Red and white striped, sometimes with a bit of blue, a barber pole twisting next to a small storefront signifies a place where men can get a haircut, a shave and a bit of masculine bonhomie. But this was not always the case. Back in the day, the red and white we associate with good grooming used to represent blood, […]
Read more
Depending on how you look at it, Frane Selak, a now 85 year old retired music teacher from Croatia, is either the luckiest, or unluckiest man in the world, having lived a life that resembles the plot to Final Destination; except after cheating death seven times, rather than be killed by a falling sign, he won £600,000 in the lotto […]
Read more
The Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve, and numerous other celebrations across the globe wouldn’t be what they are today without fireworks. It turns out that we owe our fascination with the pyrotechnic displays to ancient Chinese pyromaniacs. Sometime between 600 and 900 A.D., a few alchemists, hoping to concoct an elixir that would make them live forever, instead found […]
Read more
Kerry asks: Did an apple really fall on Newton’s head? In grade school you probably learned Newton’s apple story around the time you learned that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, that people in Columbus’ time thought that the world was flat, or that the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America and invited the Native Americans to join […]
Read more
Today I found out that Samuel Clemens was born and died during Halley’s comet years. 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 is that Clemens predicted the year of his death. In 1909, Clemens—known by his pen name, Mark Twain—said, I came […]
Read more
Today I found out why buffalo wings are called that. Unsurprisingly, neither the origin of the name nor the food item itself have anything to do with actual buffalo, nor American Bison which many people call buffalo even though they are not. Rather, this tasty item originated in Buffalo, New York, with most foodstorians indicating buffalo wings probably were first […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Dr. Seuss Wrote “Green Eggs and Ham” on a Bet The bet was made in 1960 with Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House, and was for $50 (about $382 today). Despite Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodore Geisel, winning the bet by producing […]
Read more
Where sound goes to die, acoustic shadows are areas where sounds, from a certain direction and on a given day, will not penetrate; these acoustic phenomena occur either because the sound waves are absorbed, refracted or simply blown in a different direction. Relatively unnoticed in our modern, wired world, the phenomenon played a significant role in some of the most […]
Read more
Grape-Nuts is a wheat and barley cereal developed by C.W. Post in 1897, and it has actually made some interesting contributions to American food history. A box of Grape-Nuts actually contains “whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, isolated soy protein, salt, whole grain barley flour, malt extract, and dried yeast.” It also boasts a number of essential vitamins and […]
Read more
From a young age I was introduced to what are still two of my favourite movie franchises of all time – Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I suppose it was inevitable, really. With parents who named me after a Doctor Who character, I would expect them to continue being awesome as I grew up. You may notice that my last […]
Read more
Nathan asks: Do earwigs really burrow into your brain and lay eggs? Let me just say I hate earwigs. Small, slimy-looking, fast moving, and always popping out of some dark place when I least expect it- no insect short of a silverfish fills me with more revulsion. Now, to answer your question, we’ll start off talking about the mating habits […]
Read more
Mormonism was still in its infancy when Jacob Haun moved from Wisconsin to Missouri in 1835 to set up a mill in Caldwell County. The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints was established by Joseph Smith in 1830. Despite being quite new, the church quickly prospered, and soon a large branch was set up in Missouri as […]
Read more
After decades of war, civil and otherwise, in the 1950s the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was eager to create the communist utopia promised by Marx and Engels a century before. Among the many Five Year Plans and campaigns undertaken to achieve that goal was the spectacular failure known as the Four Pests Campaign. Great Leap Forward After a decade […]
Read more
Myth: Whales spray water out of their blowholes. Contrary to what you may have seen in such movies as Pixar’s otherwise extremely entertaining Finding Nemo, whales don’t spray water out of their blowholes. Further, the whale’s trachea doesn’t connect to the esophagus of the whale; so when Dory and Marlin went down the whale’s throat, in real life, they’d have […]
Read more
Today I found out the fate of the survival of Hitler’s bloodline rests in the hands of just five family members: the two sons (Peter Raubal and Heiner Hochegger) of Adolf Hitler’s half-sister Angela Hitler, and the three remaining sons (Alexander, Louis, and Brian Stuart-Houston) of Adolf’s half-brother Alois Hitler Jr. During his life, Hitler strove for what he viewed […]
Read more
Today I found out that Denny’s started out as a doughnut shop. For those not familiar, Denny’s is a restaurant popular throughout North America whose slogan is “America’s Diner is always open.” It also has some branches in various South American countries, and a few as far afield as Japan, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates, though it hasn’t […]
Read more
Today I found out the man who gave the world one of the most enduring fictional characters of all time, James Bond, also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The man was Ian Fleming. Born May 28, 1908 to a wealthy family in London, he and his three brothers were educated at Eton College, the same school Princes William and Harry […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The First Person to “Walk” in Space Nearly Got Stuck Out There That lucky individual was Alexei Leonov, who was born in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1934. He was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force Pilots to be chosen […]
Read more