10 Things You Didn't Know About Chocolate

10 Things You Didn't Know About Chocolate

 

For many of us, life without chocolate is difficult to imagine. But it was only as recently as the Victorian era that the chocolate bar was invented. Read on to discover more about the history of one of Britain's best-loved foods.

 

1. Origins

The ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations in Central America were the world's first chocolate lovers. Cocoa trees grew wild in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon basin and the Maya and Aztecs used the beans to make a much-prized spicy drink, which they called "chocolatl".

 

2. Meaning

In Nahuatl, the Aztec language, chocolatl means "bitter water". A related Nahuatl word, cacao (source of the English word cocoa), refers to the bean itself.

 

3. Chocolate in Europe

It was the Spanish Conquistador, Don Hernán Cortés, who first realized the commercial value of chocolate. He brought cocoa beans back to Spain in 1528 and very gradually the custom of drinking chocolate spread across Europe. In 1657 the first of many drinking-houses where the new liquid-chocolate was enjoyed appeared in England.

 

4. Eating chocolate

Until the early Victorian times chocolate was exclusively for drinking, then a technique for making solid "eating" chocolate was devised. The inventor of "eating chocolate" is unknown but the first solid chocolate was sold in 1847 by Fry & Sons of Bristol.

 

5. Milk and white chocolate

In 1875 a Swiss manufacturer, Daniel Peters of Vevey, Switzerland, produced the first milk chocolate bar by successfully finding a way to combine chocolate and milk. White chocolate, which is technically not chocolate as it does not contain any cocoa liquor, was not invented until the 1930s.

 

6. Swiss chocolate

The Swiss consume more chocolate than any other population in the world. On average, each person consumes around 9 kg (20 lbs) each year! Perhaps this isn't really surprising—famous Swiss chocolate makers include Rodolphe Lindt, Henri Nestlé, Philippe Suchard, Jean Tobler (founder of the Toblerone brand), and Charles Amédée Kohler (the first to add hazelnuts to chocolate).

 

7. Chocolate boxes

Richard Cadbury introduced the first ever chocolate box in 1868. He also introduced the first ever chocolate boxes for Valentine's Day, thereby starting the tradition of giving chocolate as a token of love on February 14.

 

8. Making chocolate

The harvesting of cocoa pods is very labour intensive. The pods are split open by hand and the beans needed to make chocolate are removed to be fermented and dried. They are then sent to chocolate manufacturing companies, where they are roasted and ground in large mills until they become a thick brown liquid. This cocoa mass is the basis of all chocolate and cocoa products.

 

9. Producing chocolate

African countries harvest about two-thirds of the total world output of cocoa beans. At the start of the twenty-first century the Côte d'Ivoire was the world's greatest cocoa-bean producing nation.

 

10. Health

A chemical in chocolate—theobromine—is toxic to dogs and cats. For humans, chocolate contains only a small amount of nutrients and has a high fat content. However, the presence of antioxidants in dark chocolate means that it has recently been promoted for its health benefits.

 

10 Mini Mysteries

10 Mini Mysteries

 

1. Why is Friday the 13th unlucky?

The number 13 has long been stigmatized. In an ancient Norse myth, a dinner party of 12 is interrupted when a 13th guest crashes the event and kills the god of joy and gladness. Within Christian traditions, too, 13 is an unlucky number to have at a dinner party—there were 13 people at the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. And to top it all, a correctly tied hangman’s noose has 13 knots.
Meanwhile, Friday also carries negative connotations. Eve was rumoured to have given Adam the apple on Friday, thus bringing about the downfall of mankind. And to make matters worse, Jesus was crucified on a Friday. It is no wonder then, that when the two are combined, Friday the 13th is considered so unlucky that many people decide to stay at home.

