On the morning of Friday, October 11, 1957, workers at the nuclear reactor Windscale Pile 1 near Seascale, Cumberland, England, faced a terrible choice: allow a raging fire to burn itself out while it released dangerously high levels of ionizing radiation into the surrounding countryside; or, attempt to extinguish the conflagration with water, an option that could cause a hydrogen […]
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Lisa asks: Why are filibuster’s allowed? In its modern incarnation, the filibuster demands no personal and political sacrifice by an idealistic legislator who is willing to stand up for what he believes in (e.g., Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Requiring neither speech, ideology or commitment, in today’s Senate if fewer than 60 senators are willing to first vote to stop […]
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Centuries in the making, Modern French owes its existence to a strange combination of conquest, evolution, authoritarian control and revolution. Linguistic Ancestors Long before it was France, Gaul (as it was known to the Romans) was occupied by a variety of Celtic tribes. After Julius Caesar conquered it in the 1st century BC (veni, vidi, vici), native Celtic tongues were […]
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The final resting place of presidents, bandleaders, war heroes, astronauts, inventors, civil rights leaders, Pulitzer Prize winners, boxers, Supreme Court justices and sports stars, Arlington National Cemetery stands as a memorial to the melting pot of the United States. With connections to some of our nation’s most influential people and pivotal events, its history is as interesting as its denizens. […]
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On July 8, 1945, two months to the day after the Allies declared victory in Europe, 29 German POWs were shot while peacefully residing in a prison camp in Salina, Utah. The Shooter Private Clarence V. Bertucci was 23 years old at the time of the shooting. Stationed at the Salina camp, Bertucci had been born and raised in New […]
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In May 1972 in a uranium enrichment plant in France, scientists examining ore from a mine in Gabon, West Africa, discovered that a natural nuclear reactor had spontaneously manifested in that region in the Earth’s primordial past, churning out approximately 100 Kw worth of energy continuously for a few hundred thousand years about 1.7 billion years ago. In order to […]
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Since long before colonoscopies, mammograms and physicals (turn your head and cough), patients have had a love-hate relationship with doctors. Often uncomfortable (or downright awful), the procedures employed by physicians are frequently met with distrust and revulsion (until those methods achieve desired results). This was no different during the early years of modern medicine when one practice in particular, human […]
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In Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Despite two official investigations concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the President, doubts linger. This is due in no small part to the fact that neither Oswald, nor the official account, has ever been put on trial. Without the […]
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It is a sad truth that Native Americans suffer from alcoholism at rates far higher than those of other ethnic groups. While many causes likely contribute to this problem, some of those most commonly espoused, including lack of prior exposure to alcohol and genetic predisposition, are oft-repeated misconceptions. In fact, well before Europeans began to colonize the Americas, Native Americans […]
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Immense, stretching up to nearly 70 feet long and weighing over 50 tons, the sperm whale is the seventh largest animal, and the largest with teeth, in the world. Prized for centuries because of its oil and the almost supernatural ambergris it creates, the sperm whale today remains vulnerable. And although we have hunted and studied this leviathan for well […]
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Myth: Doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath. A binding agreement, as much a social contract as Social Security or Medicare, the traditional Hippocratic Oath holds those who swear to it to a strict code of professional and personal conduct. Contrary to popular belief, though, most doctors never take this oath, and, actually, most of us are probably glad they […]
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Absent from the visible spectrum and neither a wave nor a particle, the color pink is, for many, a scientific enigma: how can a shade that doesn’t even appear in the rainbow exist? The answer lies in color theory. The Primary Colors: RGB Unlike art production (see below), when it comes to eyesight (and video production), the primary colors are […]
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With the possible exception of boozy, reckless ingénues, there is no animal more bent on its own ruin than the giant panda. With its low population (only 1600 remain in the wild and 300 in captivity) and self-destructive lifestyle, giant pandas are in danger of extinction. Luckily, scientists and conservationists are hard at work unlocking the secrets of panda behavior […]
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Just over a century ago in the Mediterranean Sea in between Greece’s Peloponnese and the Isle of Crete, a sponge diver came across an amazing discovery: an ancient shipwreck from classical times, filled with pottery, jewels, wine and so many marble and bronze statutes that, upon surfacing, he “gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women“. The […]
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From King Arthur’s Avalon to Plato’s Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Laputa to Pi’s carnivorous Eden, people have long dreamed of magical islands where the miraculous happens and the lost find sanctuary. The Celts of Ireland were no different, and in their tradition, the mythical island was known as Hy-Brasil. The Myth of Brasil Also called O’Breasail, Hi-Brasil, O’Brazil, Hy Breasail, Hy […]
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Olivia asks: Why is it that Chernobyl is still toxic, but there are millions of people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without dying? On August 6 and 9, 1945, U.S. airmen dropped the nuclear bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On April 26, 1986, the number four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear […]
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Red and white striped, sometimes with a bit of blue, a barber pole twisting next to a small storefront signifies a place where men can get a haircut, a shave and a bit of masculine bonhomie. But this was not always the case. Back in the day, the red and white we associate with good grooming used to represent blood, […]
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Where sound goes to die, acoustic shadows are areas where sounds, from a certain direction and on a given day, will not penetrate; these acoustic phenomena occur either because the sound waves are absorbed, refracted or simply blown in a different direction. Relatively unnoticed in our modern, wired world, the phenomenon played a significant role in some of the most […]
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