- 2 hours ago
Things about everyday stuff you still can't believe!
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:00Now, I hate to break it to you, but there's no such thing as a baby carrot.
00:04The cute little carrots they sell at supermarkets are actually regular carrots that have been shaved down to this baby
00:10size.
00:11You would think strawberry-flavored gummy bears should be red or pink, right?
00:16Well, sorry to say, but they're green.
00:19Brown rice and white rice are the same product.
00:22The white variety starts off as the brown one, but then some parts of it are removed by milling, which
00:28gives the rice its white color.
00:30This allows it to be stored for longer, but at the same time, reduces the rice's nutritional value.
00:36Now, on the topic of rice, it was used to build the Great Wall of China.
00:40The builders mixed sticky rice soup with lime and got rice mortar for construction.
00:45It was stronger and had better water resistance than regular lime mortar.
00:50Thanks to the rice soup, the Great Wall has been able to stand for centuries despite the elements.
00:56You've found a long-forgotten chocolate bar somewhere deep in your desk.
01:00Yum! Nice surprise!
01:02But when you open it, you hesitate.
01:04There's some unpleasant-looking kind of dusty film on it.
01:08Don't worry, though, it's still safe to eat.
01:10It's just that the fat or cocoa butter used to make the chocolate has been separated from the rest of
01:16the bar because of the heat.
01:17As it cooled back down, it created this whitish film.
01:21The taste might be a little off, however, so it may be best to use it for cooking instead.
01:26And you'd have more self-control than I do.
01:30Avocados can't ripen while on the tree.
01:32If not picked, they will simply fall from the branch while still not ripe.
01:36When picked, though, they will become soft and flavorful just like we love them.
01:41This happens because of the burst of ethylene produced by the fruit itself after picking.
01:46It's inhibited while the avocado is still on the tree.
01:50Tomatoes bought at supermarkets often have a weak flavor.
01:53It has to do with how they're grown and stored afterwards.
01:56Tomatoes are gathered when not fully ripe yet, and they ripen in the transportation containers and on the store shelves.
02:03But if they're stored at temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit while not fully ripe, they lose a lot of their
02:09flavor.
02:09So, to keep them tasty, it's best to store tomatoes outside the fridge.
02:15Honey is probably the only food that can literally never go bad.
02:19If it's properly sealed with no air left in, it can go for millennia and still be edible.
02:25The oldest pot of honey ever found was 5,500 years old, next to the mummy of Winnie the Pooh.
02:33Nah, not really.
02:34While dark and milk chocolate raise no questions, their white sibling isn't chocolate at all.
02:40It doesn't contain any cocoa powder, which makes chocolate, well, chocolate.
02:44The white variety is made of cocoa butter mixed with sugar and flavor, usually vanilla.
02:50Peanuts are closer relatives to peas than to nuts.
02:53They're legumes, the type of plants that includes peas, chickpeas, and beans.
02:58Cashew nuts aren't nuts either.
03:00They're seeds that are collected from pretty large fruits.
03:03The same can be said about walnuts, almonds, pecans, and pistachios.
03:08When you buy some sushi rolls with crab meat, what you get is no crab at all.
03:13The red and white stuff is what is called imitation crab, and it's basically paste made of fish.
03:19Its other name is serene.
03:21By the way, sushi was originally a way to preserve fish.
03:25It was stored in fermented rice, which could keep fish fresh for up to a year.
03:30And after that, the rice was thrown away while the fish was cooked and eaten.
03:35If you get all tearful while cutting onions, there are several ways to avoid that.
03:40One is put the onion in the freezer before cutting it.
03:43That will freeze the molecules of the chemical that makes you cry.
03:46Another method is washing the onion in cool water just before cutting it.
03:51The cold and moisture left on the onion will not allow the tearful chemical to get in your eyes.
03:56And the third way is to put a wet paper towel next to your cutting board.