2. Why do we drive on the left-hand side of the road in the UK?

The most common explanation for this British law again arises from the Middle Ages. The theory goes that knights riding on horseback would have wanted to keep their right hand, usually their sword hand, exposed to oncomers so that they would be prepared to attack. They would therefore keep to the left when travelling. This custom was transferred to the modern road and crystallized in the Highway Act of 1835, which declared a 20s or 40s fine for drivers not keeping the left or near side.

3. Why do we have bad breath in the mornings?

Almost everybody wakes up with bad breath. The unpleasant smell comes from bacteria living in your mouth. The bacteria are in fact in your mouth day and night, but while you’re sleeping, the flow of saliva—and thus oxygen—decreases greatly. This allows the anaerobic bacteria to multiply, feeding on leftover food particles and skin cells. The waste product of this process often contains sulphur, and this is what smells so unpleasant.

4. Why do we blush?

When you’re embarrassed or ashamed, your body releases a tiny amount of adrenalin. Adrenalin causes blood vessels in your face to dilate, allowing more blood to flow to your cheeks. This causes reddening, or blushing. Sociologically, blushing may be useful as a means of communication, as it can act as a wordless signal. For example, if we blush when we’re attracted to someone, we are allowing what’s on our mind to be known without having to say a thing.

5. Why do onions make you cry?

When you slice through an onion, you cause a series of chemical reactions to occur within its cells. A gas called propanethiol S-oxide is released into the air and travels upwards into your eyes. The gas then reacts with the water in your eyes to form a mild sulphuric acid, which causes itchiness. Your brain reacts by producing more water, or tears, to dilute the irritant and protect your eyes.

6. Why are wedding rings worn on the fourth finger?

There was an ancient belief that a vein, known as the vena amoris (vein of love), ran directly from the fourth finger of the left hand to the heart. It was thought that this direct blood-flow to the heart made it the perfect candidate for a wedding ring, as it solidified the union of love. However, in reality the veins running from the fourth finger are no different from those of any other finger, and it seems as if shrewd marketing, hearsay, and tradition have designated the fourth finger as the “ring finger”.

7. Why do geese fly in a “V” formation?

Because the one in the front has the map J.

When geese fly in a flock, they tend to form a “V” shape, with each bird flying slightly higher than the one in front of it. This causes a reduction in wind resistance, making the flock more aerodynamic and allowing those flying at the back of the formation to glide easily. The birds take it in turns to fall to the back, meaning that as a group they are able to fly for longer. Another benefit of the V shape is that every bird is visible and easy to track. For the same reason, fighter pilots use this “squadron” formation.

8. Why do gentlemen prefer blondes?

The science behind what people find attractive remains largely theoretical. However, a consensus emerges among theorists: We are generally attracted to people who are most likely to protect and preserve our genes as a human race. For example, we are more likely to be attracted to a healthy young face than an old diseased one because this increases the chances of producing healthy offspring. Following this theory, it is believed by some that the reason blonde hair, which is much rarer than brown or black hair, is deemed more attractive is due to a subconscious human desire for a bigger, and therefore healthier, gene pool.

9. Why are there seven days a week?

The root of our seven-day week lies in Babylonian mathematics. The Babylonians realized that a lunar cycle, i.e. a month, was 27.25 days long. However, they also realized that the number 28 is a perfect number—it is the sum of all the numbers that divide into it (1+2+4+7+14 = 28). They therefore designated a month as 28 days long, and eventually chose to split it into four cycles of seven days, giving us our seven-day week.

10. Why do we shake hands with people?

The origin of the handshake lies in medieval history. By offering a right hand to a stranger, a hand that could otherwise be used to draw a sword, men were overtly displaying their intentions of peace towards one another. Nowadays, from signing a treaty to settling a bet with friends, “shaking on it” remains a symbolic sign of agreement.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sleep

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sleep

 

1. Your alarm is set for 6 a.m.—why do you wake up at 5:59 a.m.? The body's internal alarm clock, which enables some people to wake up naturally at the time they desire, is triggered by the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. The levels of this hormone begin to rise an hour or two before an expected wake-up call, to prepare the body gradually for the stress of waking up.

