Today I Found Out has been nominated for the “Best Site of 2011 Award” from All My Faves. If you’d care to vote for Today I Found Out in that contest, I’d very much appreciate it. Just go here to vote : Vote 2011 and click “Like” there near the top. Alternatively, if you’d like to see what other sites […]
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Today I found out sushi is not raw fish, that’s sashimi. Sashimi is just sliced raw fish, sometimes dipped in sauces and sometimes served with sushi. Sushi is any food dish consisting of vinegared rice, usually served with some other toppings, but not always. It happens to often be served with various types of sea food, either cooked or raw, […]
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You may notice that sometimes when you click on posts to read, the page only partially loads. I’m working on fixing the issue at the moment, but no solution is currently presenting itself, or rather, I haven’t figured out yet what’s causing the problem, so it may be a little bit before the issue is resolved. For the present, if […]
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This Day In History: December 13, 1809 On this day in history, 1809, the woman who would soon become the first to survive an oophorectomy was diagnosed as not being pregnant past term, as she had thought, but having an extremely large tumor, which isn’t that different than a baby when you think about it, but you know… bigger, in […]
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This Day In History: December 12, 1901 On this day in history, 1901, Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi’s radio device became the first such device to successfully transmit a signal all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to Signal Hill in St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada, a span of about 2100 miles. His receiving device used a […]
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Rubber is made black by adding various chemicals, such as carbon black. This isn’t just for cosmetic reasons, but because adding chemicals like carbon black to the rubber drastically increases desirable qualities of the rubber. For instance, with tires, carbon black works as a reinforcing filler in rubber, which increases the durability and strength of the end product. Specifically, adding […]
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This Day In History: December 11, 1972 On this day in history, 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan landed on the moon, becoming the last human beings to walk on the moon. Throughout the Apollo missions which spanned from 1961 to 1972, a total of 24 people journeyed to the moon with twelve of them getting to […]
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Today I found out gyroscopic effects have almost nothing to do with your ability to ride a bike. The problem with the forces generated from the gyroscopic effect on a typical bicycle is that they simply aren’t very powerful when considering the physics involved in having the majority of the center of mass of the bike at the top (with […]
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This Day In History: December 9, 1872 On this day in history, 1872, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became the first person of African American descent to serve as the governor of a U.S. state. Pinchback was born the son of a freed slave (African-Cherokee-Welsh-German descent) and her former white owner (Scottish-Irish-Welsh-German descent), who married her. His father was reasonably well […]
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Today I found out Albert Einstein did not fail at mathematics in school. In fact, he actually excelled at mathematics throughout his schooling and even considered becoming a mathematician for a time. This rumor actually started while he was still alive and even showed up in a particular issue of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Einstein was shown the article […]
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Today I found out the actor who played Steve Urkel also did the voice for Sonic the Hedgehog. While staring in Family Matters, Jeleel White was cast to do the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog for 65 episodes in the animated series The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1993. From 1993-1994, he also did the voice of the famous […]
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This Day In History: December 8, 2010 On this day just one year ago, SpaceX became the first privately held entity to successfully launch a spacecraft into orbit and then subsequently recover it (they were also the first private company to launch something in orbit with a liquid-fueled vehicle around a year earlier when their Falcon 1 rocket put a […]
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Today I found out it is actually quite safe to fly through an asteroid field. The reality is that the asteroids in asteroid fields are incredibly far apart and most of the objects in these fields are very tiny. There are generally hundreds of thousands of miles between these objects and most of them are no bigger than a tennis […]
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Today I found out about a real life white whale that destroyed over 20 whaling ships and reportedly survived encounters with another 80 or so. The massive 70 foot long albino sperm whale was named Mocha Dick and was one of the two whales that inspired the novel Moby Dick. Mocha Dick was given his name as he was first […]
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Today I found out Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake”. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, “Of course she didn’t, she spoke French!” But, in fact, she didn’t say “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” either. In fact, this saying in France actually pre-dated her arrival there by anywhere from about thirty years to as much […]
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This Day In History: December 5, 1933 On this day in history, 1933, Prohibition officially ended when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, originally proposed by Congress on February 20, 1933. Once ratified, this constitutional amendment repealed the 18 Amendment. The 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in […]
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Today I found out American “buffalo” are not actually buffalo. The American “buffalo” are actually bison. Specifically, they are “Bison bison”. The only true buffalo are the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. The American bison are actually very closely related to the Wisent, which are European bison. American bison are also somewhat closely related to cattle. In fact, […]
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Today I found out the Earth is hottest when it is furthest from the Sun on its orbit, not when it is closest. During the period when the Earth is furthest from the sun (aphelion), the average temperature of the entire planet is about 4°F (2.3°C) higher than when it is closest to the sun (perihelion). On average, the intensity […]
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