Introducing Fake Fact Friday
Hey, y’all! Happy Friday and welcome to Fake Fact Friday or FFF. Now, this all started when I thought “Oh it’d be fun to do fun facts on Fridays” and that week I happen to be at dodgeball on Wednesday. I was chatting with some of my old co-workers (now friends) and they were all talking about how my good buddy Braden used to come up with fake facts and feed them to his manager. His manager believed them and I thought “That’s fun I’m going to steal that.” Friday came around, and I was prepared with what was actually one of Braden’s fake facts: “In the 1500s they were “discovering” all sorts of new things, lands, peoples, and spices. One of these spices was mint, however, it would go bad by the time it made it back wherever they were sending it back. One of these sailors had the genius idea to store the mint with the peppercorns and that’s how we actually get peppermint.”
So I sent this message with a little “Happy FFF” and people were excited by what they thought was a “Fun Fact Friday”. I was outed after people started questioning what FFF actually meant. It wasn’t a total loss though because everyone thought that was fun. They even suggested ways to improve it. My lovely new co-worker Iyris suggested that I present two facts, one fake and one real, and that people try and guess which one is the fake one. And so for the next week, that’s exactly what I did and that’s what I’d like to present you with now.
Fact 1
Texas is big, it’s shaped like toast, and everything down there is bigger than anything anywhere else. But also they got some weird laws. If you’re a horse person though, I don’t know if it’s so weird. Every business establishment in Texas is required by the government to have a hitching post outside of it. If you’re a business and you don’t have a hitching post, you could be fined anywhere from $500 to $1,500. Now I doubt in this era this law is enforced so much, but if you’re riding your horse around town keep an eye out for businesses that don’t have hitching posts and report them to the local authorities.
Fact 2
In this day and age, we’re always looking to change laws. You know remove old ones that don’t make no sense but then sometimes there are some old laws that you’re just like this still exists? For example, if you are an American citizen, can you find an island out in the middle of nowhere with no sort of government or citizen occupying it? You can claim it so much as it’s covered in bird guano. That’s right. If you find a rock or an island that’s covered in bird crap, you can claim it for the United States and they will defend you with the army. They’ll even defend that island under the 1856 guano Island act.
Answer
Fact 1 is fake.
The Guano Island Act is a real law that still exists. It was actually because in 1856, guano (or bird crap) was a valuable resource due to the high nature of Nitrate in it. Nitrate was valuable (and still is) because it is used to create fertilizers.
As a double bonus fact, it may not be Texas that has a horse hitching law, but Alberta, the Texas of Canada, actually has a law that all businesses must have a post to hitch your horse to.
What’s Next
The next step in this FFF series is to try and figure out a way to turn this into the next Wordle, Heardle, Framed, Worldle, you know one of those fun little games to play. I have no experience coding or making a website or an app or even a web extension for your browser. I guess that will be my journey to learn these things.
Come back next week for your weekly FFF.