Y
Yellow
During the Elizabethan Era, English Law dictated who could wear the color yellow since both color and material used during this era were extremely important.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the color yellow represented earth.
“High yellow” was a term for very light-skinned, multiracial people who also had African ancestry, but the term is rarely used today.
Jaundice is the yellow discoloration of the skin caused by excessive amounts of bilirubin (the product of hemoglobin breakdown) in the blood.
“Mellow Yellow,” was the hit song by Donovan. Though many speculated that the song was about smoking banana skins, this was just an urban myth. It was actually Country Joe McDonald who, in 1966, started the rumor that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins.
Yo-yos
The yo-yos today are based on a hunting aid created by Filipino tribe people. The orb was used to stun and disorient while the twine came in handy to trip the animals. An American businessman saw the novelty and turned the weapon into a toy in the 1920s.
The world’s largest yo-yo resides in the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico, CA. Named “Big Yo,” the 256-pound yo-yo is made of California sugar pine, Baltic birch from the former USSR, and hardrock maple.
Various yo-yo tricks include “Walk the Dog,” “Hop the Fence,” “Man on a Flying Trapeze,” “Rock the Cradle,” and “Skin the Cat.”
The World Yo-Yo Contest was first started in 1932 in London, England. As of 2006, 19 countries participated in the World Yo-Yo Contest and 700 people were in attendance.
The World Yo-Yo Contest also acts as the host for the World Spin Top Contest and the World Throw Dough Championships every year.
Yodel
A yodel is a type of wordless singing usually associated with the Swiss, but is practiced as much in the Alps as it is in the mountains of Kentucky.
The best environments for Alpine-style yodeling have an echo and include lakes, rocky gorges, long hallways, rocky shorelines sporting canoes, and of course, the best environment of all, a mountain range.
Yodels require breaks between high and low notes and it’s the epiglottis, a human physiological feature, which allows for emphasizing the breaks.
In Persian and Azeri classical music, singers employ a yodeling technique called tahrir, which oscillates on neighboring tones.
On October 8, 2002, 937 yodelers held a melody for a minute at the Ravensburger Amusement Park near the German town of Meckenbeuren. They set the world record for the largest simultaneous yodel.
Yogurt
Americans consume more than 300,000 tons of yogurt each year.
Fruit was first added to commercially-produced yogurt in the U.S. by Dannon Yogurt.
It takes about 1 pound of whole milk to make 1 pound of yogurt.
In Armenia, yogurt is called matzoon and in Egypt, it’s called leben raib.
Preliminary studies show increasing one’s dietary intake of low fat, calcium-rich dairy products such as yogurt may reduce the risk of colon cancer.
Z
Zebra
Zebras, like horses and wild asses, are equids—long-legged animals that can move swiftly for their large size and have teeth designed for grinding and cropping grass.
Zebras communicate by positioning their ears and tails.
The long-legged Grevy’s zebra is the biggest of the wild equids. Named after a 19-century French president who received one as a present, Grevy’s zebras can be found in Northern Kenya.
The Romans used to call Grevy’s zebras “hippotigris” and used them in circus exhibitions to pull two-wheeled carts.
Zebras are black with white stripes…not vice versa.
The black and white stripes form a type of camouflage known as “disruptive coloration,” which breaks up the outline of the body. Like fingerprints, the pattern is unique for every zebra.
The zebra’s shiny coat dissipates over 70% of incoming heat.
Zedong, Mao
“An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
On September 9, 1976, Mao died at the age of 82 and was embalmed. His corpse was laid in a sarcophagus on permanent public display in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Each night when the museum is closed, the sarcophagus is lowered into an earthquake-proof chamber below the square.
The Chairman was married four times and was convinced that having sex with virgins helped “to restore and reinvigorate a man’s health and vigor.”
Mao was responsible for 14 to 20 million deaths from starvation during the “Great Leap Forward” with tens of thousands killed and millions of lives ruined during the “Cultural Revolution.”
Mao Zedong loved to swim. In his youth, he promoted swimming as a way of empowering the bodies of Chinese citizens, and one of his earliest poems embraced the beating of a wake through the waves. He swam avidly throughout his entire life.
The book Mao: the Unknown Story alleged that Mao was aware of the vast suffering and deaths from the “Great Leap Forward” but was dismissive of it, instead blaming bad weather or other officials for the famine.
Zipper
The initials YKK commonly seen on most zippers stands for “Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha,” the world’s largest zipper manufacturer.
Whitcomb L. Judson, a mechanical engineer from Chicago, invented a number of labor-efficient items, including the zipper.
It was B.F. Goodrich who coined the term zipper when he placed a large order for rubber galoshes he was manufacturing. He liked the “z-z-zip” sound they made and coined the name.
Initially, clothing with zippers was viewed as inappropriate for women because clothing could be removed so quickly. For this reason, zippers were found mostly in men’s and children’s apparel for years.
Zippers were originally used primarily for boots and tobacco pouches. Two decades later, the fashion industry introduced them for children’s clothes. You can imagine how excited men were when they began placing them on their pants!
Zombies
The bubonic plague not only wiped out half of Europe at one time, it also spawned many stories of zombies. Tales of the recently deceased and walking dead began to appear across the continent. Some of the symptoms of the bubonic plague—including passing out, falling into a brief comatose state, and internal bleeding—likely contributed to the notion of zombies.
In the early 19th century, electrophysiologists thought that the right dosage of electricity charged to the brain could bring a corpse back to life.
Rob Zombie, the accomplished musician and front man of the band White Zombie (named after the film), has directed several horror films including House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects. His remake of Halloween earned $78 million at the box office. Rob is certainly more human than human in terms of achievements.
With a budget of $500,000, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1983) had the highest budget for a music video at the time. In 2006, Guinness World Records awarded it the “most successful music video,” having sold over 9 million units.
Zombie flick Resident Evil (2002) starring Milla Jovovich was originally titled Resident Evil: Ground Zero. They dropped the subtitle after the September 11th attacks on New York City.
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The Utterly, Completely, and Totally Useless Fact-O-Pedia Page 21