04:00The chemical gets attracted to the nearest water source, which is usually your eyes.
04:05But in this case, it'll be the towel.
04:08Now, the vast majority of wasabi we eat isn't actual wasabi.
04:12The real thing is very expensive.
04:14So what we get is just a mixture of horseradish, mustard, and green food coloring.
04:20Be careful when you eat fresh pineapple, because it can literally eat you back.
04:25It contains an enzyme that digests protein.
04:28That burning sensation you get when you've eaten a bit too much pineapple?
04:32That's it.
04:34Mac and cheese used to be a really fancy dish back in the 18th century U.S.
04:38Pasta could only be imported from Italy, which made it expensive, and the process of making cheese was time and
04:45effort consuming.
04:46It didn't make the product cheaper either.
04:49Only the wealthiest could afford a plate of mac and cheese, and it was served in the fanciest restaurants as
04:55a delicacy.
04:56Oysters, lobsters, and pretty much any other seafood, on the other hand, were considered food for the poor back in
05:03the day.
05:03Seaside communities fed themselves with what they could catch in the sea, and that included mussels, crabs, and a lot
05:10of other stuff we consider delicacies today.
05:13Wow, I think if I ate mac and cheese with lobster right now, my head would explode.
05:18Back to rich food.
05:20In medieval times, fish was considered a gift fit for a king.
05:24English monarchs were known to be presented with huge pikes.
05:27And even before that, in the Roman Empire, fish, such as red mullet, was a delicacy that emperors paid for
05:34with large amounts of gold.
05:37Farmed salmon fresh is naturally gray.
05:39Wild fish eat a lot of shrimp, which makes their meat that trademark pink-orange color.
05:44The farm kind is fed with a special plant pigment for the same effect.
05:49The inventor of petroleum jelly, Sir Robert Cheesebro, claimed to eat a spoonful of Vaseline every single day.
05:57He also asked his nurse to cover him head to toe in the stuff when he fell seriously ill.
06:02He soon recovered and lived to be 96 years of age.
06:06All the while, he firmly believed in petroleum jelly's miraculous properties.
06:10It was a slick product.
06:13Oranges actually gave their name to the color we now know as orange.
06:17In Old English, this color was called roughly yellow-red.
06:21Only when the fruit became widespread across Europe, the word that signified their color appeared.
06:27If you want to take a closer look at a beehive, make sure you don't have any bananas on you.
06:33The femurone that alarms bees to rise and protect their home smells like bananas.
06:38So, you're likely to become their enemy number one if you get too close.
06:43Milk was once proved as a material for plastic.
06:47It was biodegradable and non-soluble in water and virtually didn't burn.
06:51But it was later outperformed by oil-based plastic because the milk-based variety couldn't be molded and became brittle
06:58over time.
06:59Also, the oil-based kind was a lot cheaper in production.
07:03Pound cake got its name for the mass of its ingredients.
07:07It was originally made from a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, and, you guessed it, a pound of
07:13sugar.
07:13So, it should be three-pound cake.
07:16The most expensive pizza you can ever get costs around $12,000.
07:21It can only be cooked by three chefs in your home, and it takes three full days to make.
07:27Do the chefs have to stay in your home?
07:30In ancient Egypt, laborers were paid with food.
07:33They got radishes, onions, and garlic as part of their wages.
07:37These plants were known for their antibacterial properties even then, which made them pretty valuable.
07:43Although the most widespread color of cauliflower is white, it also comes in green, orange, and purple varieties.
07:51They're more difficult to cultivate than the white one, but aren't much different from it otherwise.
07:55As for the overall number of varieties of cauliflower, there are several hundreds of them.
08:01To easily test the freshness of eggs, put them in a bowl of water.
08:05A fresh egg will quickly go down to the bottom, while a rotten one will float.
08:10Hey, last one to the bottom is a rotten egg.
08:13Sandwich bread is not entirely real bread.