2. A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours.

3. In 1964, 17-year-old Randy Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours and 12 minutes, the officially recognized world record. He then slept for 15 hours—not a record, but not bad.

4. In a gesture of integration with the European Union, Spain has launched a campaign to eliminate the tradition of siestas, or afternoon naps.

5. Thanks in part to their afternoon naps, Spaniards sleep an average of 40 minutes less per night than other Europeans. Spain also has the highest rate of workplace accidents in the EU and the third lowest productivity rate.

6. A 2002 study by Oxford University researchers concluded, brilliantly, that the traditional practice of counting sheep is an ineffective cure for insomnia. The mental activity is so boring that other problems and concerns inevitably surface.

7. A Muslim couple in India is being forced to split up after the husband uttered the word "talaq," the Arabic word for divorce, three times in his sleep. According to Muslim law, the "triple talaq" is an actual divorce.

8. Dreaming is related to bursts of electrical activity that blow through the brain stem every 90 minutes during REM sleep. Over a lifetime, an average person spends more than six years dreaming, clocking more than 136,000 dreams in all. But nobody knows why we dream.

9. Mattresses have an average life span of eight to 10 years. They grow some nasty stuff in that time; one study links mattress bacteria to sudden infant death syndrome.

10. Somniphobia is the fear of sleep.

Why Beans Make You Fart

Why Beans Make You Fart

 

The 16th-century theologian Martin Luther boasted that he could drive away the evil spirit with a single fart. Just imagine what he could have done after a whole plate of beans. But where does this bean-power come from?

Farts have been called belches lost to posterity, but belches or burps are sometimes caused by swallowed air, while farts are bubbles of gas produced by bacteria in the large intestine, or colon. Kids classify them—noisy smelly, silent deadly, and so on. There is a real medical term for farts, however: "flatus" (rhymes with "hate us"), and flatulent describes both a person who farts a lot and food such as beans that tends to produce farts.

Everyone farts. Most people fart gently every now and then, producing between 10 and 40 ml of gas per hour, but some people fart much more than this, and farts are enormously increased by particular foods, including onions, cabbage, and especially beans.

 

Fart production

Much of the food we can digest is made of proteins and carbohydrates, especially complex sugars, or polysaccharides. The polysaccharides are broken down by enzymes in the gut into oligosaccharides and then into simple sugar molecules, which are absorbed into the bloodstream and provide energy for the muscles.

However, beans contain three rogue oligosaccharides—raffinose, stachyose and verbascose—which humans cannot digest, because we lack the necessary enzyme, a-D-galactopyranosidase. These three rogues therefore go right through into the colon, where they are chewed up by bacteria, producing the gases hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Some people—about one in four—also produce methane, but most of us don't.

 

Smell

The smell of farts is partly due to traces of indole and scatole, but mainly the result of various sulphur compounds produced as by-products alongside the hydrogen and carbon dioxide. When you hold a fart in, the gases are absorbed into the bloodstream, and the hydrogen can be detected in your breath, but luckily the smell does not get through.

 

Research

At a New York farting conference, a doctor described how volunteers had sat for hours with perforated rubber tubing inserted into their rectums to collect the farts, which were then analysed for quantity and composition. On a base diet they produced an average of 15 ml of gases per hour, mainly nitrogen and hydrogen, but a few hours after a meal of pork and beans the rate went up by a factor of 12 to an average of 176 ml an hour, and the farts contained masses of carbon dioxide as well.

There is great variation between people; some produce up to 500 ml per hour after eating beans.

The doctor also found that farting was greatly increased by stress. The volunteers farted much more when they sat with their rubber tubes in a passage in an open lab than when they were in a comfortable room with armchairs and a TV set.

