sting got his nickname from a black and yellow sweater he liked to wear.

When someone pairs the colors black and yellow, what jumps to your mind?

Is it the Wiz Khalifa song?

The uniform colors for the Pittsburgh Steelers?

Or maybe you think of a bee, flying around like it doesn’t have a care in the world.

As far as I know, I’ve only been stung by a bee once in my life. It was on the beach in Venice, California. I had just played a flag football game and felt something scratch against my neck. I tried to brush it off, thinking it was a twig, and then saw a bee floating around.

I knew this was not a honeybee, because they die after they sting you. And this didn’t look like a Casper the Friendly Ghost situation…but, you know, with a bee, instead of a human.

The sting hurt for a little bit. Thankfully, I was none the worse for wear. In fact, the sand from the beach lingered longer than the pain from the sting did.

If you’re a fan (or even a hater) of the Police, you’ve had far more encounters with a different kind of Sting.

The musician, born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, has had quite the successful career. He fronted the Police from 1977 until the band broke up in 1986, and he’s continued performing as a solo artist.

He’s sold more than 100 million records and received 17 Grammy Awards between his solo work and albums with the Police. He’s even had some excellent guest starring roles on shows, such as “Only Murders in the Building.”

So, how did he end up with the name Sting?

Growing up, young Gordon was playing jazz in a few different bands around England, often with people much older than him. Gordon Solomon, a fellow Gordon and the trombone player and bandleader of the Phoenix Jazzmen, noticed the younger Gordon wearing black and yellow sweaters to practice and performances.

According to the artist, they thought he looked like a wasp, and they jokingly called him “Sting.” He kept wearing the sweaters and the bandmates thought his new nickname was the funniest thing imaginable. I suppose “Taskmaster” hadn’t started airing yet.

Sting has told a few variants of this story, with details like his age changing (he said he was 16 in one interview and 18 in another, for example). Still, the common refrain is that his striped black and yellow sweaters caused enough of a ruckus that he earned a nickname that refused to die.

Sting even says his bandmates would call up his mom to ask if Sting could come out. She enjoyed the nickname, too. Suddenly, Gordon was a thing of the past, except for his passport, which Sting says still contains his birth name.

In a 2011 interview with Time, Sting commented that just about everyone in his life uses that name.

“[My wife] Trudy calls me Sting. I was never called Gordon. You could shout Gordon in the street and I would just move out of your way. My children call me Dad.”

Whatever you call him, I hope you give something a spin from Sting’s discography this weekend. There are some bangers out there.

Only five U.S. presidents have had beards, most recently Benjamin Harrison in 1893.

When I was in third grade, my teacher said she was going to quiz us on the U.S. presidents and their terms. I memorized those things like my life depended on it. To this day, I can still rattle ‘em off.

For example, John Tyler: 1841-1845. William McKinley? He was a classic 1897-1901er.

It turns out I had misheard the directions, and the quiz was merely “name any five U.S. presidents.” Oops. Much easier to do.

(Side note: George Washington died on December 14, 1799. I wonder if he and Martha were planning some kind of raucous end of the century New Year’s Eve bash).

Back then, becoming president of anything seemed like a big deal. Heck, I even reluctantly accepted a student council job in fifth grade, winning by one vote over my friend (who I voted for. Sorry that wasn’t enough, Adam). And that didn’t even have a presidential title tied to it.

Now, the current administration seems to be actively attempting to drive the United States into the ground while also spending time doing things like criticizing Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show because there wasn’t enough English in it.

What I didn’t do in third grade was memorize which presidents had facial hair. I’m sure my teacher would have been mighty impressed if my five presidents were the ones with beards.

Since none of us were alive in the 1890s (and if you were, please let us know your immortal secrets), let’s head back in time.

From 1889 to 1893, Benjamin Harrison was the U.S. president, the 23rd to be exact. He was proud to have lasted longer in office than his grandfather, William Henry Harrison did.

Granted, ol’ Willie Henry was president for exactly one month before dying of septic shock, possibly spurred on by complications from pneumonia, since he frequently went out in cold weather without a coat or a hat.

Perhaps learning from his grandfather, Benjamin Harrison made sure to always leave the house with warm layers on. Or at least one warm layer in the form of a beard.

If someone asked you to name ten U.S. presidents, I imagine Benjamin Harrison would not be among your list. So, here are three things he did while in office:

• He brought six new states into the union: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. No other U.S. president has admitted as many states during their presidency.

• He offered support to and expanded the U.S. Navy from three modern steel war ships to 22.