08:16Water can boil and freeze at the same time.
08:19Bananas are berries that grow in grass.
08:22Believe these or not, but let me ask you, did you know water can be wetter than it is in
08:26nature?
08:27Find out in this video.
08:30Bubble gum is usually pink, because the first commercial gum made in 1928 was like that.
08:35Pink simply was the only color of the food dye available at the factory.
08:39The first chewing gum ever, though, probably appeared about 9,000 years back.
08:45People chewed birchbark tar back then for its medicinal properties, for example, to fight fever.
08:50In fact, at different periods, people used to chew on lots of stuff.
08:54For instance, the ancient Mayans made gum out of chicle, a substance made from the sapodilla tree sap.
09:01They used it to fight hunger and quench thirst.
09:04And in North America, people chewed spruce tree resin,
09:07a habit which European settlers later picked up and turned into a commercial thing in the 1840s.
09:14You can't name a folder CON on any version of Windows.
09:18This also applies to some other letter combinations, such as PRN, AUX, NUL, and others.
09:26It has to do with the operating system itself.
09:29It creates folders to store data in them.
09:31And if you create one of your own using one of these names, it will confuse the system.
09:37If you shuffle a deck of cards to get every possible combination,
09:41you'll spend billions upon billions upon billions of years just to get a third of the way there.
09:47Think about it.
09:48There are 52 cards in a regular deck.
09:51And the possible number of combinations without repeating is 8 times 10 raised to the power of 67.
09:58Even if you shuffle the cards 100 times per second without repeating combinations,
10:02it will take you several hundreds of trillions of the times the universe has existed so far.
10:10Folding a simple sheet of paper 103 times will get you a stack 93 billion light-years thick,
10:16which is more than the size of the observable universe.
10:20But if you decide to check this on your own, you won't be able to fold it more than 12
10:24times.
10:25And that would require a really big sheet of paper, too, as in almost a mile long.
10:30With a regular printing paper sheet, it would be even less, 7 times.
10:36In many supermarkets, you'll see two different bread sections, bread and bakery,
10:41and they do have different types of bread in them.
10:44The lighter, square, and most often cut-in-advance variety is called white pan bread, or sandwich bread,
10:51while the other is, well, just bread.
10:55The difference is that sandwich bread is made specifically to have stuff spread on it.
10:59It has a tougher texture.
11:01It's also soft enough, letting you bite into your sandwich and not squeeze the contents out of the sides,
11:06turning your meal into a mighty mess.
11:10Finally, white pan bread lasts longer than regular bread because of the additives in it.
11:15They preserve the bread's texture for a week or so in your home,
11:18allowing you to enjoy your PB&Js for longer.
11:21While the traditional bread variety would likely go stale the next day.
11:27There's a state at which water can both be boiling and freezing.
11:31It's called a triple point, and it occurs when all three states of a substance,
11:35liquid, solid, and vapor, exist at all the same time without messing with each other.
11:42For water, the triple point happens just a tiny bit over the freezing temperature
11:46and at an atmospheric pressure of 0.006 atmospheres.
11:52The blue bird you see on the Twitter logo has an official name.
11:55It's Larry the Bird.
11:57And the creator of the social network named it after the former NBA basketball player Larry Bird from the Boston
12:03Celtics.
12:05If you've decided to save a few bucks by charging your smartphone less often,
12:10let me disappoint you.
12:12To charge a cell phone, you use teeny amounts of electricity.
12:16That's why the maximum amount of money you can save within a year is less than $1.
12:21Jeep is actually an abbreviation.
12:24Originally, it was called a GP, or a general-purpose vehicle.
12:29It was only much later that it became a brand we know today.
12:34Bananas have a curved shape because they turn towards the sun.
12:38They're also not trees, but grass, by the way.
12:41The bunches grow downwards.
12:42But the fruit itself wants to get towards the sun,
12:45so it curves a bit up while it grows.
