We’ve partnered up with our good friends over at the ever popular Neatorama to hold a contest with super awesome prizes and a bunch of easy ways to enter. The Grand Prize winner will receive a FitBit Surge, which you can read about here. Four runner ups will win Tees from the Neatoshop as described below in the contest details. […]
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James C. asks: Who was Miranda from the Miranda rights? In 1966, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Miranda v. Arizona, made it clear that the Constitution requires the police to warn criminal suspects in custody that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say may be used against them, and that they have the right to […]
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This Day In History: June 1, 1967 ‘Sgt. Pepper is the one. It was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together.” – John Lennon After years of touring and relentless media attention, the Beatles felt frustrated creatively. They were tired of wearing matching suits in front of throngs of screaming girls. None of them came to hear the […]
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In this video from MinuteEarth, created by Henry Reich et al, you’re going to learn how exactly greenhouse gases keep the Earth’s temperature relatively regulated. If you like this video, go check them out and subscribe to their channel here. You can also join us in supporting their efforts to make more videos like this by donating via their Patreon […]
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Recent headlines that chocolate supplies could fall short of demand by as much as a million tonnes by 2020 have been alarming. Those in despair over the news can take heart, however, as substitutes are available to get you through the rough times, including one that is actually relatively healthy – black sapote. Native to the coastal regions in and […]
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This Day In History: May 29, 1851 Sojourner Truth, abolitionist, orator, and women’s rights activist, delivered a ground-breaking speech on May 29, 1851, one of the first and most memorable of the fledgling suffragist movement. An emancipated slave, Sojourner believed the wrongs committed against both blacks and women by the US were “inextricably intertwined.” She never learned to read or […]
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Karl G. asks: Why do we call an elephant’s nose a trunk? It’s not clear who first tagged the elephant’s snout with the name “trunk,” but it seems to have happened sometime in the late 16th century. The first documented instance appears in the 1589 work by Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations: “The Elephant . . . With water fils his […]
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I’m very excited to announce the launch of the new “Daily Knowledge” section of our YouTube channel. This will feature twice daily videos covering various interesting topics just like you see in the articles here, but in video/audio form. You can check out the first few videos here: The Difference Between Concrete and Cement The Truth About Injecting Medicine Directly […]
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This Day In History: May 28, 1961 “Only when the last prisoner of conscience has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world’s people, will our work be done.” Peter Benenson – Founder of Amnesty International On May 28, 1961, The London Observer published […]
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Occurring between 1665 and 1666, the Great Plague wasn’t exactly the first time London had experienced such a terrifying spread of disease, with periodic cases being reported in the city for decades up to this point and, of course, that time about two-thirds of China’s population and then a decade later about half of Europe’s, including an awful lot of […]
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This Day In History: May 27, 1940 In late May 1940, Allied troops were trapped with their backs to the sea on the French beach at Dunkirk. While the Nazis planned to systematically decimate them, the Royal Navy hastily assembled an armada that set out on May 27, 1940. Dubbed Operation Dynamo, a rag-tag assortment of destroyers, rowboats, yachts, fishing […]
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Pete M. asks: Why is a tiny bit of parsley included with certain meals? Is it true that it is there to cure bad breath? Does it really work? Thanks and keep up the great work! In an age where strong-flavored, nutritiously dense greens like kale dominate, quiet, mild parsley has, for many, been shunted to the side. This is […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Living History As you sit there reading the letters on this page, you’re actually looking at symbols from the distant past. Take the two oldest letters in our alphabet, “X” and “O”; they were created by the Phoenicians more than 3,000 years ago. Most of the rest of the “modern” […]
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This Day In History: May 26, 1897 On May 26, 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker’s masterpiece Dracula was released for sale in London. Dracula was not only a sensation in its own right, but inspired a genre of horror that remains immensely popular today. But Bram Stoker certainly wasn’t the creator of vampire lore; the history of the blood-sucking undead […]
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This Day In History: May 25, 1961 “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” –JFK On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress that put the United States […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Surprising Truth About the Difference Between Hardwoods and Softwoods Generally speaking, wood is often put into one of two categories- hardwood and softwood. But what exactly makes a given piece of wood qualify as either hard or soft and how […]
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This Day In History: May 22, 1958 “They were looking for a place to stick the knife into rock & roll. And Jerry gave it to them—well, I did, I opened my mouth.” – Myra Lewis Williams As 1958 dawned, Jerry Lee Lewis was riding high. He’d recently had two huge hits with “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great […]
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Bert Trautmann was born October 22, 1923 in Bremen, Germany. Blue-eyed and blond haired, Trautmann was the product of a tumultuous political climate within the post-World War I country. He grew up surrounded by Nazi-ideology, including blaming the Jews for the country’s economic problems and believing certain Germans, such as himself, were members of the “master race.” So it’s not […]
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