 

Other foods

Some people fart a lot after consuming dairy products; one flatulent man went to his doctor and eventually discovered he could not digest lactose, the main sugar in milk. When he eliminated dairy foods from his diet his farting returned to normal. For other people, sweet biscuits produce an immediate effect. If your farting bothers you, try varying what you eat and see what happens.

 

Prevention

You can prevent farting when you eat beans by consuming with them some of that missing enzyme, which is marketed in the UK as Ido-air, and in the US as Beano. Eat a Beano tablet first, or sprinkle a drop or two on your food, and (so they claim) the farts will not come. "Now you can have peas and quiet" says their advertisement—and for a promotion they once produced a lightweight nylon jacket—a Beano windbreaker.

In her excellent Bean Book, cookery writer Rose Elliott suggests par-boiling the beans, thoroughly rinsing with cold water, and then simmering until done, but it's hard to see how this will remove those rogue oligosaccharides.

 

Collect Your Own

If you really want to find out how much you fart after a meal of beans, take a bath a few hours later, and take into the bath a small empty plastic bottle. Fill the bottle with water, hold it upside down, keeping the open end under the surface so that it stays full of water, and pull it up between your legs so that when you fart, the gases bubble up into the bottle. Can you beat 250 ml?

If you don’t want to stop eating beans, but find all this flatulence rather embarrassing, then just remember that you’re not alone—everyone does it. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford farted loudly as he bowed to Queen Elizabeth I, and was so ashamed that he travelled abroad for seven years. When he returned to her majesty's presence, however, the first thing she said was "My Lord, I had forgot the fart."

Seven Deadly Sins

Seven Deadly Sins, in Christian thought, classification of certain sins. The seven deadly sins are pride, avarice (greed), lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth (laziness). There is no foundation in the Bible for the classification, but the above list has been found in the works of several spiritual writers and theologians, including St Thomas Aquinas, a leading Roman Catholic theologian during the 13th century. Aquinas slightly modified the earlier lists of St Gregory the Great, who was the first to refer to the concept, and of St John Climacus. The seven sins are not singled out because of their severity, but rather because they are the inevitable source of other sins.

 

The Mythology of Numbers

The Mythology of Numbers

 

Do you have a lucky number, and do you always avoid the number 13 when picking your lottery numbers? We take a closer look at eight supposedly lucky, unlucky or otherwise special numbers. Why eight numbers? Read on…

4
In Japanese, the pronunciation for the number four is "shi", very similar to that of the word for "death", giving this number unfortunate associations. For this reason, it is the custom not to give items in fours as gifts, and hotels and hospitals may not have floors or rooms numbered four.

 

7

Seven is an important number in Christian and other religious traditions. It is the Sabbath, the day on which God rested. There are also believed to be seven virtues and seven deadly sins, and in Japanese mythology, there are seven gods of good fortune.

8
It's no coincidence that the scheduled start time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics is 8 o'clock on August 8—the eighth day of the eighth month—2008. Eight is an auspicious number in China, its pronunciation being similar to that for "prosper". For this reason, license plates, bank accounts, addresses and telephone numbers featuring the number are highly popular.

 

13

The number 13 is commonly associated with bad luck, and there is even a name for the fear of the number 13: triskaidekaphobia. The belief that 13 is unlucky can be linked to the Last Supper, attended by 13, including Judas.

17
In Italy, it is the number 17 that has unlucky connotations. This is a superstition with Classical roots—17 spelt out in Roman numerals is XVII, which can be rearranged to spell "VIXI", the Latin for "I have lived" and, consequently, I am now no longer living, or I am dead.

 

23

Fans of David Beckham and Michael Jordan have reason to be keen on the number 23, sported on the shirts of their heroes. However, they are probably unaware that followers of Discordianism, a self-styled religion that began in the 1950s, believe that the number 23 is holy. American writer William S. Burroughs became obsessed with the number, keeping a scrapbook of events connected to it, and it has spawned a number of books and films, including The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey as a man fixated on the number.

