Today I found how caffeine is removed from coffee to produce the decaffeinated version of the world’s most popular drink. There are several different methods used that can make coffee relatively decaffeinated. The drawback (or advantage, depending on your preference) of all of these methods is that they generally make the coffee flavor milder due to caffeine being one of […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Houdini Facts In the early part of his career, Houdini often performed as a Wild Man in circus shows. Wild men were sideshow acts where the performer would do crazy things, such as bight the heads of live animals. “Wild men” were also where the word “geek” came from.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn About the First Robot Created Around 400 BC The first known human killed by a robot was in 1981, when a robotic arm, no doubt in a diabolical plot to try to take over the world, crushed a Japanese Kawasaki factory worker.
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##EMBED## Click Here to Learn Why Crackers Have Holes The first cracker was made in 1792 by John Pearson in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Pearson was looking to make a type of biscuit that would last longer than traditional sailor’s biscuits without spoiling. He eventually mixed just flour and water, baked it, and called his invention “Pearson’s Pilot Bread”. This later became […]
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Today I found out the guy who did the voice for Optimus Prime also did the voice for Eeyore, in the Winnie-the-Pooh series, and was the first person to voice Nintendo’s Mario character. The man is Canadian voice actor Peter Cullen. Cullen not only did the voice of Optimus Prime in the original Transformers series, but he also did the […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why You Used to Have to Use #2 Pencils on Scantrons The metal band that attaches the pencil body with an eraser is called a “ferrule”.
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##EMBED## Click Here to Learn Why Milk is White Lactose intolerance is caused by a lack of the enzyme lactase, which resides in the small intestine. Once a baby is born, their lactase levels slowly diminish unless milk is consumed on a regular basis. When the lactose is passing through your small intestine, it will become attached to the lactase […]
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##EMBED## Click Here to Find Out Why Salt Enhances Flavor Salt works amazingly well as a stain remover if the stain is from spilled liquid and the spill is recent. Next time you spill some red wine/Kool-Aid/etc. on the carpet, cover it with a very generous pile of table salt. Wait an hour or two (the longer the better), then […]
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Today I found out there is nothing that comes after the sequence “once, twice, thrice”. Interestingly, even though these words are roughly equivalent, differing only in the numeric value they refer to, it is now considered poor English to use “thrice” instead of the equivalent “three times”. At the same time, it is considered poor English to use “one time” […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Prohibition Facts As happens quite often when people are told they can’t do something, the banning of the sale, transporting, or distributing alcohol in the United States resulted in alcoholic beverages being consumed at an estimated three times the rate it was before the banning took effect.
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Today I found out how one-way mirrors work (also known as “two-sided” mirrors). Interestingly, there is no such thing as a true one way mirror. This would actually violate the laws of physics (for more on that see the Bonus Factoids below). What’s actually going on here with one-way mirrors is that we have a piece of glass with an […]
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Today I found out that ‘Uncle Sam’ was a real person- Samuel Wilson, born September 13th, 1766 and died on July 31st, 1854. In 1789, Wilson and his brother Ebeneezer moved to Troy New York where they set up a counting house. Sam Wilson later died, then came back to haunt Ebeneezer on Christmas Eve trying to get him to […]
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Today I found out about an encyclopedia finished in 1408 that contained nearly one million pages. This particular encyclopedia was called the “永樂大典”, which translates to “The Great Canon of the Yongle Era”; today it’s just called, in English, the “Yongle Encyclopedia”. This encyclopedia was originally commissioned by Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty in China. It was not only […]
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Today I found out the first fully professional baseball team was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, ten men on salary for eight months from March 15th to November 15th. The team was organized by Harry Wright, who also played center field for the team and managed the defensive positioning, which was something that typically wasn’t done at that time. The […]
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Today I found out that Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, before starting the Wendy’s franchise helped save the KFC franchise and was a high school dropout. Thomas first worked at a Knoxville restaurant at the young age of 12 years old, from which he was eventually fired due to a misunderstanding with his boss about a vacation. At 15, […]
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Today I found out Leo Fender, inventor of one of the most popular electric guitar brands in the world, Fender Guitars, never learned how to play guitar. In addition to that, he actually was an accountant before losing his job in the Great Depression. When he lost his job, he decided to turn his hobby of tinkering with electronics, radios, […]
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Today I found tofu was popularly eaten as far back as the 2nd century BC in China. Tofu’s flavor is not the same as cheese but it is processed in a similar way by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into soft blocks. Often called ‘bean curd’, ‘bean cheese’, or ‘soy bean cheese’, tofu contains a low […]
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