ISSUE NO. 01
DECEMBER 20215 Things You Probably Never Thought About – Until Just NowCurious minds may not have pondered all of these little mysteries, but they'll certainly be dying to learn about them now.Why do cats climb into boxes?They do it to feel safe, according to Live Science. And it’s not just your domestic tabby: Big cats also like to hide in a spot where nothing can sneak up on them. Susan Bass, director of public relations at Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida, told Mental Floss that the tigers and other cats at the sanctuary will hop into any box big enough to hold them, just like the little kitty living at your house does. 
 How did the colours blue and pink get assigned to boys and girls?It seems so embedded in our culture, but it wasn’t always so; in 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing that four major department stores suggested dressing boys in pink, according to Smithsonian Magazine. In 1918, the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department wrote, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Jo B. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of the book Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America, told Smithsonian that the colour designations were pretty much arbitrary until the 1940s, when manufacturers attempted to interpret the preferences of the American audience and could easily have gone the other way.
 Why do we hiccup? Believe it or not, hiccups might be an evolutionary holdover from our more fishlike ancestors, according to Smithsonian Magazine. During a hiccup, the muscles we use to inhale contract while our vocal cords are slammed shut by the tongue and the roof of the mouth. There’s no discernible purpose for hiccups in humans, but a similar pattern of movement among amphibians is useful. When tadpoles are breathing underwater during a stage when they have both lungs and gills, they take in a mouthful of water, close the opening to the lungs, and then force the water out through their gills. In both humans and amphibians, the signal initiating hiccup-like activity comes from the brain stem.
 What were the first crops humans started to grow? Crop cultivation probably started with wild varieties of peas, lentils, and barley that humans already found growing naturally around 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East (including modern Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran), according to NPR’s food blog, the Salt.
Why do seashells sound like the ocean? It’s lovely to reminisce about your beach vacation by listening to the sound of waves in a big conch shell. Of course, that it isn’t the ocean you hear. The shape of seashells allows them to capture and reflect ambient noise, amplifying certain frequencies, so when you hold one to your ear, you’re really just hearing echoes of the quiet sounds that are already surrounding you. Nationally accredited audiologist Shruti Deshpande, PhD, an assistant professor at St. John’s University and the Long Island Doctor of Audiology Consortium, told HuffPost that empty bowls and bottles can produce similar effects.