If Coca-Cola’s own marketing is to be believed, few things are more satisfying than a cold drink on a hot day. Tacking on to a string of hilarious missteps in the late 20th century (see: That Time Coca-Cola Spent $100 Million Intentionally Filling Coke Cans With Water That Smelled Like Farts, That Time Coca-Cola Tried to Sell Bottled Tap Water […]
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John A. asks: Are there any real examples of medieval castles having alligators in the moat to keep out intruders? A common image in pop-culture is that of a castle moat filled to the brim with water and hungry crocodiles. So did anyone ever actually do this? The short answer is that it doesn’t appear so. That said, while there’s […]
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Beyond being a staple of any self-respecting peace officer, thanks to the popularity of things like Movember, the humble moustache has made a glorious, bristly return to the faces of men all over the world in recent years. As a result, there is an almost endless supply of moustache related products one can buy, which means it’s only a matter […]
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Mark R. asks: Why do drawn hearts look nothing like real hearts? Who first drew them this way? The heart symbol is one of the single most enduring and widely recognised symbols in modern culture. But where did it come from? Something like the familiar heart symbol goes back many thousands of years. Specifically, several pieces of pottery going back […]
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Oxford University is well known for being one of the most prestigious and elite places of learning in history. Over the years, it has seen some of the finest minds the world has ever known pass through its halls. It’s also the place where over six centuries ago a bunch of students and a fair number of townsfolk were killed […]
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Joseph R.asks: What happens if the president is too sick to work? The president of the United States never technically takes a day off. Even when they’re ostensibly “on vacation” they are still very much the leader of the country and have many duties to fulfill on a daily basis. For example, even while on vacation, they need to continue […]
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Although crime in England’s capital was on the decline in the mid-19th century, thanks in part to the relatively recent formation of the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1839, fear of crime was a persistent, reoccurring issue thanks to a few instances of robbery and murder, and, of course, the news media. In particular, the so-called “garrotting” cases, where someone […]
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At one point in time, Nicolas Coppola, better known as Nicolas Cage (he changed his last name so as not to seem to be trying to cash in on his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola’s, name), was among the highest paid actors in the world, earning some $40 million in a year at the apex of his success. In 2009, Cage’s […]
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Ron G. asks: Your donating bodies to science article left me wondering. What do hospitals do with limbs of people they amputate? Like, if I have a limb amputated, can I ask for it back? It’s standard procedure in most hospitals to incinerate any limbs, organs or tissue they remove from a non-organ donor patient. However, just because this is […]
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Jesse K. asks: How are drug sniffing dogs trained? I mean, they don’t have them actually sniff drugs, right? Sniffer dogs are a key tool in the arsenal of law enforcement to do their jobs- trained to sniff out everything from drugs to fruit and boasting a reasonably good success rate (with one caveat that we’ll get too shortly). As […]
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Worryingly described by entomologists and arachnologists as a “not uncommon” occurrence in certain parts of the globe, spider rain can see anywhere from a few thousand to several million spiders tumble from the sky in a given area, seemingly out of nowhere. So what causes it? This is thanks to a rather interesting behaviour exhibited by spiders known as ballooning, […]
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Ian asks: When someone leaves their body to science, what happens to it and how does a person opt into this? As you might expect, the rules surrounding how one goes about donating one’s body FOR SCIENCE varies a little from region to region, though the general process and what happens after you donate seems to be relatively consistent. For […]
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We here at TodayIFoundOut are firmly in the camp that language is constantly evolving and grammar lives to serve language and effective communication, not the other way around. Putting aside the issue of unintentional mistakes, intentional use of atypical grammar isn’t really something to get inherently upset or high and mighty about. And certainly those who claim some word, like […]
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Derrick H. asks: Whatever happened to Tom from MySpace and why was he the first friend of everyone on the site? Tom Anderson, better known online as MySpace Tom, was, for a brief period in the early 2000s, arguably the most popular man on the internet. Boasting over 200 million friends at the apex of MySpace’s popularity, Tom was everybody […]
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Born in 1955 in Baltimore, Jonathan Meath studied at New York University, graduating with honors in 1979 before embarking on a lucrative career as a children’s television producer, with arguably his most famous credit being that of senior producer for almost 300 episodes of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? During his career, Meath also worked with The Jim […]
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Michael P. asks: Does tapping on the top of a shaken pop can really prevent it from fizzing up? For the uninitiated, it’s commonly held that when opening a recently shaken can of soda, you can avoid, or at least reduce, the inevitable shower of sugary carbonated liquid by simply tapping the top or side of the can briskly with […]
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For fashion, even war is no excuse to let standards slip, as many British women found out during WW2. As part of doing their part for King and Country, they were strongly encouraged to contribute to the war effort by looking their best at all times. In fact, one bit of British war propaganda was literally “Beauty is your duty”… […]
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For over two decades now, if the New York news (or any other present) needs a soundbite or quote from an “everyman” or “man on the street” to round off a story, there has been one man they’ve been able to rely on with an almost staggering level of consistency- Gregory Packer. Since the mid-1990s, Packer has been quoted hundreds […]
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