12:50Spandex, a fiber used for making sports clothing,
12:52got its name as an anagram of the word EXPANDS.
12:57If you were to watch every video on YouTube,
13:00you'd have to spend 1,000 years on that,
13:02and then about 1,000 times more because of all the new videos that would appear by then.
13:09You probably know that tomatoes are technically berries.
13:13Well, bananas, peppers, watermelons, and eggplants are too.
13:18There's a little open jar symbol on every cosmetics item packaging.
13:22It's called PAO, period after opening,
13:25and it tells you how long you can safely use the product after opening it.
13:29The jar is usually accompanied by a number with the letter M,
13:33which stands for months.
13:35Just make sure you remember exactly when you opened the package
13:38so that you'll know when 3, 6, 9, or however many months indicated have passed.
13:45A phone jack often has several rings on it,
13:48each representing different components.
13:50One ring is for mono sound,
13:53two are for stereo,
13:54and the third one means your earphones have a microphone function built in.
13:59To know if an egg you boiled is fully cooked,
14:02just spin it on the countertop.
14:04If the egg spins steadily without immediately falling over,
14:08it's done.
14:09Instead of using good old water,
14:11firefighters extinguish fires with wet water.
14:15They add special wetting agents to it,
14:18chemicals that reduce the surface tension that regular water has.
14:21It helps the substance to soak into objects and spread everywhere much more easily.
14:28Your shower curtain sometimes gets a bit too clingy
14:31when you get into the shower trying to get clean.
14:34According to the shower curtain effect,
14:37the hot water lowers the air pressure behind the curtain.
14:40The higher, denser pressure outside the shower pushes the curtain in,
14:44making you feel like your shower curtain is out to get you.
14:48If you take a closer look at the regular garbage bag,
14:51you'll probably notice that the seam is inside out.
14:54In fact, you're not supposed to shake up the bag to open it.
14:57You gotta place the bag over a garbage can like a hat,
15:01and then just push the middle of the bag down into the can.
15:04This way, the seam will end up where it should be, inside.
15:09If you ever had problems with popping chocolates from the box,
15:13look at those little holes around them.
15:15They're there to help you.
15:16If you push a hole right next to the candy,
15:19it'll jump out easily.
15:21An extra hole at the upper part of the sink has multiple hidden functions.
15:25First, in case someone forgets to close the faucet,
15:28the water won't overflow, and the bathroom won't get flooded.
15:32Second, thanks to that hole, the water drains faster,
15:35as it gives an escape for the air, helping the water flow down.
15:41Many cups and mugs have little grooves on the bottom on purpose.
15:45They're designed for washing machines.
15:46The grooves let the water flow and not spill all over your feet when you take the cup out.
15:51Also, those grooves let the air flow so the cup doesn't crack even if the tea is scalding.
15:58Take a closer look at that metal plate at the front of your stapler, known as the anvil.
16:03Turn the stapler upside down and rotate the anvil, reversing it.
16:08You're basically changing the stapler setting to temporary.
16:11In this mode, you can staple the sheets without too much vigor,
16:14so they can be easily detached from each other later.
16:19If you look at it on the street, you'll think a fire hydrant is about 3 feet in height.
16:24But the actual size of the device used to provide water supply to firefighters
16:27all over the world is twice as large.
16:30That is, if you count the rest of the hydrant, which is hiding underground.
16:34They're mostly red, and it's not just a matter of urban design.
16:37First of all, they need to be of bright, easily noticeable colors,
16:40so firefighters can spot them fast when they need to.
16:43The choice of color depends on how much water the hydrant can hold.
16:47It can sometimes vary depending on the location, but here's the breakdown.
16:51A red fire hydrant can splash 500 gallons of water per minute,
16:56while an orange one at least 1,000 gallons.
17:00Green ones mostly process 1,500 gallons of water per minute,
17:04and the most plentiful ones colored blue can generally contain over 1,500 gallons.
