This Day In History: December 14, 1903 On this day in history, 1903, the Wright brothers took their Wright Flyer out in their first attempt to fly it. The date of their first attempt would have been a day sooner, but they had promised their dad they would not fly on the Sabbath, so waited until Monday the 14th. The […]
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Brenda asks: Did one of the Bond girls really used to be a man? That depends on how you define “man” and “Bond girl”. If you define “man” as a person who was born with a penis and “Bond girl” as any eye candy female that appeared in a Bond movie at any point, then yes- one of the Bond […]
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Today I found out the Christmas song Silver Bells was originally called Tinkle Bells. To make matters slightly more humorous, Silver Bells originally appeared in the The Lemon Drop Kid, a 1951 film starring Bob Hope. Needless to say, these two things would have surely resulted in the song getting a few chuckles, had composer Jay Livingston’s wife, Lynne Gordon, […]
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This Day In History: December 13, 1809 On this day in history, 1809, the woman who would soon become the first to survive an oophorectomy was diagnosed as not being pregnant past term, as she had thought, but having an extremely large tumor, which isn’t that different than a baby when you think about it, but you know… bigger, in […]
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Despite how it sounds, “Tulipmania” does not refer to just a general love of tulips; it was actually one the world’s first recorded major financial bubbles. Long before the dot com frenzy or the real estate bubbles of recent decades, there was Tulipmania in the Netherlands beginning around 1624 and reaching its peak from 1636 to 1637. While the extent […]
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This Day In History: December 12, 1901 On this day in history, 1901, Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi’s radio device became the first such device to successfully transmit a signal all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to Signal Hill in St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada, a span of about 2100 miles. His receiving device used a […]
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This is a guest post contributed by List25.com 1) Teflon: Roy Plunkett, a chemist who worked for DuPont in the early 20th century, accidentally stumbled across the non-reactive, no stick chemical while experimenting with refrigerants, specifically looking for a non-toxic chemical to use for a refrigerant. After storing tetrafluorethylene (TFE) in gas form in small cylinders and having it frozen, […]
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Rob asks: What is eggnog actually made of? Does it really have raw eggs in it? Traditionally, yes, eggnog included raw eggs. However, some countries today, such as the United States, severely restrict the use of raw egg in products, due to health concerns; thus, most commercial eggnog does not include raw eggs. (The FDA actually limits the egg yolk […]
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This Day In History: December 11, 1972 On this day in history, 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan landed on the moon, becoming the last human beings to walk on the moon. Throughout the Apollo missions which spanned from 1961 to 1972, a total of 24 people journeyed to the moon with twelve of them getting to […]
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Milly asks: Where did candy canes originally come from and how did they get associated with Christmas? First, let’s start by dispelling a somewhat popular myth that more or less goes like this: The white base color of the candy cane symbolizes Jesus’ purity; the red stripes symbolize Jesus’ blood when he died on the cross; and the J shape […]
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On this day in history, December 10 1868: The first traffic lights are put in place using semaphore arms during the day time and at night using gas lamps with red and green as the traffic light colors. This was all spurred on because in London, England in 1865 there was a growing concern over the amount of horse-drawn traffic […]
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This Day In History: December 9, 1872 On this day in history, 1872, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became the first person of African American descent to serve as the governor of a U.S. state. Pinchback was born the son of a freed slave (African-Cherokee-Welsh-German descent) and her former white owner (Scottish-Irish-Welsh-German descent), who married her. His father was reasonably well […]
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This Day In History: December 8, 2010 On this day just two years ago, SpaceX became the first privately held entity to successfully launch a spacecraft into orbit and then subsequently recover it (they were also the first private company to launch something in orbit with a liquid-fueled vehicle around a year earlier when their Falcon 1 rocket put a […]
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L. Stevens asks: What does “Gangnam Style” actually mean? “Gangnam” is an area in South Korea, specifically a small area in Seoul, South Korea, home to about 1% of the population of Seoul and is about the size of Manhattan. It is known for its wealthy, “new money”, inhabitants. (The region has only very recently become extremely upscale, with a […]
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This is a guest post by Shoshana Davis Brushing your teeth after every meal, visiting the dentist for cleanings, and having a relatively painless mouth is not just desired but expected in the year 2012. However, that was not always the case. Dentistry has come a long way since its inception and is often overlooked for other scientific advancements. The […]
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On this day in history, December 7: 1869: Former Confederate guerrilla fighter Jesse James turns to a life of crime, robbing the Davies County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. Over the next 14 years, James and his gang committed a variety of robberies and murders. Despite often being portrayed in his day as a “Robin Hood” type, robbing from the […]
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“Murderous” Mary was a 5 ton Asian Elephant in the Sparks World Famous Shows Circus. Her downfall began with the hiring of an assistant elephant trainer who had no experience working with elephants and possibly no professional experience even working with animals. This worker was Red Eldridge, who before getting the gig generally was a drifter and most immediately before […]
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