Skip To Main Content
Wut? Issue #3

by Ava Gayl and Clarissa Goddard (8th)

Welcome to our new school year, CMS! For all our new 6th graders: WUT? (Why U Think?) is CMS’s monthly fun-facts machine, dedicated to pumping out random facts to answer the age-old question:

“Why think properly when fun facts can do it for you?”

Let’s get started.

Dolphins Have Names?

Yes, they have names—but they’re more like whistles. Each dolphin has a signature whistle, which helps them keep track of social relationships. Dolphins learn whistle patterns from one another, but each varies in volume, pitch, frequency, and length. So basically, underwater roll call is wild.

Cherophobia

Derived from the Greek root chero (“to rejoice”), cherophobia is the fear of having fun—something we can confirm certain CMS teachers definitely struggle with.

People with this fear often experience:

  • Difficulty expressing positive emotions

  • Avoidance of activities that bring joy

  • A belief that happiness leads to negative consequences

  • Anxiety or panic when they feel happy

Fun, right? (Well… not for them.)

Bananas = Berries

We all know what bananas are, right? Those mushy yellow things associated with monkeys?
Well, what many people don’t know is that bananas are botanically classified as berries.

A berry is defined as a fruit that:

  • Grows from a single flower with one ovary

  • Has a fleshy pericarp (fruit wall)

  • Contains seeds

Bananas check all the boxes.
We apologize in advance to anyone whose childhood we may have just shattered.

“Jingle Bells” Was Originally a Thanksgiving Song

Yep—not a Christmas song!
James Pierpoint composed “One Horse Open Sleigh” in 1857 for children to sing on Thanksgiving, not Christmas.

But the song became such a hit that people kept singing it—especially after the “Very Official Mariah Carey Start of Christmas”—and boom, it got adopted as a Christmas carol. The title changed to “Jingle Bells” two years later for reasons historians still don’t know…but it definitely sounds like elf mischief.

Ketchup Was Originally Made With Some Freaky Ingredients…

Ketchup began in China as a fermented fish sauce called ke-thcup. But it wasn’t made with regular fish meat—oh no. The original recipe involved:

  • Fish guts

  • Fish entrails (stomach, intestine, etc.)

  • Soybeans

Yup. Imagine that… with a side of fries.

Later, when the English adapted it, they used slightly less horrifying but still questionable ingredients like mushrooms, walnuts, and—brace yourself—anchovies.

News Headlines