• He took 13 million acres of public domain land and put it toward national forest reserves.

Arguably the most notable accomplishment is that he’s the most recent U.S. president who sported a beard.

I am tickled by this Wikipedia page that breaks down presidential facial hair. Sure, guys like John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren had absurd sideburns, but we’ve only got a quintet of beards:

• Abraham Lincoln (16th president): 1861-1865

• Ulysses S. Grant (18th president): 1869-1877

• Rutherford B. Hayes (19th president): 1877-1881

• James A. Garfield (20th president): 1881

• Benjamin Harrison (23rd president): 1889-1893

Is it morbid to point out that two of these presidents (Lincoln and Garfield) were assassinated in office?

Maybe a better note to end on is Ulysses S. Grant’s last words, or word, in this case: “Water.”

He was requesting some in his situation, but it’s also a good command. Remember to hydrate, this weekend.

The concept of instant replay came from the men’s slalom event in the 1960 Olympics, when event officials asked CBS to review a video tape to confirm if a skier missed a gate.

The 2026 Winter Olympics are upon us! They’re taking place across northern Italy, referred to as the Milano Cortano 2026. Milo and Tina are the official mascots, “the first openly Gen Z” mascots for the games.

I feel confident I could participate in about three Winter Olympics events, tops: curling, luge, and skeleton. Curling just looks like a fun time all around. The latter two surely have technique behind them, but, as “SNL” recently posited, the best of the best have to think things like how to “confuse and ultimately silence my survival instincts,” and “I honestly think a corpse that’s my same shape could win.”

That’s part of the joy of the Olympics, of course. It’s watching people who are the best at what they do, and the jubilation of a job well done is delightful to witness.

Naturally, a Winter Olympics fun fact feels fitting. One thing I came across that I really wanted to be true was a story about Finnish skier Kalle Jalkanen. During the 1936 games, he allegedly lost his dentures while breathing heavily in an impressive come-from-behind race.

The dentures fell into the snow, so Jalkanen skied back to find them. He recovered his dentures—still intact—and managed to huff and puff his way to a victory even with the delay.

However, despite being listed on the Olympics website as a fact, I didn’t find anything verifying this story. It could simply be a fun legend.

I’m thinking back to the days of wearing my expander (like a retainer in that it’s removable) as a teenager and don’t recall ever running so fast or exerting any amount of energy to the level that the expander came out.

That’s probably the lone reason why I’m not an Olympian.

In any case, here’s an Olympic fact that seems to hold more weight: We have the 1960 Winter Olympics to thank for instant replay.

The 1960 Olympics Games, held in Squaw Valley (now Olympic Valley), California, were significant for a number of reasons.

• Women’s speed skating and men’s biathlon debuted at these Olympics. We also saw our first medal earned by metal skies (a little medal on metal wordplay) instead of the traditional wooden ones when Jean Vuarnet of France won a gold in the downhill event. He was given those metal skis just a few days before his race!

• There was no bobsled event, the only time that’s ever happened during the Winter Olympics. The reason? Only nine nations said they were planning to participate, so the Olympic organizers didn’t bother putting a bobsled run together. This is the Olympic equivalent of taking your ball and going home.

• Most relevant for this fact, though, is that the 1960 Olympics were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast live on television.

For a very simplified overview of the slalom event, participants ski down a slope and have to go in between pairs of poles, or gates. Both their feet and the tips of their skis must pass inside the gates.

Today, the majority of skiers use what’s called a cross-blocking technique, where their hands, arms, or shin pads and poles touch the outside gate as they pass it. With this technique, it’s typically very obvious when a skier has touched a pole.

Things were different in 1960, however. And during the men’s slalom event, it was unclear if one competitor had, in fact, gone through a gate.

Event organizers huddled together and decided they needed a second review. They asked CBS (the Olympics broadcaster) for a tape of the event, so they could see for themselves what had transpired.

That gave CBS an idea: What if we add this “second look” to other sports that air on the network? And the instant replay was born.

While you’re enjoying a slow-motion angle of a snowboard gliding through the air, a curling puck perfectly coming to rest, or a bobsled team gracefully running in stride before hopping in the ol’ sleigh, tip your cap to the 1960 Olympics for helping make that happen.

Now, if only we could reduce the number of replay reviews that happen (particularly in basketball and football games), then we’d truly be living the good life. Enjoy the Olympics!

Reindeer eyes change color during the winter from yellow to blue.

Fun Fact Friyay has welcomed a bit of reindeer trivia over the years. Maybe you love rattling off Santa’s reindeer like Donner and Blitzen and whatever the other six are.