 

87

Linked to triskaidekaphobia, in Australian cricket a score of 87 is seen as unlucky. Known as the devil's number—and you thought that was 666—87 is 13 runs short of a century and so deemed to be bad luck. And England did win the Ashes in 1987.

 

111

On the other side of the world, in English cricket a score of 111 is known as a "Nelson", in supposed but inaccurate reference to Nelson, prior to his death, losing an eye, an arm and a leg. Three stumps relieved of their bails would look like the number 111 and the tradition of jumping off the ground to avoid bad luck when this score is reached has been carried on in style by umpire David Shepherd.

 

10 Little Mysteries

10 Little Mysteries

 

Throughout history the world’s greatest thinkers have pondered the big questions in life: why are we here; is there a God; how can we know something; why does toast always land butter-side down? But philosophy and the thirst for knowledge aren’t just concerned with the metaphysical questions of life. They also seek to answer the mysteries of the physical world—from the sky above our heads to the idiosyncrasies of our own bodies. Here are ten little mysteries that have puzzled the world’s thinkers at one time or another. Science has explained most of them, but not all…

 

01.   Why is the sky blue?

Good question. The sky is blue because of a process called Rayleigh scattering. When light from the Sun reaches the atmosphere, it strikes the molecules in the air and is scattered in all directions. The extent to which light is scattered depends on its frequency. Blue light, which has a high frequency, is scattered many times more than other colours. As more blue light is scattered, it becomes the dominant color, causing bright blue skies on clear days.

 

02.   Why are rain clouds grey?

It’s usually pretty easy to tell when it’s about to rain because the clouds in the sky turn an ominous grey color. Clouds that are full of water or ice particles absorb light so that they appear grey from below. Those that contain relatively small amounts of water reflect more light, so that they appear bright white from the ground.

 

03.   Why is a new moon invisible?

Just as half the Earth is always in daylight and the other half is in darkness, so around 50 per cent of the Moon’s surface is always illuminated by the Sun. The degree to which the sunlit portion of the Moon is visible from Earth depends on the Moon’s phases, which change as it orbits the Earth. In the phase called the new moon, the area of the Moon that faces the Earth is completely in shadow, so it cannot be seen.

 

04.   What causes tides?

Have you ever wondered what causes the rise and fall of the tide? When the Moon is directly over a given point on the surface of the Earth, its gravity exerts a powerful pull on the water of the oceans below, causing them to rise above their normal level. Water covering the parts of the Earth furthest from the Moon is also subject to this pull, and forms another axis of high water. At both crests, the condition known as high water prevails, while along the circumference of the Earth perpendicular to the direct-opposite tidal axis, phases of low water occur.

 

05.   Why do cockerels crow at dawn?

Most birds like to take part in what is known as the "dawn chorus". For around half an hour after sunrise, birds make more noise than at any other time of day, although all birds, including cockerels, continue to crow throughout the day. The reason for the chorus is largely territorial, and is stimulated not just by light, but also by a biological response (even cockerels that are shut up in coops without light will crow at dawn).

 

06.   Why do airplanes suddenly plunge during thunderstorms?

During normal flight conditions, the lift force produced by an airplane is equal to its weight, so the plane flies at a steady level. Most of the lift is produced by the wings, which are set at a slight angle to the oncoming wind. If the angle increases, the plane produces more lift and will climb, and if the angle decreases, the plane will descend. When a plane flies into stormy conditions, it will often encounter patches of rapidly rising or descending air. As the plane flies into these patches, the angle at which the wings meet the wind changes, causing the plane to suddenly climb or descend.

