Today in History: November 15, 1985 A dark-haired, blue-eyed two-week-old baby girl known to the world as “Baby Fae” (later revealed as Stephanie Fae Beauclair) underwent a first-of-its-kind heart transplant and died on this day in 1985. What made this transplant unique at this time? The tiny infant received a baboon heart in an attempt to correct hypoplastic heart syndrome, […]
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Absent from the visible spectrum and neither a wave nor a particle, the color pink is, for many, a scientific enigma: how can a shade that doesn’t even appear in the rainbow exist? The answer lies in color theory. The Primary Colors: RGB Unlike art production (see below), when it comes to eyesight (and video production), the primary colors are […]
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Luke asks: Why when I squint does it help me see things clearer? Squinting causes two reactions that help you visualize the world around you in better detail. First, it changes the shape of our eye, allowing light to be focused better. Secondly, it decreases the amount of light that is allowed to enter the eye. Light coming from a […]
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Today in History: November 14, 1970 Marshall University had chartered a plane to bring its football team, the Thundering Herd, home after a game with East Carolina University on November 14, 1970. The plane hit a row of trees and careened into a hillside less than two miles from their destination – the Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. All […]
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Jay asks: When/How did the Cold War start and finish? The Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between two world superpowers, the USA and the USSR, that started in 1947 at the end of the Second World War and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991. The Cold War was marked by continuous rivalry between […]
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On an autumn evening, October third to be exact, in 1849, a middle-aged Edgar Allan Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, Maryland in a delusional, hysterical state. Unkempt, dirty, with “vacant eyes” and in someone else’s clothes, the writer was admitted to Washington College Hospital unable to explain what had happened to him. At five am on October […]
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Today in History: November 13, 1953 On this day in 1953, Robin Hood was declared a Communist, at least by the Indiana Textbook Commission. Mrs. Thomas J. White, Republican member of the committee, insisted that all references to the book “Robin Hood” be purged from textbooks used in state schools. She felt this was necessary because there was a Communist […]
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Today I found out that Welch’s Grape Juice started out as a substitute for sacramental wine. You’ve probably heard about Jesus turning water into wine, but Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch is a lesser-known drink magician who developed a way to turn something that would have been wine into a non-alcoholic version of the drink, in an attempt to make an […]
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Today I found out why school buses are yellow. An estimated twenty-six million students in the United States alone are transported to school every school day via bus—over half the student population in the country. While school buses in countries outside of North America usually look like any other buses, North American school buses are distinctive for their yellow colour. […]
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Today in History: November 12, 2004 After a two-year ordeal that dominated the headlines and engrossed the entire nation, a jury found Scott Peterson guilty of murder 23 months after his heavily pregnant wife Laci Peterson suddenly vanished from her home in Modesto, California on Christmas Eve. Peterson stated that Laci had gone for a walk with their dog while […]
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In 1975, George Lucas was casting for his upcoming sci-fi film The Star Wars (name later changed to simply Star Wars). After a joint casting session with Brian De Palma, who was looking to hire actors for his new horror movie Carrie, Lucas was able to cast many of his principal actors. He decided on two young no-names, Carrie Fisher […]
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Today I found out about the origin of the phrase “in the limelight.” Today it means “at the centre of attention,” but back in the day “in the limelight” meant, well, being in the limelight. “Limelight,” which is also known as “calcium light,” was used as stage lighting for years after being discovered by Goldsworth Gurney in the 1820s. Gurney […]
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Today in History: November 11, 1988 During the early 1980s, ex-nurse’s aide Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for the elderly in Sacramento, California. She was a schizophrenic who had numerous run-ins with the law. She served time for forging checks, and also was incarcerated for drugging and then robbing random people she had met in bars. She opened her […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Fascinating Origin of the Word “Abracadabra” These days you might hear this word before some stage magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, but hundreds of years ago people actually believed that “abracadabra” was a magical spell. The exact origin […]
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Today I found out about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, the wife of famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and who the video game character of “Zelda” was named after. Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1900. She was named for characters in two different books, Zelda: A Tale of the Massachusetts Colony and Zelda’s Fortune, both of […]
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While there are a million plotlines and hundreds of explanations of how various superheroes got their special powers, there was one superhero in the 1960s who maintained his powers to fight evil by lighting up. “8-Man” originally ran as a weekly comic strip in Japan from 1960 to 1963, then a half-hour cartoon from 1963 to 1964. The show eventually moved […]
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Today in History: November 8, 1960 On November 8, 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the youngest man to be elected as United States President, beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon by one of the narrowest margins in history. One of the factors that may have tipped the scales ever so slightly in the election was Kennedy’s shrewd willingness to address […]
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Despite her future successes, Nancy Wake had humble beginnings. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, but her family moved to Sydney, Australia when she was almost two and she grew up there. A Maori midwife delivered her and, at the time of her birth, allegedly pointed at a fold of skin on her head and said, “’This […]
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