WEDNESDAY READER | APRIL 5

FASCINATING STUFF

•  Just 250 or so people live on the Pacific atoll Pingelap, and about 10% of them are completely colorblind.  This isn’t ordinary colorblindness, though.  It’s the result of a rare hereditary condition called achromatopsia that inhibits development of cone cell color receptors in their eyes.  The prevalence can be traced to a tribal chief on the island, who passed the condition to the generation that followed him.  It’s continued ever since.  By comparison, achromatopsia affects about 1 in every 30,000 Americans.
• Avant-garde composer John Cage is best known for experimental works, such as 4 ‘ 33’ ‘ — in which a pianist sits at a piano for 4 minutes 33 seconds without touching the keys.  Cage also was a painter and an author and (lesser-known fact) devoted to mycology, the study of mushrooms.  While living in Italy in the 1950s, Cage was a celebrity contestant on a TV game show called “Lascia o Raddoppia” (Double or Nothing”) on which he won about $8,000 answering questions on the subject of mushrooms.
•  The first live televised baseball coverage was a college game between Columbia and Princeton played on May 17, 1939.  Three months later, Major League Baseball entered the TV era.  A doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers was broadcast from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on Aug. 26, 1939.  The Reds took the first game 5-2, and the Dodgers won the second game 6-1.
•  Rembrandt’s earliest known paintings are “The Four Senses,” painted around 1624 when he was just 18 years old.  “The Spectacles Seller,” “The Three Singers,” “The Unconscious Patient” and “The Operation” represent sight, hearing, smell and touch, respectively.  Why just four senses?  Because only these four paintings have been found and identified.  In fact, until 2015, there were just three senses.  “The Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell)” turned up at auction in New Jersey, not attributed to Rembrandt.  Sharp-eyed collectors spotted it and placed it in the group where it belongs.  Art historians are confident a fifth painting representing taste will be found someday.
• When someone says they’re playing “devil’s advocate,” they mean they’re arguing a position contrary to yours.  It’s a way to ensure your argument is airtight, and it has its roots in the Renaissance-era Catholic Church.  Traditionally, the Devil’s advocate — advocatus diaboli in Latin — was an ecclesiastical lawyer consulted when someone was being considered for sainthood.  The church already knew the individual’s positive attributes; the advocatus diaboli was there to point out negative qualities that could be obstacles to sainthood.
• Tooth enamel develops in layers over time, creating a pattern of rings like tree rings that bear indications of age, diet, health and even environmental changes.  The concentric rings are called Retzius lines, or striae of Retzius, named for Anders A. Retzius, the Swedish anatomist who studied and wrote about them in the 1830’s.

~ Leslie Elman is the author of “Weird But True:  200 Astounding Outrageous and Totally Off the Wall Facts.”  Contact her at triviabitsleslie@gmail.com  COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
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