Barefootangel asks: “I read your report on honey and have a question. Yesterday (June 21, 2012) I went to a farmer’s market and while there I tried a teaspoon of raw honey. It left an awful taste and certainly did not taste like good honey. I helped my grandfather with his hives and know how honey should taste. After leaving […]
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Today I found out why iodine is added to salt. Iodine first began being added to salt commercially in the United States in 1924 by the Morton Salt Company at the request of the government. This was done as a response to the fact that there were certain regions in the U.S., such as around the Great Lakes and in […]
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Emma asks: Why does your nose runs when you cry? Well when you’re crying, if you find your nose running and your feet smelling, perhaps you’re upside down? *crickets* In truth, your nose runs when you’re crying because the tears from your tear glands not only drain out onto your face, but there is also a passage way in the […]
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Ali asks: What is the origin of Spelling Bee contest, its rules and regulation and interesting facts about it, the first winner, etc? Though spelling competitions were very likely around long before “spelling bees”, the first documented case of a spelling bee called such was in 1825. It wasn’t until a century later that the first National Spelling Bee was […]
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Carl F. states: During WWII, I saw my father go to get a physical for the Navy, when he returned home for a week before shipping out he had red ink on the back of his hand that took 2 or 3 days to wash off. He said after the physical if you passed they would brush red ink on […]
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J. Doherty asks: How do Honey bees produce a queen bee? I mentioned this in an article on Honey bees a couple years ago in the Bonus Facts, but for those who missed it, Honey bees create a queen bee for a few different reasons, such as the death of the previous queen bee, if the hive gets overpopulated resulting […]
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Jimmy K. asks: Can the great wall of China really be seen from space? That depends on what is meant by “seen” and “space” because the definitions of each determine whether or not the Great Wall of China can be seen from the heavens above. First, let’s look at whether the Great Wall of China be seen by the unaided […]
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Petyl asks: Where does the word robot come from? The word robot was coined by artist Josef Čapek, the brother of famed Czechoslovakian author Karel Čapek. Karel Čapek was, among other things, a science fiction author before there was something officially known as science fiction, in subject matter along the same vein as George Orwell. He introduced the word in […]
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D. Braxton asks: Is it safe to eat moldy bread or moldy cheese? For the quick answer to your question: no and sometimes. While not all molds are bad for you to eat, many are, and unless you want to whip out a microscope and meticulously identify the mold present on your food (note: there are 300,000 known types and […]
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Christine asks: Where are all the B batteries? There’s A’s (AA and AAA), no B, then C, and then D. Why did they skip a letter? There actually are B batteries, but they aren’t something you’ll usually see stocked at most stores any longer. Since the invention of the battery, there have been a pretty amazingly diverse number of battery […]
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