26 Not-So-Scary Facts About Halloween - mental_floss List Show (Ep.228)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube, and I am being made to wear a series of animal masks

because I have failed to find adequate support for the Pork Chop Party Fund, and I am being punished by my employees

Also, it's Halloween. By the way, did you know the fear of Halloween is known as Samhainophobia

Well, that's the first of many facts about Halloween I'm going to share with you today, so if you have Samhainophobia, you should probably look away

Halloween is technically a Christian term. It translates to hallowed evening or holy evening

Now, you've probably heard it referred to as All Hallows Eve before. The letter N at the end of the word Halloween actually came from the Scots language where even means eve

Trick-or-treating may have evolved from an old English tradition that started around the year 1000 AD

On November 2nd, children would go door-to-door with something called soul cakes

The children would sing and hand these cakes to people in their communities

So naturally that eventually evolved into children taking candy because children were like

you know what's better than giving away cakes? Cakes. Gourds, turnips, and beets were the original vegetables carved to make jack-o'-lanterns

but in the Americas, pumpkins are much more common, so European immigrants used them instead

Which is great because it allows me to share a few facts about pumpkins. The largest pumpkin of all time grew in California in 2013

It weighed 2 pounds and blossomed for 105 days The world largest jack was a little smaller but still pretty big weighing in at 1 pounds

It was carved in Pennsylvania in 2005. And now I have turned into a kitten to tell you that the largest display of lit jack-o'-lanterns occurred in Keene, New Hampshire

where 30,581 were put on display in 2013. I have to say I dramatically prefer being a kitten to being a pig

Anyway, Native Americans used to use pumpkins to treat bladder, digestive, and kidney problems

And from 1863 to 1936, pumpkin seeds were considered an effective treatment for parasites in the intestines in the United States

These days, of course, yeah, no, that does not work. But some people still argue that pumpkins can help with one's cholesterol levels after menopause

No, not mental floss, menopause. All of this is particularly surprising when you consider that 90% of a pumpkin is water

Now, if you've ever watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and felt bad when Charlie Brown receives rocks instead of candy, you're not alone

In fact, viewers mailed in a bunch of candy and cookies for Charlie Brown when the program first aired in 1966, back before people knew that cartoons are fictional

And speaking of candy, candy corn used to be called chicken feed. The slogan that Gullitz Confectionary Company used to advertise it was something worth crowing for

By the way, if you want to celebrate candy corn on a day separate from Halloween, National

Candy Corn Day is the day before October 30th. And now I am a zebra Mark remind me to never forgive you for this According to daylight savings expert Michael Downing the candy industry pushed to move daylight savings time to November so we could have as much light as possible on Halloween In 1985 when the Senate was discussing daylight savings time the candy industry put a candy pumpkin on every seat in the Senate

We don't know exactly why orange and black represent Halloween, but most think it's because orange symbolizes harvest and black symbolizes death

Moving on to Halloween legends, some believe that if you put your clothes inside out on Halloween, then walk backwards, you'll encounter a witch at midnight

Which is actually true, that's not a legend, Meredith. No, that's true. It's said that if girls put the apple they bob for under their pillow, they'll dream of the man they're going to marry

Maybe if you're really good, you'll dream of him wearing a zebra mask. Speaking of which, Mark, can I move on to the giraffe, please

Oh yeah, that's better. I've always loved giraffes. Anyway, there's also an old Western European story about the origin of the Jack-o'-lantern

In it, a man named Stingy Jack tricks the Devil, although the actual trick varies according to the story

It's a bit of a complicated story, but it works out that Jack can't get into heaven or get into hell

so the Devil ends up giving him a burning coal that he puts inside of a turnip and jack-o'-lanterns

And finding a spider on Halloween is actually considered good luck. Some say the spider is actually someone you know who's died, who's taken spider form to say hello to you

Maybe the spider is even Harry Houdini, who famously did not believe in ghosts, and who died on Halloween

Back to bobbing for apples for a moment, if I may. In the UK, the game is also referred to as, like

Snap Apple Duking Apple Ducking and also Duck Apple Silly String has been a major cause of property damage in Los Angeles on Halloween so it is now banned on that holiday In fact the used possession sale or distribution of silly string is punishable by up to a thousand dollar fine

If you're familiar with the fight-or-flight phenomenon, you can probably guess that haunted houses are extremely dangerous for the actors who work there to scare you, because sometimes you don't flight, you fight

The most common reports we came across involved punches and therefore breaks to the nose

There's also an evangelical Christian take on the haunted house, the Hell House

Rather than being like, you know, attacked by ghouls, customers there go through a house that shows them what happens if they sin

According to a study done in 2000 that examined hundreds of kids' Halloween costumes, only 8.7% of costumes were gender neutral

The most common costumes for girls were princesses and then beauty queens

The most common boy costumes, death-themed or superheroes. And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that the last time we had a full moon on Halloween was in 2001

and the next time we'll see one is in 2020. It turns out that it's a pretty rare occurrence

Thanks for watching Metal Plus here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people who made me wear a giraffe mask

and ergo are no longer considered particularly nice by me. We appreciate you watching

Enjoy Halloween, stay safe, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be spooky