Author Archives: Daven Hiskey

December 4th: The Mary Celeste is Found Completely Abandoned Yet Still Containing All Its Cargo, Plenty of Food and Water, and Still Under Sail. The Crew Were Never Seen Again

This Day In History: December 4, 1872 On this day in 1872, the crew of the British craft Dei Gratia spotted the Mary Celeste (originally named The Amazon before being purchased and rechristened) still under sail, but yawing slightly.  Upon closer inspection, they observed that no members of the crew were on deck.  After several hours of watching from a […]

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December 2nd: The First Man-Made Self Sustainable Nuclear Chain Reaction is Initiated

This Day In History: Dec 2, 1942 On this day in history, at 3:25 pm CST, 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, famed physicist and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, the “father of the atomic bomb”, and his team successfully started the word’s first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on a racquetball court under the west stands of Stagg […]

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The Development of the Video Game “Pong” was a Training Exercise for a New Gaming Developer at Atari and Wasn’t Originally Intended to Be Released

In 1972, a 29 year old Nolan Bushnell and a 35 year old Ted Dabney were fresh off a sort of successful failure in an arcade game known as Computer Space, which was more or less just a very blatant rip-off of a previous game Bushnell had come across called Spacewar! The pair had gotten a company called Nutting Associates […]

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Keanu Reeves’ First Name is Pronounced “Kay-ah-noo” Not “Key-ah-noo”

Today I found out Keanu Reeves’ first name is pronounced “Kay-ah-noo”, not “Key-ah-Noo”. That isn’t the only misconception surrounding his name. The name itself means “the coolness”, but is often incorrectly said to mean “cool breeze over the mountains”. Reeves’ was named after his uncle Henry Keanu Reeves. In Keanu Reeves’ early days in Hollywood, his agent thought his name […]

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November 30th: A Meteorite Hits a Woman Napping in Her Home, Making Her the First Known Human to Be Struck by an Extraterrestrial Object

This Day In History: November 30, 1954 On this date in history in 1954 a meteorite hit 31 year old Ann Elizabeth Hodges who was napping in the living room of her home at the time.  This made her the first known human being to be struck by an extraterrestrial object. Somewhat humorously, Hodges lived across the street from the […]

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November 28th: Former Scrap-Metal Dealer, Louis B. Mayer, Who Later Helped Form MGM, Opens His First Movie Theater

This Day In History: November 28, 1907: On this day in 1907, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer, who was struggling to make ends meet with his scrap-metal business, purchased an old 600 seat burlesque house in Massachusetts and re-opened it as a movie theater he named the “Orpheum”.  His first theater was such a success that within a few years, […]

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Microwave Radiation Does Not Cause Cancer

The type of radiation emitted by microwave ovens is non-ionizing.  This means that it doesn’t contribute to your chance of getting cancer like x-rays, ultraviolet light, etc. do.  Outside of potential burn risks, experiments done with rodents have yet to show any major adverse effect to prolonged exposure to microwaves at the 2.45 GHz range seen in most microwave ovens, […]

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November 26th: The Second Triumvirate with Caesar Augustus, Marcus Lepidus, and Mark Antony is Formed, Marking the End of Rome as a Republic

This Day In History: November 26, 43 BC On this day in 43 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, (also known as Caesar Augustus) the great nephew of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed the political alliance that became known as the “Second Triumvirate”, which officially ended the days of Rome as a Republic.  Before their alliance, the […]

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Clever Jewelers

In a marketing effort to boost jewelry sales, the American National Retail Jeweler Association in 1937 revised the system by which certain wedding anniversaries are to be marked by giving various jewels, precious metals, and other artifacts on certain anniversaries. Prior to their marketing scheme, it was traditional only to give standardized gifts on the 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, […]

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