“Elementary, my dear Watson“, sometimes quoted as, “Elementary, dear Watson“, is one of those phrases that everybody knows the character of Sherlock Holmes said. You know, just like everyone knows that Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty” and Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father”. The thing is, none of those characters ever said any of those things. They […]
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Today I found out why our galaxy is called the Milky Way and what it’s called in other languages. No, it has nothing to do with the candy bar. Like many words we use today, the English name of our galaxy is derived from its Latin name: Via Lactea. Translated, that means “the road of milk.” The Romans actually got […]
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Anthony Johnson first came over to America as an indentured servant, arriving in 1620 in the Colony of Virginia. He did not come over willingly, as many did, agreeing to become indentured servants in exchange for passage to the New World. Rather, Johnson was captured in Angola by neighboring tribesmen and eventually sold to a merchant who transported him to […]
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Nick asks: Is it true that there was once a girl with no vagina who got pregnant after giving oral sex, then getting stabbed in the stomach? Well Nick, I’ve got to say, I was extremely skeptical on this one just from the sound of it (as was the editor here at TIFO). It’s got “urban legend” written all over […]
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Today I found out that the soft drink 7 UP used to include a psychiatric medication as one of its ingredients. The lemon-lime flavored soda, 7-UP was created by Charles Grigg of the Howdy Corporation in 1929 and first launched two weeks before the stock market crash that spurred the Great Depression… Timing! It was originally named “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime […]
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Sarah asks: Who invented the TV dinner? TV dinners weren’t officially created until the 1950s under that name, so before that time single guys, people that simply can’t or hate to cook, and harried moms had to find other ways to rustle up dinner in a hurry. It’s hard to imagine surviving in such primitive conditions, but our ancestors were […]
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G. Peterson asks: Why do we call a time when something needs done by a “deadline”? Great question! We all have deadlines. And when we hear about other people’s deadlines it’s understood that they refer to a time limit of some kind. But where does the phrase come from and what was its original meaning? The first references to a […]
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It was 5:12am, local time on April 18, 1906, when residents of the San Francisco Bay area in California experienced major shaking. 20-25 seconds later, they learned the hard way that that shaking was nothing compared to what they would experience for the next 45-60 seconds. The epicenter of the 7.7 – 8.25 quake was about 2 miles from the city of […]
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The speed of light in a vacuum stands at “exactly 299,792,458 metres per second“. The reason today we can put an exact figure on it is because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant that has been measured with lasers; and when an experiment involves lasers, it’s hard to argue with the results. As to why […]
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When Neil Armstrong set his left boot on the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969, becoming the first person to ever walk on the moon. He then spoke some of the most famous words in the history of mankind, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” So true, so brilliant, so inspirational yet…so contradicting? The word […]
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Lyda asks: Why is carrying someone on your back called a “piggy back ride”? Funny how not one of us can likely name a time they have ever seen a pig carry anything on its back; yet we rarely question the term “piggyback”. How could this be? As with many English terms, we have to think back…way back, and usually […]
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Mark asks: Why is it illegal to remove mattress and pillow tags? Well Mark, unbeknownst to many innocent consumers out there, the warning that it is unlawful to remove the tags from a mattress or pillow is not for you! It is for pillow and mattress sellers only. How many times does that mean you have unnecessarily awoken with the […]
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Leo Major was a French Canadian man born in 1921. He probably didn’t think he was going to be more of a hero than the average soldier when he joined up with the Canadian Army at the start of World War II—supposedly he simply joined up because he wanted to show his father, with whom he had a shaky relationship, […]
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Today I found out about the remarkable Harriet Quimby, the first woman in the United States to get a pilot’s license. Born in Michigan in 1875, Harriet Quimby’s family moved to California when she was a young woman. Their farm had failed, and they sought a better living situation in the warm, sunny state. Quimby found that the atmosphere was […]
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What is the strangest thing ever found on the set of a TV show? I’m going to go with “a human body”. Yes, a real live (or should I say “dead”?) human corpse. And that’s only part of the strangeness of this tale. In 1977, The Six Million Dollar Man was a hit TV series starring Lee Majors. That year, […]
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Craig asks: Do chicken egg whites really help heal burns? Craig, I’ve actually had a couple of people try and convince me of this in the past. A quick Google search will yield several, not so reputable, websites claiming this is true; but the short answer to your question is, “No. Egg whites do not help with burns, and they […]
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Car accidents are a sad fact of life. Every day thousands lose their lives in collisions, crashes and accidents. Though the car itself is a fairly recent invention, the first recorded accident involving them could have happened almost 300 years ago, depending on what your definition of a car is. Though it looked nothing like the modern cars you see […]
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In the midst of the Cold War, forward-thinking military planners realized just how much they had come to rely on international communications. Fearing interference from the Soviet Union, in 1958, the U.S. Air Force commissioned scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory to create a space-based international system for communications by sending up several hundred million needles into […]
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