Mark H. asks: Is it true diplomats can get away with murder because of diplomatic immunity? While the idea of some form of diplomatic immunity has existed seemingly as long as there have been humans banding together in some form, the modern rules surrounding this were originally laid out in 1961 at the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, with to […]
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If you were to ask a group of experts in various entertainment segments to point to a single year as the greatest in medium’s history, you’d likely get a slew of different answers with different rational. For example, when it comes to film, there’s no clear agreement between critics and film buffs about a particular year you can point to […]
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Kerri G. asks: Is it true that Rick Astley only made like $10 from Rickrolling? To begin with, for anyone who’s somehow managed to avoid the more than a decade old phenomenon of Rickrolling, in a nutshell this involves tricking someone into clicking on a link that takes them to the video for the relentlessly upbeat and infinitely cheesy 1980s […]
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Scott L. asks: Can you really just go online and order a bride/wife from some other country? Seems like this can’t really be a thing because of immigration laws, right? While people have been sending messages back and forth to arrange marriages sight-unseen throughout history, the slightly more modern concept of mail-order brides is generally considered to have originated during […]
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Jeremy A. asks: How many hamsters running on electricity generating wheels would it take to provide enough energy for an average American household? Would this be cheaper than coal electricity? While the question of hamsters powering homes may seem a bit farcical, it should be noted that at one point humans did specifically breed a certain type of dog for […]
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Sarah M. asks: What happens if you renounce your citizenship but don’t belong to another country when you do it? It turns out, renouncing your citizenship to a given nation is generally a fairly simple affair in many nations of the world. It doesn’t even usually cost that much. For example, in the UK- fittingly for a country stereotypical known […]
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In mid-2005 players logging on to play the popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft found themselves besieged by a virulent virtual plague nobody knew how to cure or effectively combat. For around a month the plague spread unchecked throughout the kingdom of Azeroth, killing tens of thousands of players’ characters and intriguing experts who’ve since used the plague as […]
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According to official company statements, Ronald McDonald is “second only to Santa in terms of recognition”. While this may or may not have been true at one point in time, you might have noticed of late that the formerly prominent fast-food mascot has almost completely disappeared from the lime-light. So how did Ronald McDonald come about in the first place […]
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Holly H.asks: I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and in one episode a guy is hit by a bazooka and the bomb gets lodged inside his body without exploding. Has this ever happened in real life? At first thought the idea of a human being hit by some kind of large explosive that not only doesn’t detonate and kill the person, […]
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Chloe T. asks: Can police officers or FBI agents commit crimes while undercover? The use of undercover or covert law enforcement is common throughout much of the world and, for the most part, men and women tasked with going undercover are expected to, and do, follow the law. However, beyond the occasional bad officer doing things they aren’t supposed to, […]
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Gina K asks: When people have to resort to cannibalism to survive, is it considered a crime? To begin with, cannibalism is absolutely legal in the United States (with the exception of the state of Idaho), the UK, much of Europe, Japan, etc. However, as Cornell Law School notes, a number of laws are in place across America “that indirectly […]
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In the city of Seattle, Washington there exists a vending machine that over the years has become something of a local landmark amongst residents who are familiar with its mysterious history. Situated on the corner the John Street and 10th Avenue East in the bustling Capitol Hill neighbourhood, the seemingly ancient machine is well known for dispensing random, sometimes rare, […]
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Outside of wine snobs, I think we can all agree that wine snobs are just the worst. This is not because virtually every study ever conducted into the field of wine tasting as a whole has concluded that it’s ridiculously easy to convince even the top sommeliers that $5 boxed white wine is the finest red wine ever bottled. Nor […]
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Today in History: June 21, 1994 On June 21, 1994, a Spanish man by the name of Jose Martin was out for a drive with his wife when he got definitive proof that the Universe doesn’t like him, or, at least, doesn’t like his car. How? Well, it dropped a nearly 2 kilo hunk of space rock that just moments […]
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Laura S. asks: Who was the first to come up with the idea of using passwords for computers instead of other authentication? Something akin to passwords have seemingly been used for at least as long as humans have been recording history. For example, one of the earliest references to something like a password is mentioned in the Book of Judges, […]
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Today in History: June 11, 1895 As the official name of Paris–Bordeaux–Paris Trail suggests, the idea of this particular event was to see who could drive from Paris to Bordeaux and back again in the quickest possible time. For reference, this was a distance of 1,178 km or 732 miles on the roads of the day. So what was so […]
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Today in History: June 8, 1959 Today for the equivalent price of a decent cup of coffee you can get the United States Postal Service to pick up and deliver a letter to anywhere in the continental United States in just a day or two. But it hasn’t always been that way and there’s a reason they call it “snail […]
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Today in History: June 7, 1971 On April 26, 1968 a 19 year old man called Paul Cohen walked into the Los Angeles County Courthouse to testify in a case for a friend. This, in and of itself, isn’t noteworthy. Why Mr. Cohen would have his name stenciled into the history books is because of something that was in turn […]
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