17:10Hey bowling fans, isn't it super annoying when your bowling ball gets cracked?
17:14Turns out that most of them get damaged because of incorrect storage or spikes in temperature.
17:20Now come on and face it, since it's already cracked a bit,
17:23aren't you curious what's actually inside the bowling ball?
17:26Because I sure am.
17:27Let's have a look.
17:28They mostly make the inner core of the ball of powdered metal oxides,
17:32like calcium or iron oxide.
17:34Then mix them with some resin and catalyst to harden the whole mixture.
17:38So that light bulb shape you now see inside of the ball is actually its heaviest part.
17:43It also influences how your bowling ball rotates when going down the lane.
17:48The same goes with spray paint cans.
17:50When you shake it, it makes a weird noise, but what is that thing in there?
17:54It's called a pee, and it's meant to hold the paint mixture in place and maintain its shape.
18:00They generally make it out of plastic, metal, or ceramic.
18:03It basically acts as a whisk to make sure your paint is well mixed together
18:07before you apply it to your surface of choice.
18:10Ever wondered how soda bottles keep that refreshing fizz for that long?
18:14Well, they have a little plastic ring fastened to the lid.
18:18They place it there to keep the gas from escaping and making the soda go flat,
18:22even if you shake it around in your bag the whole day.
18:26Speaking of things we use on a hot summer's day,
18:29wait, wait, don't put your baseball cap on just yet.
18:31Take a look at it for a minute, and you'll notice there's a small button on the very top.
18:36Is it functional, or is it just there for the sake of design?
18:39Way back when people started using fabrics to cover their heads,
18:42some say the button was actually functional.
18:45Since it's on top of the cap where the fabric panels come together,
18:48the top button helps keep the cap crown in one single piece.
18:52Now, with recent advances in fabric and pattern design,
18:56the button is more of an aesthetic feature.
18:58It's used to cover up the joint point of the fabric panels.
19:01Your cap might not have a button at all,
19:03but don't you think a cap actually looks better with one?
19:07Cotton pads have two sides,
19:09and if you take the time to look at them carefully,
19:11they're actually different in texture.
19:13Just in case you've ever wondered why,
19:15the textured side is for applying makeup,
19:17and the even side is for removing it.
19:21Bookworms.
19:22This one is for you.
19:23Dust jackets that come with a lot of hardcover books
19:25are not just meant to make your book look pretty.
19:28They also double as a bookmark.
19:30Just fold the pages you've already read underneath the inside of the jacket,
19:34and voila!
19:36Next time you reach out for your favorite shirt,
19:38take a look at the top buttonhole.
19:39It should be stitched horizontally,
19:41and all the other ones are vertical.
19:44Turns out that the dress shirt was designed this way,
19:46since the first and the last buttons
19:48were the first ones to unbutton throughout the day.
19:51They then changed the direction of the buttonhole
19:54to ensure the shirt would stay nice and fitted
19:56before you're ready to take it off.
19:59These days, we have so many variations of this awesome dessert
20:02that it's hard to imagine we've ever lived without it.
20:05You can find different types of cookie dough ice cream
20:07or even chocolate chip cookie cake basically everywhere,
20:10but the famous cookie wasn't actually invented until 1930.
20:14The story goes that a woman named Ruth Graves Wakefield
20:18was preparing some chocolate cookies
20:19as she was waiting for some guests to arrive.
20:22She soon figured out she was out of Baker's chocolate,
20:24a crucial ingredient for the classic cookies.
20:27To fix things up,
20:28she chopped up a block of semi-sweet chocolate,
20:30thinking it would eventually spread out evenly
20:32throughout the batter, given the heat of the oven.
20:35Things didn't necessarily go as planned.
20:37But hey, it's great they didn't
20:39because this is how she invented this modern dessert
20:41we now can't get enough of.
