Jamie M asks: When did having young teenage girls marry stop being so widespread? A long, long time ago. Marriage in the Ancient World In the Western world (and generally speaking) before imperial Rome, girls were deemed sufficiently mature for marriage and sex when they first started menstruation (and boys, by the way, when they developed pubic hair). Marriage was […]
Read more
Martha was a very lonely bird. She had once been part of a pair, with her male counterpart George, but he had died several years before. So, for the final years of her life, Martha sat in her one-bird cage alone. The Cincinnati Zoo offered a thousand dollar reward (about $23,000 today) to anyone who could track down a mate […]
Read more
Harriet W. asks: What is the difference between brown and white eggs? There are all sorts of rumours surrounding brown eggs and white eggs. Some people say that brown eggs are better for you and contain more nutrients; some people think brown eggs taste better; some think that brown eggs are better for cooking things like quiches, while white eggs […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. When a Tulip Cost More than a House Despite how it sounds, “Tulipmania” does not refer to just a general love of tulips; it was actually one the world’s first recorded major financial bubbles. Long before the dot com frenzy or the […]
Read more
Find more from this author at All That is Interesting a part of the PBH Network. Subscribe to their newsletter here. Sam Patch: Before Evel Knievel was a twinkle in his father’s eye, Sam Patch was thrilling audiences across America. As a child laborer in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Patch would entertain his friends by jumping off the mill dam. By […]
Read more
Laury asks: What causes morning sickness? Most mothers will tell you that “morning sickness” is a misnomer, and that it should really be called “all day sickness.” In fact, it’s sometimes called “nausea and vomiting during pregnancy” or NVP. Pregnant women have been experiencing this unfortunate side effect of growing a parasite… err human inside them seemingly for as long […]
Read more
Jamie M. asks: When did people stop thinking it was OK to marry your cousin? In modern western society, marrying your cousin is not well accepted, particularly in the United States. Through a combination of old prejudices and present-day conventional wisdom about inherited birth defects, first cousin marriage is seen by many as a little too close for comfort, as […]
Read more
For Part I of this two part series, go here. Today I found out about the last three wives of King Henry VIII: Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, and Katherine Parr. We last left off with King Henry finally receiving the heir to the throne he so badly wanted. However, Henry knew well enough that heirs could die, and after […]
Read more
Today I found out about the first three wives of King Henry VIII: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour. “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” as the old rhyme goes. King Henry VIII is known for having a huge number of wives and getting rid of nearly all of them in some way or another. As most people […]
Read more
This is something a little different, which I nevertheless thought was an entertaining, and more than a little humorous, story. (Although, to be fair, I have a bit of a twisted sense of humor. ;-)) So I asked if my brother, Jon, wouldn’t mind writing it up and letting me publish it. So here’s a guest post by Jon, the […]
Read more
The name deriving from the Greek “eugenes,” meaning “well-born,” it should be no surprise that “eugenics” seeks to engineer a better human race by purposefully selecting good traits, and eliminating bad ones, as is common when breeding animals. Over the years, eugenics has had a number of proponents, from some of the greatest and most admires thinkers in western civilization […]
Read more
Despite being just 8 weeks old, our new Daily Knowledge Podcast has just passed 500K downloads. These days it’s also pushing over 16K downloads per day and rising every week. Further, it has ranked as high as #13 overall on iTunes among all podcasts. 🙂 If you haven’t given it a listen, check it out here. You can also subscribe […]
Read more
Fourteen cm in height and eight around, the world’s first battery looked more like primitive pre-Columbian art than an amazing piece of ancient technology. Although most experts agree that the device produced electricity, there is little consensus on what that power was intended to do. Discovery Archaeologists searching for “evidence of Biblical tales like the Tree of knowledge and Noah’s […]
Read more
This is a guest post from our friends over at The Medicine Journal– the TodayIFoundOut of medical related sites. Also, don’t forget to check out their awesome videos on YouTube. Ever wonder why certain foods seem to have a weird flavor that hangs around after you swallow them? Aftertaste is generally classified as any taste that remains in your mouth […]
Read more
War is ugly. Especially in contrast to the beauty of centuries-old European art. That was the very the reason that the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program was established in 1943, to protect fine works of art in every form from the horribleness of World War II. The men and women who were part of this program and assigned to […]
Read more
An integral part of the American experience, “As American as Apple Pie” (which in truth is not American), the apple is nevertheless ubiquitous in U.S. culture. We put it in desserts, give it to our favorite teachers, wash our hair with its essence and put it in our lunches. So common, it’s easy to take the simple apple for granted, […]
Read more
It was February 18, 1964. The Beatles had arrived in America just 11 days earlier and had taken the nation by storm. They already had the number one record on the charts and several others quickly catching up. They had appeared on the Ed Sullivan show before 73 million awestruck and curious fans. It was the highest rated television broadcast […]
Read more
Making copies of architectural drawings hasn’t always been the easiest thing in the world to do. For the majority of human history, the most economical solution was simply to have someone make a tracing of the original plans. In the mid-nineteenth century, the process abruptly became much quicker and easier thanks to famed polymath Sir John Herschel. In 1842, Herschel […]
Read more