Today I found out why salt preserves meat. While today salting meat as a method of preservation is generally only commonly used in such things as salted pork and the like, salt has been used as the primary method of preserving meats and various other foods as far back as history records. Salt has a preservative effect thanks to the osmotic […]
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Today I found out how “port” and “starboard” became the commonly used terms for “left” (port) and “right” (starboard) on a ship. We’ve all been there. You step on a ship and everything suddenly becomes nautical, despite the fact that most on the boat probably have to resort to mnemonics to remember which side of the ship is port and […]
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This Day In History: January 5, 1825 On this day in history, 1825, on a bitter cold day, a young Alexandre Dumas, soon to be famed playwright and novelist and current son of Thomas-Alaxandre who was once one of Napoleon’s generals, fights in his first duel. During the duel, Dumas successfully defeated his opponent almost immediately, but, according to his […]
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This Day In History: January 4, 1965 On this day in history, 1965, CBS purchased the Fender Guitar Company for $13 million from Leo Fender. For reference, this would be around $90 million today. This was also close to $2 million more than CBS paid for the New York Yankees just two years before. After CBS continually reduced the quality […]
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Today I found out was started three years ago on January 1, 2010. In that span about 20 million people have visited the site with around 7.2 million of those people visiting at least once in 2012. There are now over 1400 posts between “regular” articles, “This Day In History” posts, Quick Facts, Infographics, and Answers. 2013 should be an […]
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The condition is known as “prosopagnosia” / “facial agnosia”, or in less medical terms: “face blindness”. (“Prosopagnosia” actually literally means: “face ignorance”. “prosopon” = “face”, “agnosia” = “not knowing” or “ignorance”). Once thought to be incredibly rare, with only 100 or so documented cases up until the last decade or so, it’s now thought that around 1 in every 50 […]
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This Day In History: December 29, 1890 On this day in history, 1890, the Seventh Cavalry opened fire on a Lakota Native American encampment with four rapid fire Hotchkiss guns, killing 150-300 of the group, including women and children. Along with the dead Lakota, around 25 of the cavalry troops themselves were killed with another 39 wounded, largely due to […]
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Today I found out the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue” was written by Shel Silverstein. The song was originally inspired by a friend of Silverstein’s, Jean Shepherd (noted writer, actor, radio personality, and humorist, who, among other things, co-wrote and narrated the holiday classic The Christmas Story film, partially based on his childhood). Jean had often been teased […]
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The (Carcharodon) Megalodon is thought to have looked something like a Great White Shark, only a bit more stocky and overall bigger… much bigger, with an average adult Megalodon estimated to have weighed around 70-100 tons (about 30 times that of a Great White Shark which full grown tend to be about 2.5-3 tons). The Megalodon is estimated to have […]
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Merry Christmas from everyone here at Today I Found Out! While you’re sipping eggnog and trying your best to continue smiling and nodding while your cousin and cousin-in-law once again tell you how their little Stacey has a photographic memory and already sings and plays the piano as well as Norah Jones, despite being just 4 years old and publicly […]
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On the whole, people don’t generally like to kill one another. Most wars throughout history are often more about the agendas of the state’s leaders than the soldiers on the field actually inherently feeling any real malice towards those they are asked to try to kill or otherwise defeat. Few events in history illustrate this as well as a remarkable […]
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This Day In History: December 21, 1898 On this day in history, 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactive element radium (in the form of radium chloride), extracting it from uraninite. They first removed the uranium from the uraninite sample and then found that the remaining matter was still radioactive, so investigated further. Along with the barium in the […]
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The man was Eric Moussambani Malonga, later nicknamed “Eric the Eel”. Moussambani is from Equatorial Guinea in Africa and only managed to get into the Olympics at all because of a wildcard drawing system put in place by the International Olympic Committee, designed to try to encourage developing countries to participate in various Olympic events. Thanks to this drawing, Equatorial Guinea […]
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This Day In History: December 19, 1973 Much like Orson Welles before him, Johnny Carson once accidentally used his public platform to incite a public panic. On this day in history, 1973, Carson started a near month long toilet paper shortage in the United States. In his show, he stated, “You know what’s disappearing from the supermarket shelves? Toilet paper… […]
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Today I found out the guy who did the voice for Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger also sang the iconic “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” song in Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The man was Thurl Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft originally went unintentionally uncredited in the film. Because of this, a common misconception rose up that it was Boris Karloff, […]
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This Day In History: December 16, 1916 On this day in history, 1916, the “Mad Monk”, Grigori Rasputin, was murdered by members of the Russian aristocracy. The exact events surrounding his death have given rise to a variety of stories, much of which are probably false. So what actually happened? First, a brief background on Rasputin: Grigori Rasputin was born […]
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This Day In History: December 14, 1903 On this day in history, 1903, the Wright brothers took their Wright Flyer out in their first attempt to fly it. The date of their first attempt would have been a day sooner, but they had promised their dad they would not fly on the Sabbath, so waited until Monday the 14th. The […]
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Brenda asks: Did one of the Bond girls really used to be a man? That depends on how you define “man” and “Bond girl”. If you define “man” as a person who was born with a penis and “Bond girl” as any eye candy female that appeared in a Bond movie at any point, then yes- one of the Bond […]
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