On July 8, 1945, two months to the day after the Allies declared victory in Europe, 29 German POWs were shot while peacefully residing in a prison camp in Salina, Utah. The Shooter Private Clarence V. Bertucci was 23 years old at the time of the shooting. Stationed at the Salina camp, Bertucci had been born and raised in New […]
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Today I found out about John Billington, the first convicted murderer in America. John Billington was around 40 years old when he disembarked the Mayflower in New England in November, 1620. Like most of the other adult males on the ship, he had signed the Mayflower Compact prior to setting foot on American soil. The Compact had been drawn up […]
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In May 1972 in a uranium enrichment plant in France, scientists examining ore from a mine in Gabon, West Africa, discovered that a natural nuclear reactor had spontaneously manifested in that region in the Earth’s primordial past, churning out approximately 100 Kw worth of energy continuously for a few hundred thousand years about 1.7 billion years ago. In order to […]
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Today I found out why barbecues are called that. The word “barbecue” comes from the Caribbean word “barbacoa.” Originally, a barbacoa wasn’t a way of cooking food, but the name of a wooden structure used by Taino Indians to smoke their food. Due to the known diets of the Indians in question, it’s likely that the first barbecue consisted of […]
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Today I found out about the use of exploding anti-tank dogs during World War II. These dogs, usually Alsatians, were also called “Hundminen” or “dog mines.” They were trained to carry explosives on their bodies to enemy tanks, where they would then be detonated. No, it did not end very well for the dogs in question. This type of animal […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why a Turkey is Called a Turkey In the sixteenth century, when North American turkeys were first introduced en masse to Europe, there was another bird that was popularly imported throughout Europe and, most relevant to this article, England, called a guinea […]
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Mark asks: Who was the first comedian to do the slippery banana peel routine? There are some things in this world that are just inherently funny; a pie in the face, an unexpected squirting flower, and a kitten in a shark costume riding a roomba chasing after a duck are just a few of the best examples. But nothing has […]
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Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes. We […]
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On May 8, 1828, the man who founded The International Committee of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, was born. In 1922, almost a century after his birth, the eighth of May was declared a day dedicated to the International Red Cross, in this way honoring its founder. Dunant’s dream was to prevent and alleviate human suffering, without discrimination. Despite being […]
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Today I found out about Amy and Katie, the twins born 87 days apart. Maria Jones-Elliot of Waterford, Ireland, was just 23 weeks pregnant when she went into labour with her twins in 2012. She was understandably worried—it isn’t until 24 weeks that doctors now consider a pregnancy viable (that is, the baby could potentially live outside of the womb […]
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Think back to when you were a child visiting your grandparent’s home. Do you recall a distinct scent when you walked through the door? Many people do and it turns out, it’s not just in your head. Gerontologist and author of A New Wrinkle: What I Learned from Older People Who Never Acted Their Age, Dr. Eric Shapira, says it […]
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Today I found out how tennis shoes came to be called sneakers. When it comes to athletic shoes, calling them something like “walkers” or “runners” seems more appropriate than calling them “sneakers.” These days most people don’t use their sneakers for sneaking, but back in the day they were associated with people who were up to no good and sneaking […]
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For those of you in the United States who are about to celebrate Thanksgiving and want to look particularly knowledgey at your family get-together, here is a roundup of all the Thanksgiving related articles we’ve made here at TodayIFoundOut for you to peruse. Or, you know- don’t. But when there are awkward pauses in the conversation at your Thanksgiving parties, […]
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Noah K. asks: Who invented braille? Braille was invented by a nineteenth century man named Louis Braille, who was completely blind. Braille’s story starts when he was three years old. He was playing in his father’s shop in Coupvray, France, and somehow managed to injure his eye. Though he was offered the best medical attention available at the time, it […]
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Since long before colonoscopies, mammograms and physicals (turn your head and cough), patients have had a love-hate relationship with doctors. Often uncomfortable (or downright awful), the procedures employed by physicians are frequently met with distrust and revulsion (until those methods achieve desired results). This was no different during the early years of modern medicine when one practice in particular, human […]
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In the early days of the United States, cotton and tobacco crops on the east coast are remembered as big contributors to the ongoing slave trade. Meanwhile, the sugar cane plantations in Louisiana are often forgotten. Because of the back-breaking work of maintaining the sugar cane crops, white settlers started importing African slaves to do the work for them. It […]
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Today I found out about Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. World War II veteran. Murphy was born on June 20, 1925 in Texas. His family was extremely poor, partially due to having twelve young mouths to feed. When his father abandoned the family when Audie was fifteen years old, he was forced to pick up some of the slack […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Difference Between an Asteroid and a Comet A comet is simply a relatively small astronomical object that has a “tail”, known as a coma, which makes up a temporary atmosphere for the comet. Asteroids, on the other hand, do not exhibit […]
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