The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Apple Seeds In February 1974, a 20 year old college dropout named Steve Jobs answered a newspaper classified ad and landed a $5-per-hour job as a technician at a new company in Los Gatos, California, called Atari. If you’re old enough to remember the 1970s, you probably remember the name: […]
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Being an intern at a German landscaping company during 1992 meant Ökoland Dederow was handed the tedious task of looking through aerial photographs for irrigation lines in a forest located in East Germany. During the course of this, Dederow came across something that definitely was not an irrigation line in photo 106/88. Approximately 140 larch trees in the middle of […]
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This Day In History: May 12, 1215 “No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned save by the lawful judgment of their equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.” The Magna Carta is one of the most famous and revered documents in […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn why it is that graduates wear caps and gowns at graduation ceremonies. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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According to legend passed down by residents in Western Pennsylvania, you can spot a mysterious “Green Man” walking alongside the road late at night or in a local tunnel where his touch will disrupt a car’s electrical systems. His trademark disfigured face and glowing green skin are said to be the result of an electrical accident. One version of the […]
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This Day In History: May 11, 1981 “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.” ― Bob Marley Bob Marley was the first “third-world” global superstar and the artist responsible for bringing reggae to mainstream audiences. Marley’s unforgettable music alone would have earned him a place in music history, but his status as a moral and religious compass to […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Flotsam and Jetsam Bumping into a rock or a reef, war, swamped by rough weather or high waves, pilot error or pirates, there are a variety of ways a ship can sink. After it does, depending on whether it floated out […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn why the insides of apples turn brown when exposed to air and what this has to do with why most human’s skin browns when exposed to the Sun. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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Ashley W. asks: Where did the male and female symbols come from? Representing two planets, iron, copper and a couple of Olympian gods, the classical symbols for male and female pack a lot of meaning into a few squiggly lines. The symbols themselves are ancient, and the associations they make date back to the dawn of civilization. The ancients, after […]
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This Day In History: May 8, 1902 “I know nothing about Mount Pelée, but if Vesuvius were looking the way your volcano looks this morning, I’d get out of Naples.” – Marino Leboffe, Captain of the Italian freighter “Orsolina” 5/2/02 On May 8, 1902 Mt. Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique unleashed an eruption that killed approximately 30,000 people, […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn why some people sneeze when going from a dark room to being exposed to sunlight. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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In this video, produced by the very talented Brady Haran over at Numberphile, which you can subscribe to here, Dr. Mike Merrifield discusses how it is decided who to give telescope time to given the limited time available in the world’s major observatories. If you like this video, please join us in supporting Numberphile on Patreon here. If you liked […]
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Justin R. asks: What is going on in our skin to create goose bumps? A holdover from an earlier stage in our evolution, goose bumps are a function of the autonomic nervous system reacting to a primal threat. Technically, the phenomenon is called the pilomotor reflex, and occurs when the arrector pili muscle, which runs between the base of a […]
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This Day In History: May 7, 1896 Dr. Henry Howard Holmes came into this world as Herman Webster Mudgett May 16, 1861 in Galmanton, New Hampshire. His family was affluent, and the intelligent young Herman had the means to attend medical school at the University of Michigan. It was there that he began his lucrative career as a con artist, […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn why some names, like McDonald, have a second capital, along with a lot of other interesting facts about where these sorts of common names came from. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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Meaning a complete collection of a set of related things, the curious expression the “whole kit and caboodle” has part of its origin in military life. In the 1785 version of his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose gives us the first mention of the word “kit” with this meaning, as well as the phrase “the whole […]
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Along with serving two terms as the President of the United States between 1901 and 1909, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt also had a laundry list of supremely manly escapades throughout his life, such as the time he was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt, but went ahead and gave a lengthy speech he’d planned anyway before seeking medical attention. […]
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This Day In History: May 6, 1895 Rudolph Valentino, the first great lover on the movie screen, was born as … *deep breath* … Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla on May 6, 1898 in Castellaneta, Italy. (If you think that’s long, you should know Pablo Picasso’s real name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan […]
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