 

07.   Why do leaves turn brown in autumn?

Throughout the summer months, the leaves of a deciduous tree are like miniature chemical factories. Using a process called photosynthesis, they capture energy in the form of light and convert it into chemical energy. This process is made possible by the presence of chlorophyll, the substance that gives leaves their green color. As autumn approaches, shortening daylight hours and falling temperatures induce trees to prepare for winter. They grow a corky membrane between the branch and the leaf stem, which interferes with the flow of nutrients into the leaf. The production of chlorophyll declines, and this causes the green color in the leaf to fade to a yellow. In some trees, such as oaks, the flow of sugar from the leaf is also inhibited; this increased concentration causes a reaction that produces chemicals called anthocyanins, a pigment which causes yellowing leaves to turn red or brown.

 

08.   Why do we yawn?

The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that it’s your body’s way of obtaining more oxygen when you are tired or when there is a lack of fresh air. The problem is that we don’t only yawn under those circumstances. Top athletes may yawn before a big race and we’re just as likely to yawn when there’s a plentiful supply of fresh air as when we are sitting on a crowded bus. Perhaps the answer to the next question can help…

09.   So why is yawning contagious?

If you’ve ever sat on a crowded bus and yawned, you’ve probably noticed that this causes some of your fellow passengers to yawn as well. It’s almost as if yawning is contagious. The short answer is that we still don’t know why yawning causes other people to yawn, but this phenomenon may help us to explain why we yawn in the first place. The fact that we are so sensitive to the impulse suggests that there must be a reason for our ability to detect and respond to other people’s yawns, but scientists have been unable to reach a conclusion. One likely explanation is that at one time in evolutionary history, yawning was a way of coordinating the social behavior of a group.

 

10.   Why do men have nipples?

Many great thinkers have pondered this—even Aristotle had a crack at answering the conundrum! The answer is that in the first few weeks of development in the womb, male and female embryos look exactly the same. Every embryo has the potential to be either male or female—the determining factor is the chromosomes that it carries. Chromosomes are like little packs of instructions which determine aspects of the development of an embryo, including its sex. The male embryo has an X and a Y chromosome and the female has two X chromosomes.

 

Top 10 Useless Body Parts

Top 10 Useless Body Parts

 

When you're sick you may feel that certain body parts are more trouble than they're worth. And in some cases, you'd be right. While the human body has evolved and adapted significantly since caveman days, a few biological traces of our prehistoric ancestors still remain with us in the form of freeloading body parts we lug around with us, but have no use for. Take a peek at the top offenders!

10. Plica semilunaris
You may not know it, but you have a third eyelid. Pull open the two more noticeable eyelids and take a look—it's located right in the corner by the tear duct. This small third eyelid is left over from what's known as a "nictitating membrane," which is still present in full form in some animals including chickens, lizards and sharks.

9. Body hair

No doubt we were once hairier. Up until about three million years ago, we were covered with body hair. But by the time Homo erectus arrived, the ability to sweat meant we could shed our woolly ways.

8. Sinuses

Doctors don't really know much about sinuses—only that we have a lot of them. Possibilities for their function range from insulating our eyes to changing the pitch and tone of our voice.

7. Adenoids
Adenoids trap bacteria, but they're also prone to swelling and infection. Just ask any seven-year-old. Luckily, our adenoids shrink with age and are often removed, along with...

6. Tonsils

Also prone to swelling and infection. If you still have them when you reach your 30s, it's almost an accomplishment.

5. Coccyx

More useful as a game-winning Scrabble word than as part of the anatomy, the coccyx or tailbone, is made up of several fused vertebrae left over from the days when we had tails.

4. Arrector pili

When we were hairier (see No. 9), the arrector pili made the hairs stand on end when we needed to appear bigger and scarier. Now, it just gives us goose bumps.

3. Wisdom teeth

Back in the day, when we ate mammoth meat off the bone and didn't floss afterward, our teeth tended to fall out. Therefore, when those reserve molars, aka "wisdom teeth," came in, they were welcomed. Nowadays, fluoride and dental plans have just made them a huge pain.

2. Appendix

Darwin claimed the appendix was useful for digestion during our early plant-eating years; it's dwindled down to little since we started eating more digestible foods.

1. Male nipples
Because, why?