What Would FEMSHEP Do?: Fun Fact Friday

To kick off your (presumably) glorious weekend, I have assembled a cache of really interesting facts for you this lovely day.

You know "Jurassic Park" refers to the Jurassic epoch, but did you ever wonder what epoch in which we currently live? Wonder no more, my friends. We are living in the Holocene epoch, which is where Bon Iver kind of got the name for that one song, Incidentally, this is why the mass extinction event that's currently happening is called The Holocene Extinction.

Farewell, faithful Passenger Pigeon. We hardly knew ye

The first words ever spoken on the surface of the Moon were not "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind" said by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission. The first words ever spoken when mankind first made contact with the Moon's surface were spoken by Buzz Aldrin. After a harrowing descent and landing, the Lunar Module (callsign: Eagle) touched down, and Buzz, the Lunar Module Pilot, called out "Contact light," which let Armstrong know that the probes on the feet of the Lunar Module were indicating that contact was made with the Lunar surface. So, technically, Buzz had the first word up there.

Shown: Probes on the feet!

SCIENCE

Speaking of Apollo missions that are brilliant and misunderstood, Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell (who, no joke, bought me lunch after I graduated from Navy boot camp, what a guy), never said "Houston, we have a problem." Let me tell you about Jim Lovell, and Apollo astronauts in general. They were, for the most part, bad ass test pilots. Have you ever met a pilot of any sort? Even the guys and gals who fly Cessna's walk and talk like they are the most fearless and awesome group of humans to ever have sprung from a fertile womb. Now, have you ever met a military aviator? I love you guys, but you all are some cocky SOB's, and rightfully so. So there's absolutely no way in hell that this big, tough Naval aviator would ever confess to having an active problem - this would imply that he couldn't handle it, and if you've ever met a man in your entire life, this concept is as foreign to them as spontaneous bouts of sobs during diaper commercials. Just does not happen. What Lovell actually said after hearing the massive bang in their Service Module was

"I believe we've had a problem here."

The line in the transcript is on page 160 of that link above so please now for the love of God can we put this misquote to bed!

No really, this magnificent human being bought me lunch!

The bananas we eat every day are heavily genetically modified in order to minimize or eliminate the seeds inside. This is what they would look like without any human interference: