Two thousand ago, the Thomas Edison of the ancient world lived in Alexandria, Egypt where he tinkered, built and wrote about some of the most amazing and whimsical machines the pre-industrial world had ever seen. Hero Also called Heron, the Greek engineer and mathematician Hero is believed to have lived in the 1st century and was active in Alexandria between […]
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We owe this unit of engine power measurement to Scottish engineer James Watt. In the early 1780s, after making a vastly superior steam engine to the then classic Newcomen steam engine, Watt was looking for a way to market his invention, advertising the fact that his engine used about 75% less fuel than a similarly powered Newcomen, among many other […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn some very surprising truths about Velociraptors and how the real life animals differed from the Jurassic Park film depictions. (TRANSCRIPT) Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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Today in History: February 28, 1704 When you visit the Old Burying Ground in Deerfield, MA, tucked away in the back corner there is a grassy mound with a weathered gravestone atop it. The only inscription it bears is the date “1704.” It is in memory of the 50 inhabitants of the tiny village killed in the overnight hours on […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn about who exactly was the world’s first computer programmer and the surprising date this program was first written. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast We’re also happy to say that Squarespace is offering a […]
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You might be surprised to learn that this staple of Major League Baseball games is actually something of a modern practice, first starting as a regular part of the seventh inning stretch with the White Sox in the late 1970s, thanks to Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Carabina, better known as Harry Caray. Before this, the song had occasionally been […]
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Today I found out about Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated war dog of WWI. When he was a puppy in 1917, Stubby was wandering around the fields of Yale University. Private Robert J. Conroy was undergoing military training in the area at the time, and found the little dog with a short tail who he decided to name Stubby. Due […]
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English folklore is filled with green people – the Green Knight, green fairies, the Green Man and Jack-in-the-Green. Two of the smallest were the Green Children of Woolpit. It’s not precisely known when they first appeared, but it seems to have been around the reign of Stephen (1135-1154) or that of Henry II (1154-1189). One year during the harvest in […]
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Our resident medical expert, Scott, and a buddy of his recently started The Medicine Journal, where you can learn all sorts of interesting facts about all things medical related. Below is a sample article from their new site. A quick online search of Aspartame will provide you with numerous opinions about this artificial sweetener. Some claim it causes things like […]
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Today in History: February 27, 1827 “No party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.” – Desiderius Erasmus Mimicking what they had seen done in Paris, a group of boisterous masked students decked out in colorful costumes took to the streets of New Orleans on February 27, 1827, in what would be the first of the city’s many world famous […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn a surprising fact about who actually wrote the hit song “A Boy Named Sue,” as well as how if not for an impromptu guitar-pull at a party at Johnny Cash’ house, the song which was his biggest hit may never have been recorded at all. This episode is brought you you by audible.com. […]
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Over the past several years, the debate over the efficacy and implementation of the Affordable Care Act has highlighted the deep divides in the U.S. over the need for, and cost of, the entire social welfare net in the U.S. All this might have got you wondering about the roots and history of social welfare in its many forms in […]
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David asks: Why is the second “C” capitalized in names like “MacCleod”? The short story is that “Mc” and “Mac” are prefixes that mean “son of.” Early inconsistencies in records are what led to having both Mc and Mac prefixes. Mc is just an abbreviation of Mac, and both can actually be abbreviated further to the much less common M’. […]
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Today in History: February 26, 1954 Rock and roll had barely shot off the launching pad when “concerned” citizens and politicians began rallying to nip this scourge on decent society in the bud. One of the first to (apparently) suffer from a wooden object lodged up their backside over music you couldn’t waltz to was a Republican Congresswoman from Michigan […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn how the practice of putting Bibles in hotel rooms got its start. This episode is brought you you by audible.com. Audible is offering listeners of this podcast a free audiobook and a 30 day trial membership if you sign up via this link. Among the 150,000+ audio books you can find on audible, […]
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Jennifer asks: I’ve read that vaccines cause autism and that they don’t. What’s the truth with this? In 1998, there was a groundbreaking study telling parents that their children were at risk of getting autism from vaccines. Parents everywhere collectively gasped. After all, they had been told for years vaccines were the best way to prevent any number of unwanted […]
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The peanut butter and jelly sandwich is such a staple of American childhood these days that it seems like it’s been around, well, forever. In fact, it took a surprisingly long time after all the necessary ingredients were invented for someone to put them together, and several decades more before doing this became popular. In fact, there are people alive […]
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Today in History: February 25, 1972 Paul McCartney had always been careful to remain fairly apolitical and uncontroversial when writing his songs. He felt his job was to entertain, not preach, and had made several not-so-veiled jabs at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s almost constant use of their fame as a soapbox to promote political causes they believed in. So […]
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