McDonald’s first started the Monopoly promotion in 1987, and its premise was simple: attach Monopoly pieces to food cartons and cups, with each piece signifying a Monopoly property or a small prize. One out of every four pieces would be a small prize, such as a medium fry or soda, and a very few of the prizes would be significantly […]
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Growing on tall shrubs with dense foliage, the small, red, mildly sweet berries known as miracle fruit seemingly magically can turn sour flavors sweet. The plant that produces the berries, Synsepalum Dulcificum, is native to West Africa, where the fruit was traditionally used to sweeten palm wine and make soured cornbread more palatable. Growing best in acidic soil in tropical […]
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Between July 25 and September 23, 2001, the people of the southern India state of Kerala witnessed, on numerous occasions an extraordinary sight: blood colored rain. Although most reports limited the color of the rain to that striking red that resembled blood, some people also reported seeing green, black and even yellow rain as well. Eye-witnesses also reported that accompanying […]
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Personally nominated for the Nobel Prize a record 84 times, Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld was one of the most influential physicists of all time, both because of his own accomplishments in the field and the many dozens of his students who turned into superstars in the world of science (including having four doctoral students go on to win the Nobel […]
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Called by some a “vagina wig,” the Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun, merkin, as “an artificial covering of hair for the female pubic region.” And although given the recent popularity of meticulous waxing and grooming of one’s nether regions you may think the merkin must be a modern invention, in fact, it has actually been around for at least […]
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Domenic V. asks: Is it true that the snozzberries in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were dicks? Given the dark undercurrent of Roald Dahl’s works, perhaps it wouldn’t be surprising if his famous snozzberries mentioned in the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) made into the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), were, in fact, penises. […]
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Joel B. asks: Do people really wrestle octopus? Arising out of the peace and prosperity of the post-war world, in the middle of the 20th century Americans threw themselves into a variety of weird fads, with goldfish swallowing, pet rocks (see: How Did the Pet Rock Fad Start?), streaking, dance marathons, and sea monkeys (see What are Sea Monkeys?) among […]
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According to George Orwell, “tea is one of the main stays of civilization,” and like many of his countrymen, Orwell had rather strong opinions on the proper method of its preparation. Realizing one day in 1946 that the cookbooks of the age gave scant instruction in how to make tea, he decided to remedy that deficiency and published his personal […]
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Zach L. asks: Why does Vladimir Putin walk with one arm moving and the other stuck at his side? While there is no single correct way to walk, most of us have a gait where we swing each arm forward when its opposing leg moves forward; likewise, as with the length of the stride, which is generally the same for […]
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Marcus M. asks: Was trial by combat to determine if someone was innocent or not ever really a thing or is it just another Hollywood invention? While dueling outside of the legal system to resolve a dispute has been around in one form or another seemingly as long as there have been humans, trial by combat (determining guilt or innocence […]
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David N. asks: What is the first joke ever told? Born from cultures we can only read about and making fun of customs we don’t always understand, many of the world’s oldest jokes, to a modern audience, simply aren’t that funny. That said, humans being humans, with the oldest joke that has survived through today, it would appear little has […]
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Hollywood spies often have a myriad of amazing devices at their disposal for getting rid of bad guys in a clandestine way. It turns out, occasionally so do real spies. Exhibit A: the CIA’s “undetectable” poison dart gun that near silently shot frozen darts comprised of an unspecified, undetectable poison. The individual hit reportedly would at most just feel something […]
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On August 21, 1966, after receiving a tip of dead bodies high on a rugged hill in southeastern Brazil, authorities discovered two formally dressed male corpses in waterproof coats, partly covered with grass and each wearing eye masks made of lead. The young men bore no obvious signs of trauma, and there was no evidence of a struggle or immediately […]
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Possessing a fine mind for strategy, mechanically inclined, with true and loyal friends, and a fair amount of luck, the greatest zoo jailbreak artist of all time, Ken Allen, was the El Chapo of orangutans. Born at the San Diego zoo in 1971, Ken’s early life was marked by sadness when he had to be removed from his mother’s care, […]
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Tristan N. asks: What are the longest odds on a sporting event that ended up having to be paid out? Given the nature of sports gambling and so little publicly available documented evidence in the field throughout history, it’s impossible to know for sure what the longest odds were on a sports bet that ended up having to be paid […]
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James P. asks: Who invented the slurpee? The Slurpee was invented as a commercial product more or less by accident by a Dairy Queen franchisee Omar Knedlik in Kansas City in the late 1950s. Born in 1915 and having grown up relatively poor, after WWII Knedlik used his pay from his time serving in the war to open a small […]
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Michael W. asks: Why is splitting the tab and paying for yourself called Dutch? The idea of paying for yourself when out with friends being referred to as some expression including the word “Dutch,” seemingly incorrectly is often connected to the fact that for several centuries beginning in the 17th, the word Dutch had a negative connotation in English, variously […]
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Jace K. asks: Did anyone ever figure out how old Kim Gwang-suk really was in the 92 Olympics? On one remarkable day in September 1991, North Korean gymnast Kim Gwang-suk accomplished what few have been able to do – score a perfect 10 on the uneven bars. Her days of glory were numbered, however, as her small stature and apparent […]
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