Just over a century ago in the Mediterranean Sea in between Greece’s Peloponnese and the Isle of Crete, a sponge diver came across an amazing discovery: an ancient shipwreck from classical times, filled with pottery, jewels, wine and so many marble and bronze statutes that, upon surfacing, he “gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women“. The […]
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Ken Laha asks: How long would someone’s heart have to be stopped before you’d stop trying to revive them? The question of how long someone’s heart would have to be stopped for before you can safely say that regardless of what you do, you’re not going to be able to revive them is a very tricky question. It’s not as […]
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Today I found out the origin of the word “abracadabra.” These days you might hear this word before some stage magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, but hundreds of years ago people actually believed that “abracadabra” was a magical spell. The exact origin of the word is up for debate, but perhaps one of the oldest records we […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Origin of the Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda is aptly named, as the series has truly become a legend within the gaming industry. Every new generation of gamers have been given the opportunity to fall in love with it […]
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From King Arthur’s Avalon to Plato’s Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Laputa to Pi’s carnivorous Eden, people have long dreamed of magical islands where the miraculous happens and the lost find sanctuary. The Celts of Ireland were no different, and in their tradition, the mythical island was known as Hy-Brasil. The Myth of Brasil Also called O’Breasail, Hi-Brasil, O’Brazil, Hy Breasail, Hy […]
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Today I found out that James Barry, the first British surgeon to perform a C-section in which both the mother and baby survived, was born a woman. It is believed that “James Barry” started out in life as Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was born around 1789 in Ireland. Not much is known about her childhood, except that when it came […]
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In 2010, architect and PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London, Julijonas Urbonas, from Lithuania, decided to attempt to design a method of euthanizing people that they might even enjoy. His solution- the Euthanasia Coaster, which he designed and built at a precise 1:500 scale. It’s a roller coaster that could seat up to 24 passengers and […]
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Today I found out that the Colosseum in Rome wasn’t finished until 80 AD; before that, Romans used the Circus Maximus for games. The Colosseum is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rome and incredibly popular with tourists. Movies would have you think that chariot races, gladiator shows, and battle simulations always took place there, but that isn’t true. […]
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Thibodaux, Louisiana had a history of growing sugar cane. Settled sometime in the 18th century, it was incorporated into a town in 1830. Named after a popular plantation owner, it might not come as a surprise that—in addition to sugar cane—the town also raised quite a bit of racial tension back in the day. The town was occupied by Union […]
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In 1999, 37 year old Bill Morgan was a truck driver living in a travel trailer in Australia. That’s when disaster struck- while working, he got in a pretty bad accident that he nonetheless survived. However, medication he was given during his recovery resulted in him having an extreme allergic reaction that ultimately caused his heart to stop. After being […]
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For as far back as we are able to look into the prehistory of the human race, music has been a crucial part of the life of humans. Some scholars even speculate that human music may have come before language. From the beginning, people living in little groups sang and danced to self-made music. Drums and pipes were readily developed, […]
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In 1860, the clean shaven Abraham Lincoln was running for President of the United States. This clean shaven look was somewhat odd for a man of the age. You see, shortly before Lincoln decided to grow a beard, something of a beard revolution swept the United States and by the mid-19th century the formerly predominately clean-shaven men of America now […]
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Garden gnomes are those statues you see of pint sized chubby human-like creatures usually wearing red hats and blue pants. You can find them in a variety of poses and pursuing various past times such as fishing, napping, or in the case of my personal gnome, smoking a pipe. Garden gnomes are typically male and have beards but you see […]
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The Legend of Zelda is aptly named, as the series has truly become a legend within the gaming industry. Every new generation of gamers have been given the opportunity to fall in love with it through their current Nintendo console. Or if they’re purists, going back to the original NES game. However, the fundamentals have pretty much always remained – […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Mark Twain Was Born and Died in the Same Years That Halley’s Comet Flew By the Earth This is a somewhat uncommon occurrence given that Halley’s comet only passes by the Earth approximately every 76 years. What makes it even more remarkable […]
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Myth: The Caesarean section procedure ultimately derives its name from Julius Caesar, who is often (falsely) claimed to have been the first baby born via Caesarean. It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly this story started, though a 10th century document is the likely culprit. The Suda, a Byzantine-Greek historical encyclopaedia, is one of the earliest records citing Caesar as the […]
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Olivia asks: Why is it that Chernobyl is still toxic, but there are millions of people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without dying? On August 6 and 9, 1945, U.S. airmen dropped the nuclear bombs Little Boy and Fat Man on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On April 26, 1986, the number four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear […]
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Lee asks: How many children have died from people poisoning Halloween candy? Remember your mom sorting through your Halloween candy as a kid, looking for signs of ‘tainted’ candy laced with poison, needles or razor blades? It turns out, unless she was just using it as an excuse to steal the good candy before you got it, she was wasting […]
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