I don’t believe the reindeer have ever been measured in height, but I sure hope Dancer is the most tiny of them all.

Why, it seemed like just yesterday when we were recounting the birth of Rudolph, who is the most famous reindeer-slash-advertising campaign to ever exist.

Rudolph’s big old red nose gets all the fame, but the celebrity reindeer, like all reindeer, would also be experiencing a change in his eye color.

Glen Jeffery is a neuroscientist who studies animal vision. His Norwegian colleagues sent him a bag full of reindeer eyes (for science, not as some kind of cruel prank). After dissecting the eyes, Jeffery was shocked to see that the animals that had been killed during the summer had yellow eyes, while those killed in the winter had blue eyes.

That led Jeffery down a delightful path of discovery that reindeer eyes adapt during harsh winter weather. Animals have a “cat’s eye,” scientifically known as the tapetum lucidum. It’s a mirrored layer behind the retina, which helps the animals see in dim conditions by reflecting light passing through the retina back onto the tapetum, giving light-detecting cells two opportunities to catch those photons.

When it’s dark outside, your iris muscles contract to dilate pupils and let your eyes take in more light. Since reindeer live in Arctic and subarctic regions, where the winters are harsh, bitterly cold, and generally quite dark, their pupils dilate for months at a time.

That causes the eyeballs to swell due to pressure, which squeezes fluid between the collagen fibers in the tapetum. Typical collagen fibers reflect yellow wavelengths. The reindeer’s more tightly packed wintry fibers reflect blue wavelengths.

Jeffery’s team also found the blue eyes are more sensitive, which they posit is due to blue light reflecting a bunch of times before getting captured. Researchers don’t necessarily agree on that point, though it’s still a fun rabbit hole to go down.

Unfortunately, if you’re gazing longingly into a reindeer’s eyes at any time of year, you won’t see this phenomenon yourself. The change in the tapetum occurs in the back of the eye, behind the retina.

And the tapetum is nowhere near the iris. So, much like the Goo Goo Dolls’ most popular song of the same name, a reindeer might say, “I don’t want the world to see me” (changing eye colors).

However, if you visit a place like the Natural History Museum in London (or just click the link that’s coming up after this parenthetical), you can see a reindeer eyeball that’s been cut in half. It’s kind of eerie, but the iridescent blue layer is super impressive.

I have not seen such an eyeball in person, though I did visit the Surgeons’ Hall Museum in Edinburgh last year. They had MANY medical specimens and oddities, including a human stomach that had somehow gotten a massive hairball lodged in it.

I also tried my hand at a handful of activities, including performing VR surgery and trying to keep my hands steady while a machine measured how much they were shaking.

Let’s just say we should all be glad we can channel nervous, hand-twitching energy into writing instead of life-saving surgery.

The coldest temperature for an inhabited place is in Oymyakon in the Sakha Republic, Russia. Daily mean temperatures are −45.7°C (−50.3°F), with a record low temperature of −67.7 °C (−89…

Read more

Greenland is farther north, south, west, and east than Iceland.

Greenland has been in the news quite a bit lately. The U.S. government is trying to overtake the nation, which operates sem…

Read more

46 BC, the longest year in recorded history, lasted 445 days.

Many people do not live in the Eastern time zone of the United States. However, the various New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square are still cons…

Read more

Most of us have at least one holiday tradition. Perhaps yours is trying to eat as many cookies as you can or finding clever ways to incorporate eggnog into your cooking. Maybe…

Read more

The SKELETONS: Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma has an office cat named Sir Indiana Bones.

When I was a child, my uncle had several cats. One day, while visiting his home, one of the cats got spooked by something. It set off a chai…

Read more

Lemons typically float while limes typically sink.

When you order a drink from a restaurant or bar, it might come with a neat little lemon or lime wedge as an accoutrement.

Or perhaps you’re a fan of a beverage like Sprite, which…

Read more

If you are any kind of creative type or want to work independently, I cannot recommend Kaitlyn Arford’s Find Freelance Opportunities newsletter enough.

Kaitlyn takes away a highly stressful part of freelancing—discovering clients—and instead sends good fits right…

Read more

If you are any kind of creative type or want to work independently, I cannot recommend Kaitlyn Arford’s Find Freelance Opportunities newsletter enough.

Kaitlyn scours high and low to, as the name suggests, find freelance opportunities for you. The…

Read more

With a total of 39, Belgium has the most distinct land borders with other countries.

One of my most memorable European meal experiences came at Maison Antoine in Brussels, Belgium. Th…

Read more