Text Version: In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Psycho, the shower scene was made up from 90 different shots using 70 different camera angles. The entire movie only took six weeks to shoot, however, that one shower scene took just over 1 week to complete. It was believed that Hitchcock used cold water in the shower to make Janet Leigh scream seem more […]
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Text Version: Before toothpaste as we know it today, people tried several different things to clean their teeth. To name a few, egg shells, ash, ground oyster shells, and salt. It wasn’t until 1824, when American dentist named Peabody started adding soap to his paste that things started to change. John Harris in the 1850’s then added chalk, and in […]
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Text Version: If you ever get tangled up with a male octopus, be careful which arm you touch. If you reach out to touch the third right arm, it’s more than just his arm, it’s also his reproductive organ, or “manhood”. The octopus uses this specialized arm called a ‘hectocotylus’ to insert ‘spermatophores’ which are packets of sperm, into the […]
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Text Version: In the 1500’s most Roman Catholic countries & Scotland adopted the Gregorian Calendar (established by Pope Gregory XIII to compensate for the errors in time that had built up over centuries) over the Julian Calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC) . A lot of protestant countries however, ignored this new calendar for another 200 or so […]
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Text Version: The term “Skid Road” or “Skid Row”, a slang term for a run-down or dilapidated urban area, was an actual road in Seattle, Washington during the late 1800’s. The real name of the road was Yesler Way (now better known as Pioneer Square), and it was the main street along which logs were transported. It soon became a […]
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Text Version: According to a law made in 1953 in Ohio, no one can be arrested on the Fourth of July nor on a Sunday if they are on their way to or from a designated place of worship. In 1998, the Ohio Senate tried to repeal this law, but it failed to pass. Not only is the law still […]
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Text Version: Before aspirin was introduced, people would chew on the bark of the white willow tree to reduce fever and inflammation. White willow contains salicin, a chemical similar to acetylsalicylic acid found in today’s aspirin. In fact, in the early 1800s salicin was used to make Aspirin. The tree has anti-inflammatory effects and although it may be slower acting, the effects […]
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Text Version: The East-African country of Uganda has a population of over 35 million people. But the astonishing part is that, according to the 2010 census, 48.4% of the population is below the age of 15! A mere 2.5% of the population was 65 years and older, making it the youth capital of the World.
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Text Version: Organized cheerleading started as an all-male activity. On the 2nd of November 1898, student Johnny Campbell of the University of Minnesota, directed a crowd at a football game into cheering “Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!”, making Campbell the very first cheerleader. From then, the University of Minnesota organized a “yell leader” squad […]
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Text Version: The phrase “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride” first originated in a music tune by Fred W. Leigh which had a line in it stating, “Why Am I Always A Bridesmaid?”. However, the mouthwash brand Listerine is responsible for the phrase’s widespread popularity. In 1924, Listerine launched a series of advertisements with slogan “Often a bridesmaid, never a […]
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Text Version: During the American Civil War, the Union soldiers blocked supplies to the Confederacy. Due to this there were mass shortages and the newspaper offices ran out of paper. The scarcity of paper forced editors into being resourceful and to find other means of publishing, which they did. They used wallpaper to print their newspapers (this was not ripped […]
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Text Version: Color blindness is basically a deficiency of color vision, the most common of which is the Red-green color vision defect. People with this defect have difficulty in differentiating between red and green color hues. It is a X-linked genetic disorder as both genes for red and green receptors are located in the X chromosome. As you probably already […]
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Text Version: Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is commonly dried and used as a spice the world over. In earlier times, although pepper was widely well-known as a seasoning, it was very costly which only the affluent could afford. In fact, the Dutch even today use the expression “peperduur” in their language, meaning ‘pepper expensive’ for something that is very expensive. […]
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According to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes during a crash and without a parachute and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those falls occurred at heights over 10,000 feet! One such incident involved a British Tail-gunner whose plane was shot down in 1944 […]
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The book “The Woman and the Car, A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women Who Motor or Who Want to Motor” (presumably extremely chatty, given the title), by Dorothy Levitt written in 1906, recommended that women carry a hand-mirror while driving as it is convenient to be able to see behind you during traffic by holding the hand mirror up. […]
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Sirius-A is the brightest extrasolar star visible to the naked eye from Earth, being almost twice as bright as the second brightest, Canopus. Sirius-A and Sirius-B combine to form a binary system and appear as one star to the naked eye, though the vast majority of luminosity to the naked eye comes from Sirius-A, Sirius-B being a white dwarf which […]
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Leaves are the food processing factories for trees. The plants use their roots to take in water and other essential nutrients. The leaves then use the water and carbon dioxide from the air, in combination with sunlight, to turn the water and carbon dioxide into glucose, also giving off the byproduct oxygen in the process. It then uses the glucose […]
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The now common “Fish and Chips” combo originated in Britain around 1860. For nearly 200 years before that, fish vendors had been serving fried fish on the streets of Britain. Sometime around the mid-19th century, one of them got the bright idea to serve thick cut French fries with the fried fish, with the first known “Fish and Chip” eatery […]
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