Happy HumpDay!
Happy HumpDay! Do you love learning something new each week? Maybe your friends and family would like to learn some cool stuff too?! If you know someone who has a thirst for useless but entertaining knowledge, feel free to forward this email to them and have them subscribe!!!! As always, check out the HumpDay website at HumpDayNewsletter.com and follow the official HumpDay Instagram!
Literature
Italics is the often ignored middle child between BOLD and underlined. Italics are used to identify titles or important objects within a sentence to allow them to stand out but, who thought of making words a little crooked in order to make look different from the rest of the sentence?
Italics were first invented in the year 1500 by an Italian scholar named Aldus Manutius. The printing press was still a relatively new invention and printers all over Europe were experimenting with new forms of text to serve specific purposes. Aldus Manutius invented italics as a more compact form of text that allowed him to print portable books that could be easily fit into someone’s coat pocket. At the time, books were only printed in large block letter that required large leather bound books to fit all of the text so, the invention of italics was vital for making the printed word easier to transport.
The slanted style of italics was designed to emulate handwriting and give the book a more informal feel as if the reader was reading a letter from a friend. In fact, the first edition of italics text was modeled off the specific handwriting of one of Aldus’ friends, Italian philosopher, Niccolo de Niccoli. Originally the font was named Aldino after its creator but as it spread through Italy the form of text gradually became known as italics for its country of origin.
Modern italics is not as widely used as it was in the 14th century and today it is reserved only for certain names, titles or objects. It would be interesting to try and read an entire book printed in italics though. You would probably end up with a sore neck from trying to read all that slanted text.
Entertainment
Disney vacations are expensive. Between flights, hotels stays in Disney themed resorts, and cost of a fast pass so you can ride more than one roller coaster per day, it all adds up to a pretty penny. Families going to Disney often pull out all the stops for their pilgrimage to the happiest place on earth, but most parents don’t shell out the kind of dough needed to experience the finer things that Disney has to offer.
Located behind an inconspicuous wooden door in New Orleans Square at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA lies a secret venue that only the most devote (and wealthy) Disney goers have access to. Hidden in plain sight is Club 33, Disney’s most exclusive restaurant and lounge that is reserved for only the most VIP of visitors. The club is only available to members and, for the low low price of a $25,000 initial fee and a $12,000 annual fee, members can access the Club 33 restaurant and three other private restaurants and lounges that are not open to the public. The restaurants are extravagant, protected from the masses, and feature a world class executive chef running each of the kitchens.
Members also get premier annual passes to the park which include free valet parking, early admission to the park, and exclusive offers for events held just for Club members. The most important perk of being a Club 33 member is that the lounges that members have access to are the only areas of the park that serve alcohol (much needed around thousands of screaming kids).
If you have the cash to spend, you can sign up for Club 33 today and plan you’re first class trip to Disneyland! Only problem is that there is a 14-year waiting list for membership so maybe sign up a few years before having kids.
Sports
Watching a football game on TV is a colorful affair. In addition to the green grass and the players jerseys, there are always blue and yellow lines painted on the field to help the fans watching at home. Many arm chair quarterbacks and fair-weather football fans rely on the magical blue and yellow lines that appears on TV to show them where the first down line and line of scrimmage is.
Unfortunately for TV football fans, upon attending their first live football game, those fans get confused with the lack of visual aids throughout the game. “Where is the yellow line?” “How far do they have to go?” “What down is it?”. Today, we take the graphics during a football game for granted but, it is important to remember that the technology required to bring us those graphics during a live broadcast is nothing short of a miracle.
The company that brought us the yellow first down line is called Sportsvision and they specialize graphically augmented broadcasts, aka putting helpful visuals over sports games so we can follow along. Sportsvision invented a computer system that works with the cameras filming the game to create a digital model of the stadium and superimpose the graphics on the broadcast in the correct position everytime.
To explain the incredible technology in the simplest of terms, Sportsvision’s software begins with a digital representation of the stadium that tells the cameras what yard line they are looking at as they are pointed toward the field. The cameras filming the game are fitted with motion sensors that measure the angle, tilt and zoom of the camera compared to its starting position. The combination of the digital representation of the field and the cameras direction measurements allows each camera to know exactly which yard line it is currently pointing at.
For example, if you were to look at the 50 yard line of a football field then, slightly tilt your head to the left, you would be looking at the 40 yard line. Tilt a little more and you’d be looking at the 30 yard line and so on. Basically, the cameras know how far they are tilted from where they started which allows them to understand know where on the field they are pointed.
Once the camera knows what yard line it is pointed at, it uses Sportsvision software to identify where on screen the yellow line should be to most accurately represent the first down line. Then, the cameras use the green grass of the field as a green screen to superimpose the line onto the field for the broadcast (sometimes when it snows you can see the yellow line is a little fuzzy since it can’t project on the white snow).
The incredible combination or digital and mechanical technology that Sportsvision created in 1978 was adopted by the NFL in 1998 and has since made the game of football so much easier to follow.
This Week in History
On this day in the year 2000, the presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was decided in the United States Congress after one of the most closely contested elections in history. The election came down to the state of Florida, which used punch cards to capture votes. It was discovered that the machines punching the holes in the punch cards did not punch the tickets all the way through, causing an excess of miscounted or uncounted votes. The Florida election was so close that it triggered a recount, but the supreme court ruled that Florida should not conduct a manual recount which effectively gave George W. Bush the presidency. In the end, Bush won the election with 271 electoral votes, just one more than was needed to win.
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