You Know What?
Roh Kyu-lee Editor-in-Chief
2 Years in Prison for Selling Gum?
Did you know that selling and chewing gum is illegal in Singapore? In 1983, a proposal to ban gum was first brought to Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister who governed Singapore for three decades, because spitting out gum anywhere was causing trouble maintaining the cleanness of the country. However, he thought that this proposal was too radical so decided not to accept it. Four years later, Singapore railway system Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) started to run, and this played a crucial role in getting chewing gum banned in Singapore. Vandals stuck chewing gum on the sensors of the doors of the trains, which caused the failure of a device function. Therefore, Singapore decided to ban spitting and selling gum in1992. People caught chewing gum faced a thousand dollar fine, and selling gum might put you in prison for twoyears. Therapeutic, dental, or nicotine chewing gum was designated as exceptions in 2004.
There Is No White Horse in This World
The hite horse, which usually appears in fairy tales, is well known as ‘prince charming’ to us all. Well, white horse doesn’t exist genetically. The hair color of a horse is determined by its genes from their parents, and there are normally three kinds of gene: brown, dark brown and black. However, gene G, which is a dominant gene, makes the whole body grey by hiding the other three genes. At least one of a horse’sparents should be grey to have gene G. This is called ‘The Rule of Grey’. A horse that inherited gene G is born grey with some white hair, and as it gets older, the number of white hairs increases and turns white all over. It's easy to understand when you think of the principle as human’s hair turning white when you get older. Perhaps the nobility and mystique of the white horse comes from its years of experience.
December 25th isn’t Christmas in Russia?
December 25th is Christmas, which is the day when Jesus Christ was born, and is a worldwide holiday not only for Christians. However, Christmas in Russia is different from other countries. The state religion of Russia is Russian orthodox, which 75% of Russians believe in. Russian Orthodox originates from Eastern Orthodoxy, which was brought in from Byzantine in 983. It was similar to Russian folk religion, so it could be inherited smoothly and contributed to the development of the country and many different kinds of culture. So, what does this have to do with the different date of Christmas in Russia? Well, Russia and other Orthodox countries such as Greece, Serbia, Romania and Ethiopia use the Julian calendar, which was made to revise the error of the Roman calendar. But the year of the Julian calendar was exactly 365 days and 6 hours, which caused an error of 10 days after a few centuries. The Gregorian calendar, which is used all over the world was made to correct the error of the Julian calendar, and the year of it is 365 or 366 days. Even though the new revision version was made, Orthodox countries stuck to using the Julian calendar, which caused Christmas13 days later in Russia. In the distant future, there may be differences for more than a month.
Am I Related to People All Over the World?!
A chromosome is a rod-shaped structure in our bodies which transmits the genetic information of a parent cell to a daughter cell when a cell divides. It consists of DNA and protein, and our genetic information is in our DNA. Humans have the same two sets of 23 chromosomes, which means we all have the same 21,000 protein-encoded and 30,000 RNAs (RNA is a highly polymerized compound which is directlyaffect when DNA synthesizes protein based on its genetic information.) With few exceptions, we all have the same number of organs and the same chemical reactions occur in our bodies. But no twohumans look exactly the same, though they can look similar. These visual differences such as the color of our skin, the shape of our nose or curliness of our hair is a very minor difference. Like the saying “A penny saved is a penny gained”, these differences are tiny, so we can’t say every human has 100% the same genes, but at least wehave 99% of our genes in common.
English Is Not an Official Language in the United States
If someone asks you, “What is theofficial language in the United States?” you m
ight answer “English”. However, English is a de facto national language in the US, not official. They never had a federal official language but have adopted a bill that gives official status to English, which is called the English-only movement. Thirty of the fifty states have set up English as an official language, while Hawaii set both English and Hawaiian as theirofficial languages, and Alaska set 20 official languages including English. The U.S. Census Bureau regularly publishes a book about the most common language spoken at home, which also informs people of the English speaking ability of people who don’tspeak English at home. According to the American Community Survey (ACS), 80% of Americans speak English at home, 12.4% speak Spanish, 3.7% speak Indo-European languages and 3% speak Asian Pacific languages. Korean ranked eighth place among them. English is not an official language in the United States, but it is considered to be by most people.