Candace asks: What makes a fruit a fruit and a vegetable a vegetable? An apple is a fruit, right? So is a banana. How about a cucumber? A vegetable, right? Not really, from a botanical standpoint. The good news is that, nutritionally speaking in terms of what you should eat daily, fruits and vegetables are typically grouped together, so you can […]
Read more
The common wombat (AKA, Vombatus ursinus) is an Australian marsupial with a unique claim to fame. You see, the common wombat and its two cousins, the Northern hairy-nose wombat and the Southern hairy-nose wombat, all poop pellets more or less in the shape of cubes, producing over 100 cubic pellets per day. If your day hasn’t been made by the phrase, […]
Read more
Often considered one of the more difficult languages to master thanks to the incredible amount of inconsistencies in the language, it should come as no surprise that the development of the modern English alphabet involved several languages, hundreds of years and a variety of conquers, missionaries and scholars. Origins of Alphabetic Writing Dating back nearly four thousand years, early alphabetic […]
Read more
Today I found out about Nellie Bly, the woman who purposefully got herself committed to a notorious insane asylum so that she could report on what actually went on inside. Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864, Nellie Bly was considered the most rebellious of her father’s fifteen children. (Yes, fifteen) Her family was thrown into poverty when her father died […]
Read more
Andy asks: After I eat vitamins or vitamin enriched cereal, my pee turns bright yellow. What’s going on here? If you’ve ever taken a daily multivitamin you too might have noticed your urine turning a bright yellow-ish color. Take your vitamins and eat some asparagus and you might just think you’re dying the next time you pee! What’s happening is […]
Read more
How Our Galaxy Came to Be Called the “Milky Way” and What It’s Called in Other Languages No, it has nothing to do with the candy bar. Like many words we use today, the English name of our galaxy is derived from its Latin name: Via Lactea. Translated, that means “the road of milk.” The Romans actually got the name […]
Read more
Today I found out about the history of Where’s Wally (known in the US and Canada as Where’s Waldo). The iconic, elusive man in the red-and-white striped shirt was first hidden away in 1987 by British illustrator Martin Handford. Handford had been drawing since he was a boy, and was particularly fond of viewing and drawing crowd scenes. He felt […]
Read more
Anyone who’s been chased around the yard by a pissed off chicken knows these birds are neither purposeless nor fearful. Descended from some of the fiercest creatures ever to roam the planet, the blood of today’s Gallus domesticus carries all of the pride, courage, fury and viciousness of its ancestors. Harnessing these qualities by the simple expedient of sticking two […]
Read more
Today I found out that Milton S. Hershey bought a VIP ticket for the Titanic but ended up not boarding. The Titanic, the unsinkable ship, launched on April 10, 1912, carrying some 2,200 passengers and crew en route to the United States. On the night of April 14, 1912, the ship hit an iceberg and sunk, resulting in around just […]
Read more
Edgar Allan Poe is probably best known for his raven that squawks “Nevermore,” but he’s also one of the first American short story writers and is often credited with being the “inventor” of detective fiction. He also contributed heavily to the genre of science fiction. Not only that, but he was one of the first American writers to earn a […]
Read more
Today I found out about the first woman to officially run in the Boston Marathon, Kathrine Switzer. “No woman can run the Boston Marathon,” said Arnie Briggs, Kathrine Switzer’s running coach. This coming from a man who had been excited to see a woman start running with the all-male cross country team at Syracuse University. He insisted that women were […]
Read more
As fascinating as it is horrifying, fetus-in-fetu is a developmental abnormality where, in utero, the larger of a set of twin fetuses absorbs the other into her body. The condition is usually diagnosed shortly after the surviving twin is born, although in a few horrific cases, the absorbed twin is not discovered until adulthood or death. Technically arising only in […]
Read more
“Elementary, my dear Watson“, sometimes quoted as, “Elementary, dear Watson“, is one of those phrases that everybody knows the character of Sherlock Holmes said. You know, just like everyone knows that Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty” and Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father”. The thing is, none of those characters ever said any of those things. They […]
Read more
Kris W. asks: What is it in seaweed that is used in making ice cream? Seaweed didn’t exactly come into play during those “make your own ice cream” science experiments you probably did in elementary school, but it is sometimes used in the making of commercial ice cream. No, it isn’t just in seaweed-flavoured ice cream, either. Seaweed is actually […]
Read more
Today I found out why our galaxy is called the Milky Way and what it’s called in other languages. No, it has nothing to do with the candy bar. Like many words we use today, the English name of our galaxy is derived from its Latin name: Via Lactea. Translated, that means “the road of milk.” The Romans actually got […]
Read more
Because we’re now covering a lot more daily topics here on Today I Found Out, and because I had a bunch of my Daily Knowledge Newsletter subscribers request something like this via email (the newsletter is free, by the way and you can subscribe here ;-)), I thought I’d start doing a “Weekly Wrap” which will more or less be […]
Read more
“The Brady Bunch” was a hugely successful sitcom which ran for 5 seasons (117 episodes) from 1969 to 1974. One of the show’s stars was Robert Reed, a Shakespearean trained stage actor. Previous to “The Brady Bunch”, Reed had also been a co-star of a very successful drama called “The Defenders” with E.G. Marshall in the early 1960s. Usually when […]
Read more
Anthony Johnson first came over to America as an indentured servant, arriving in 1620 in the Colony of Virginia. He did not come over willingly, as many did, agreeing to become indentured servants in exchange for passage to the New World. Rather, Johnson was captured in Angola by neighboring tribesmen and eventually sold to a merchant who transported him to […]
Read more