Random Thursday

Let's dive back into Weird But True by Leslie Gilbert Elman! This is a fun book so far, the only thing that nags at me a bit is there's no table of contents or organization to the facts. You basically see a few themes in them as you go, but you won't know until you read them! So let's see what we will learn today!

(image borrowed from Fast Growing Trees)

The Ginkgo tree comes in male and female varieties and it's the female tree that produces a fruit that contains butyric acid that smells rancid butter or vomit. Every one in two hundred male versions of these trees will also produce this "lovely" fruit.

Eww. Eww. Eww!

(image borrowed from Bored Panda)

A group of ginkgo trees survived the atomic bomb assault in Hiroshima, Japan during WWII and are still alive today (copyright 2010).

Dude.

(image borrowed from Fine Art America)

Europe's autumn leaves are more likely to be yellow while those in North America will also turn red or orange. This color change depends on what happens in the chlorophyll in the leaves. Leaves will turn yellow when the green chlorophyll breaks down and allows the natural yellow pigment to show. Leaves turn red when a new red pigment called anthocyanin is produced. No one really knows why the leaves only turn yellow in Europe and many colors in North America.

The red ones are my favorite! So I'm glad I'm on the right continent for that!

(image borrowed from Youtube)

When we see products such as food, cosmetics, and toiletries like shampoo have a red or orange color, it was obtained from the crushed bodies of female cochineal beetles found in Peru, Mexico, and the Canary Islands. It takes 70,000 beetles to make one pound of dye.

Aka things I wish I never knew! Lol.

(image borrowed from Brown Eyed Baker)

White bread was considered to be a higher quality than brown bread so medieval bakers would whiten their flour by mixing it with alum, chalk, clay, or even ground bones.

Again...things I wish I never knew!