Chloe T. asks: Can police officers or FBI agents commit crimes while undercover? The use of undercover or covert law enforcement is common throughout much of the world and, for the most part, men and women tasked with going undercover are expected to, and do, follow the law. However, beyond the occasional bad officer doing things they aren’t supposed to, […]
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Gina K asks: When people have to resort to cannibalism to survive, is it considered a crime? To begin with, cannibalism is absolutely legal in the United States (with the exception of the state of Idaho), the UK, much of Europe, Japan, etc. However, as Cornell Law School notes, a number of laws are in place across America “that indirectly […]
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While it’s likely others had tried it before, the first surviving documented attempt of someone trying to turn something to gold in a (relatively) scientific fashion occurred around 300 AD. The proto-scientist in question was a Greco-Egyptian named Zosimos. During his lifetime, it’s thought that he wrote nearly thirty books about alchemy, but most of them have been lost to […]
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Outside of wine snobs, I think we can all agree that wine snobs are just the worst. This is not because virtually every study ever conducted into the field of wine tasting as a whole has concluded that it’s ridiculously easy to convince even the top sommeliers that $5 boxed white wine is the finest red wine ever bottled. Nor […]
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Nathan K. asks: How did Pomp and Circumstance get to be the tune always played at graduations? Every year, hundreds of thousands of students march across a stage in a gown and a squared hat to receive a piece of paper that says they’ve completed a particular phase in their education. This school graduation will undoubtedly be marked by cheering, […]
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Today in History: June 21, 1994 On June 21, 1994, a Spanish man by the name of Jose Martin was out for a drive with his wife when he got definitive proof that the Universe doesn’t like him, or, at least, doesn’t like his car. How? Well, it dropped a nearly 2 kilo hunk of space rock that just moments […]
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It was a cool California November afternoon in 1947 when the HK-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose, finally flew. It was supposed to be a simple taxi test, nothing more than motoring through the water of Long Beach Harbor to show off its speed and test out the plane in open water. But having endured years of people mocking […]
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Laura S. asks: Who was the first to come up with the idea of using passwords for computers instead of other authentication? Something akin to passwords have seemingly been used for at least as long as humans have been recording history. For example, one of the earliest references to something like a password is mentioned in the Book of Judges, […]
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Today in History: June 8, 1959 Today for the equivalent price of a decent cup of coffee you can get the United States Postal Service to pick up and deliver a letter to anywhere in the continental United States in just a day or two. But it hasn’t always been that way and there’s a reason they call it “snail […]
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Today in History: June 7, 1971 On April 26, 1968 a 19 year old man called Paul Cohen walked into the Los Angeles County Courthouse to testify in a case for a friend. This, in and of itself, isn’t noteworthy. Why Mr. Cohen would have his name stenciled into the history books is because of something that was in turn […]
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Today in History: June 1, 1974 According to various interviews given by Dr Henry Heimlich during his lifetime (he passed away in 2016 at age 96), the eponymous maneuver he championed in the 1970s is responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of people and a not insignificant number of dogs… The genesis of the Heimlich maneuver can […]
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In 1983, Paul Mockapetris proposed a distributed database of internet name and address pairs, now known as the Domain Name System (DNS). This is essentially a distributed “phone book” linking a domain’s name to its address, allowing you to type in something like todayifoundout.com instead of the IP address of the website. The distributed version of this system allowed for […]
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Today in History: May 18, 1804 Napoleon was a lot of things, but modest wasn’t one of them. This is something no better proved than that time he responded to being declared Emperor of the French by planning an elaborate ceremony that would see him stroll around wearing an 80 pound (37 kg) cape… No, that isn’t a typo. Although […]
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Today in History May 16, 1929 In comparison to the multi-million dollar star-studded display of excess that is the modern day Academy Awards, the first Academy Awards ceremony was a relatively muted affair that could even be described as quaint if you were so inclined. Held in a medium-sized banquet hall in a Hollywood hotel mostly known for being haunted […]
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In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we cover a myriad of tips and tricks to help grow a YouTube channel and maximize the odds of being successful in that space, including covering elements of the YouTube algorithm, thumbnail design, etc. Much of this talk was gleaned from interesting things we learned at VidCon Amsterdam, and particularly from the […]
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Orlando D. asks: Does it matter what you sign on contracts? Could you draw a picture or put an X and have it still be legally binding? With so many facets of modern life being automated, signatures being easy to forge, and given how difficult it is to prove based on signature alone whether a given person actually signed something, […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Bob Fletcher was an agricultural inspector working in California’s Central Valley in the early 1940s. He might have stayed one, too, had the outbreak of World War II not changed everything. INFAMY Shortly before 8:00 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese military forces attacked the U.S. naval […]
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Sporting the third deepest natural harbor in the southern hemisphere and a rich habitat, the waters around Eden, Australia attract a variety of wildlife, including baleen whales and, at least in the fall and winter, orcas. At some point in the history of the indigenous Yuin people, they and the killer whales seemingly entered into a tacit sort of unspoken […]
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