Category Archives: Featured Facts

What Started the “Cops Eating Doughnuts” Stereotype

Dan asks: How did the running gag of police always eating donuts come about? Members of law enforcement stuffing their faces full of doughnuts is one of the most enduring stereotypes about the boys and girls in blue. In virtually every media representation of the police that isn’t deadly serious, the stereotype is played out in some way- Police Academy, […]

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Magellan Was Not the First Person to Circumnavigate the Globe, The Man Who First Did It May Have Been Magellan’s Slave

Myth: Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. There’s no doubt that Magellan intended to have a successful journey when his expedition set off from Spain on September 20, 1519. He had planned for the departure meticulously, hoping to prove that people could sail all the way around the world, and to be the […]

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How One of the Most Beautiful Women in 1940s’ Hollywood Helped Make Certain Wireless Technologies Possible

Did an exotic actress from Vienna, considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood in the 1940s, really invent wireless? Not exactly, but the non-sensationalized facts of the matter are no less fascinating, involving Hollywood, the World War II Axis Powers, and remote control technology. Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as “Hedy Lamarr”, once really did patent a […]

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The Origin of the Phrase “Close, But No Cigar”

J. Ramhit asks: Where did the phrase “close, but no cigar” come from? This popular idiom, which means “to fall short of a successful outcome” or “close call,” was first coined in the United States in the late 19th or early 20th century. While it can’t be proven definitively, it’s likely that the phrase originated at fairgrounds around this time. […]

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When People Started Wearing Clothes

M. Schane asks: When did humans start wearing clothing? Determining exactly when humans began wearing clothes is a challenge, largely because early clothes would have been things like animal hides, which degrade rapidly. Therefore, there’s very little archaeological evidence that can be used to determine the date that clothing started being worn. There have been several different theories based on […]

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Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, a.k.a., The Red Baron, Crashed In His First Solo Flight

Even after our most heart breaking failures, parents, teachers and coaches encourage us to get back up and try again. Perhaps this is because they know that rather than being a permanent condition, failure is an opportunity to learn and improve. This was certainly the experience of Manfred von Richthofen. After cracking up his aircraft on his first solo attempt, […]

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The Origin of the English Alphabet

Often considered one of the more difficult languages to master thanks to the incredible amount of inconsistencies in the language, it should come as no surprise that the development of the modern English alphabet involved several languages, hundreds of years and a variety of conquers, missionaries and scholars. Origins of Alphabetic Writing Dating back nearly four thousand years, early alphabetic […]

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Chickens Were Initially Domesticated for Cockfighting, Not Food

Anyone who’s been chased around the yard by a pissed off chicken knows these birds are neither purposeless nor fearful. Descended from some of the fiercest creatures ever to roam the planet, the blood of today’s Gallus domesticus carries all of the pride, courage, fury and viciousness of its ancestors. Harnessing these qualities by the simple expedient of sticking two […]

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