Today I found out about the origin of the phrase “in the limelight.” Today it means “at the centre of attention,” but back in the day “in the limelight” meant, well, being in the limelight. “Limelight,” which is also known as “calcium light,” was used as stage lighting for years after being discovered by Goldsworth Gurney in the 1820s. Gurney […]
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While there are a million plotlines and hundreds of explanations of how various superheroes got their special powers, there was one superhero in the 1960s who maintained his powers to fight evil by lighting up. “8-Man” originally ran as a weekly comic strip in Japan from 1960 to 1963, then a half-hour cartoon from 1963 to 1964. The show eventually moved […]
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When actress Michelle Pfeiffer was just starting out in Hollywood, long before her hit movies Batman Returns and Hairspray hit theatres, she admits to being roped into the cult of “breatharianism.” Breatharians believe that humans can survive without food or water—they get all the nutrients they need from air and sunlight. Obviously as even plants can’t survive with only air […]
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Today I found out why your palms get sweaty when you’re nervous. Ever been on the edge of a cliff or looking out the window at the top of a skyscraper and your hands start to sweat? Or maybe it’s when you’re about to speak in front of an audience? The individual who introduced you might shake your hand and […]
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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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Today I found out the origin of the word “abracadabra.” These days you might hear this word before some stage magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, but hundreds of years ago people actually believed that “abracadabra” was a magical spell. The exact origin of the word is up for debate, but perhaps one of the oldest records we […]
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Today I found out that James Barry, the first British surgeon to perform a C-section in which both the mother and baby survived, was born a woman. It is believed that “James Barry” started out in life as Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was born around 1789 in Ireland. Not much is known about her childhood, except that when it came […]
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Today I found out that the Colosseum in Rome wasn’t finished until 80 AD; before that, Romans used the Circus Maximus for games. The Colosseum is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rome and incredibly popular with tourists. Movies would have you think that chariot races, gladiator shows, and battle simulations always took place there, but that isn’t true. […]
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In 1999, 37 year old Bill Morgan was a truck driver living in a travel trailer in Australia. That’s when disaster struck- while working, he got in a pretty bad accident that he nonetheless survived. However, medication he was given during his recovery resulted in him having an extreme allergic reaction that ultimately caused his heart to stop. After being […]
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In 1860, the clean shaven Abraham Lincoln was running for President of the United States. This clean shaven look was somewhat odd for a man of the age. You see, shortly before Lincoln decided to grow a beard, something of a beard revolution swept the United States and by the mid-19th century the formerly predominately clean-shaven men of America now […]
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The Legend of Zelda is aptly named, as the series has truly become a legend within the gaming industry. Every new generation of gamers have been given the opportunity to fall in love with it through their current Nintendo console. Or if they’re purists, going back to the original NES game. However, the fundamentals have pretty much always remained – […]
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In this video from our YouTube channel (click here to subscribe), we take a look at how exactly the practice of Halloween and Trick or Treating really got started. To make sure you don’t miss out on many more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to our new daily channel! If you liked this video, you might also enjoy: […]
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Lee asks: How many children have died from people poisoning Halloween candy? Remember your mom sorting through your Halloween candy as a kid, looking for signs of ‘tainted’ candy laced with poison, needles or razor blades? It turns out, unless she was just using it as an excuse to steal the good candy before you got it, she was wasting […]
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Depending on how you look at it, Frane Selak, a now 85 year old retired music teacher from Croatia, is either the luckiest, or unluckiest man in the world, having lived a life that resembles the plot to Final Destination; except after cheating death seven times, rather than be killed by a falling sign, he won £600,000 in the lotto […]
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Kerry asks: Did an apple really fall on Newton’s head? In grade school you probably learned Newton’s apple story around the time you learned that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, that people in Columbus’ time thought that the world was flat, or that the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America and invited the Native Americans to join […]
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Today I found out why buffalo wings are called that. Unsurprisingly, neither the origin of the name nor the food item itself have anything to do with actual buffalo, nor American Bison which many people call buffalo even though they are not. Rather, this tasty item originated in Buffalo, New York, with most foodstorians indicating buffalo wings probably were first […]
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Grape-Nuts is a wheat and barley cereal developed by C.W. Post in 1897, and it has actually made some interesting contributions to American food history. A box of Grape-Nuts actually contains “whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, isolated soy protein, salt, whole grain barley flour, malt extract, and dried yeast.” It also boasts a number of essential vitamins and […]
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Nathan asks: Do earwigs really burrow into your brain and lay eggs? Let me just say I hate earwigs. Small, slimy-looking, fast moving, and always popping out of some dark place when I least expect it- no insect short of a silverfish fills me with more revulsion. Now, to answer your question, we’ll start off talking about the mating habits […]
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