Today I found out about the history of Where’s Wally (known in the US and Canada as Where’s Waldo). The iconic, elusive man in the red-and-white striped shirt was first hidden away in 1987 by British illustrator Martin Handford. Handford had been drawing since he was a boy, and was particularly fond of viewing and drawing crowd scenes. He felt […]
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Today in History: August 30 On this day in history, 30 B.C., Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, the iconic seductress and lover of both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, commits suicide after her forces are crushed by Octavian, who shortly became the first emperor of the Rome. Cleopatra was born in 69 B.C., and was made queen of Egypt as Queen […]
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Anyone who’s been chased around the yard by a pissed off chicken knows these birds are neither purposeless nor fearful. Descended from some of the fiercest creatures ever to roam the planet, the blood of today’s Gallus domesticus carries all of the pride, courage, fury and viciousness of its ancestors. Harnessing these qualities by the simple expedient of sticking two […]
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Today I found out that Milton S. Hershey bought a VIP ticket for the Titanic but ended up not boarding. The Titanic, the unsinkable ship, launched on April 10, 1912, carrying some 2,200 passengers and crew en route to the United States. On the night of April 14, 1912, the ship hit an iceberg and sunk, resulting in around just […]
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Edgar Allan Poe is probably best known for his raven that squawks “Nevermore,” but he’s also one of the first American short story writers and is often credited with being the “inventor” of detective fiction. He also contributed heavily to the genre of science fiction. Not only that, but he was one of the first American writers to earn a […]
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Today in History: August 29 This Day In History, 2005: Hurricane Katrina Pounds Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating, and costliest, natural disaster to ever occur in the United States, though unbelievably it was only the third most powerful storm in the 2005 hurricane season. Over 1,800 people lost their lives during the storm and the subsequent flooding, […]
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Today in History, August 28 This Day In History, 1963: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 1963 was a year marked by racial tension and increasing civil rights demonstrations throughout the United States. The nation was outraged by television images of police officers in Birmingham, Alabama using attack dogs and fire hoses against protestors, many who were teenagers […]
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Today I found out about the first woman to officially run in the Boston Marathon, Kathrine Switzer. “No woman can run the Boston Marathon,” said Arnie Briggs, Kathrine Switzer’s running coach. This coming from a man who had been excited to see a woman start running with the all-male cross country team at Syracuse University. He insisted that women were […]
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As fascinating as it is horrifying, fetus-in-fetu is a developmental abnormality where, in utero, the larger of a set of twin fetuses absorbs the other into her body. The condition is usually diagnosed shortly after the surviving twin is born, although in a few horrific cases, the absorbed twin is not discovered until adulthood or death. Technically arising only in […]
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“Elementary, my dear Watson“, sometimes quoted as, “Elementary, dear Watson“, is one of those phrases that everybody knows the character of Sherlock Holmes said. You know, just like everyone knows that Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty” and Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father”. The thing is, none of those characters ever said any of those things. They […]
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Today in History: August 27 This Day In History, 1883: Krakatau Erupts On a small, desolate island called Krakatau west of Sumatra in Indonesia, the most violent volcanic eruption in recorded history occurred, estimated to have produced an equivalent of a 200 megaton explosion, which is about 4 times that of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba. […]
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Kris W. asks: What is it in seaweed that is used in making ice cream? Seaweed didn’t exactly come into play during those “make your own ice cream” science experiments you probably did in elementary school, but it is sometimes used in the making of commercial ice cream. No, it isn’t just in seaweed-flavoured ice cream, either. Seaweed is actually […]
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Today in History: August 26, 1920 The 19th amendment to the United States Constitution, which was the result of about 70 years of hard work and lobbying from tireless suffragists who battled on both the state and national fronts, prohibits any US citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of their sex. The two portions of […]
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Today I found out why our galaxy is called the Milky Way and what it’s called in other languages. No, it has nothing to do with the candy bar. Like many words we use today, the English name of our galaxy is derived from its Latin name: Via Lactea. Translated, that means “the road of milk.” The Romans actually got […]
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Because we’re now covering a lot more daily topics here on Today I Found Out, and because I had a bunch of my Daily Knowledge Newsletter subscribers request something like this via email (the newsletter is free, by the way and you can subscribe here ;-)), I thought I’d start doing a “Weekly Wrap” which will more or less be […]
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“The Brady Bunch” was a hugely successful sitcom which ran for 5 seasons (117 episodes) from 1969 to 1974. One of the show’s stars was Robert Reed, a Shakespearean trained stage actor. Previous to “The Brady Bunch”, Reed had also been a co-star of a very successful drama called “The Defenders” with E.G. Marshall in the early 1960s. Usually when […]
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Today in History: August 23 This Day In History, 1305: William Wallace Executed for High Treason Thanks to Mel Gibson’s wildly popular 1995 movie “Braveheart” depicting the life of Scottish hero William Wallace, there has been a renewal of interest in the once rather obscure medieval freedom fighter. Artistic license was used liberally – but to great effect – to […]
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