20:45And speaking of popular snacks,
20:47the potato chip is even younger than the chocolate chip cookie.
20:50Well, at least historically.
20:52There are many stories trying to explain how it was invented.
20:55One of them goes like this.
20:57A chef named George Crumb, based in New York,
21:00put the chips together in 1953.
21:03He decided to try a different cooking solution
21:05when one of his customers didn't have nice things to say
21:08about his french fries.
21:10He said they were too thick and kind of mushy.
21:13Then, Crumb came up with potatoes
21:14that were thinly sliced and fried until brown.
21:17People absolutely loved the dish,
21:20and they welcomed the first ever batch of chips
21:22with open arms.
21:25Ice cream, anyone?
21:26If the story is true,
21:27back in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair,
21:31one ice cream shop owner ran out of cups
21:33to serve his dish.
21:34So, he fashioned a waffle into the shape of a cone,
21:37and the rest was history.
21:40Okay, I'll admit it,
21:41chewing gum-like treats have been around
21:43since the ancient Greeks.
21:44So this one isn't particularly a revolutionary discovery.
21:47But the actual gum we buy today
21:49wasn't there until the late 1800s.
21:52An American inventor named Thomas Adams
21:55wanted to mix together different chemicals
21:57to create rubber.
21:58He tried and failed, for that matter,
22:00to play with Chickle for his experiment,
22:02but ended up fashioning this neat treat.
22:05They still use Chickle to this day
22:06to produce most chewing gums.
22:09Back in the 1800s,
22:10there lived a man named Jean-Baptiste Jolie,
22:13who worked in the fabric industry
22:14as a textile maker.
22:16How he came up with this next invention
22:18that we use a lot these days
22:19has less to do with him
22:20and more to do with his maid.
22:23The story goes
22:24that the woman accidentally knocked
22:26a kerosene lamp over onto a tablecloth.
22:29Instead of getting upset over the damaged fabric,
22:32Jolie noticed that the substance
22:33actually made the material cleaner.
22:35Figured it out yet?
22:37Yep, that's how the idea
22:38for the very first dry cleaner popped up.
22:40A very neat accident,
22:42if I do say so myself.
22:45Now this one I loved.
22:46Did you know matchsticks
22:48were initially called friction lights?
22:50Or at least that's how their inventor,
22:52a chemist named John Walker,
22:54called them back in 1826.
22:56He scraped a stick coated in chemicals
22:59across his hearth,
23:00totally by accident one day,
23:02and realized that they ignited
23:03and created a spark.
23:05Initially made out of cardboard,
23:07they were then made
23:08using wooden splints and sandpaper.
23:12Back in the 1940s,
23:13a man named Harry Coover
23:15stumbled upon a chemical formulation
23:16that seemed to stick
23:17to everything it touched.
23:19The scientific community at the time
23:21didn't look much into it
23:22as the formula didn't seem
23:24to have many applications back then.
23:26It wasn't until 1951
23:28that he looked a bit more
23:30into the formula
23:30and decided to repurpose it,
23:32along with a fellow
23:33Eastman Kodak researcher
23:35named Fred Joyner.
23:36They gave it a proper full name.
23:38But you must know it
23:40by the shorter version,
23:41super glue.
23:43It also has many uses
23:45in security these days
23:46that it's hard to believe
23:47that we didn't come up
23:48with this one on purpose.
23:50Back in 1903,
23:52a scientist named Edward Benedictus
23:54knocked over a flask by accident.
23:56He looked down
23:57and was amazed to see
23:58that the glassware
23:59had just slightly cracked
24:01but maintained its shape.
24:02He was expecting it to break
24:04into a million tiny pieces.
24:06Curious about this hidden feature,
24:08he looked into it
24:09and figured out
24:09what was keeping
24:10the glass together
24:11was a substance coating
24:12the inside of the glass.
24:14Ta-da!
24:15That's how humanity
24:16came up with safety glass.