Today I found out there is an irony mark in punctuation. The irony mark specifically is a backwards question mark: ؟ This mark was originally proposed by the 19th century French poet Alcanter de Brahm, also known as Marcel Bernhardt. Around the same time other “second level” punctuation marks were proposed. For instance, Tara Liloia and Josh Greenman suggested a […]
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Today I found out no one really knows why Maine is called Maine. One of the most popular theories is that it is derived from the nautical term “the main” or “Main Land”. Maine has an incredible number of islands off it’s coast, so perhaps sailors referred to it as “Maine”, as in “Main Land”, to distinguish it from the […]
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Today I found out that the tongue doesn’t have zones specializing in specific tastes, contrary to popular belief. So why did your third grade teacher tell you they did and make you memorize each zone, then mark you down when you got one of them wrong which resulted in you not getting to go play with your friends that night […]
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Today I found out there was once a woman who had immortal cells. These immortal cells have multiplied to the point that if you were to weigh all of them that live today, they’d weigh about 50 million metric tons, which is about as much as 100 Empire State Buildings. So who was this woman and why are scientists keeping […]
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Today I found out why the sky is blue. For the short answer, when light from the sun enters our atmosphere it collides with molecules in the air. The blue part of the light gets scattered more than the other parts during these collisions and thus makes the sky appear to our eyes as blue. If the light from the […]
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Today I found out where Bacon comes from. Now you might think, as I always did, that Bacon comes from combining two parts awesome with a smidgen of outstanding. But in fact, Bacon, or as my brother calls it “meat candy”, obviously comes from our snout nosed little bald friends, pigs, which don’t seem remotely awesome. Though of course, one […]
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Today I found out where the “Lorem Ipsum Dolor” text comes from and what it means. For those of you who don’t know, the “Lorem Ipsum Dolor” text has been used since about the 1500’s as a sort of placeholder text in typesetting, printing, and now in such electronic media as graphical, software, and web development. It’s used to show […]
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Today I found out how to make maple syrup. Ever find yourself sitting there enjoying a stack of pancakes dripping with melted butter and maple syrup (getting hungry aren’t you?) and find yourself wondering, “I wonder how maple syrup is made?” Ya me neither. However, on the off chance you’re out of maple syrup and the apocalypse comes tomorrow and […]
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Today I found out a “Third World” country is not a country that simply is primitive, underdeveloped, or poor, as most people think. In fact, a third world country is actually just a country that is not considered a capitalist country (first world) and not considered a communist country (2nd world). This terminology was originally coined just after WWII with […]
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Today I found out Moon dust smells like spent gunpowder. This is according to the astronauts that have had the opportunity to smell fresh Moon dust that had been tracked into the lunar module after excursions out on the surface of the Moon. The astronauts didn’t just smell the dust though, they also touched and tasted it. They say it […]
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Today I found out how glow in the dark stuff works. Glow in the dark products all contain some type of phosphor. Phosphors are any substance that radiates light after being energized in some way. There are literally thousands of chemicals that are phosphors. These chemicals all have varying degrees of brightness, color, and length of time they glow after […]
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Today I found out the song “Happy Birthday” is copyrighted and brings in about $2,000,000 per year to the copyright holders (currently an investment group that purchased Warner Music who in turn was the most recent owner of the copyright for the song). The original tune for the song was created by sisters Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in […]
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Today I found out the red juice in raw red meat is not blood. Nearly all blood is removed from meat during slaughter, which is also why you don’t see blood in raw “white meat”; only an extremely small amount of blood remains within the muscle tissue when you get it from the store. So what is that red liquid […]
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Today I found out that the Swastika in Buddhism represents universal harmony, dharma, the balance of opposites, and, originally, eternity and good luck or “all is well”. Now of course in the western world the Swastika has a pretty bad reputation thanks to a certain German tree hugging vegetarian and his political party. However, Hitler and his crazy gang weren’t […]
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Today I found out, before the 17th century, almost all cultivated carrots were purple. The modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot and gradually developed them into the sweet, plump, orange variety we have today. Before this, pretty much all carrots were purple with mutated versions […]
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Today I found out what “OK” stands for, namely “oll korrect”. So how does that make any sense at all? I’m glad you asked, because otherwise this article would have been way to short to publish. 😉 The time was 1839. In Boston and New York, slang abbreviations were all the rage with the abbreviations often representing deliberately misspelled slang […]
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Today I found out that Seattle doesn’t really get that much rain compared to most U.S. cities. In fact, Seattle ranks 44th among major U.S. cities in average annual rainfall, getting approximately 38 inches annually. Cities that get more rainfall than Seattle include such as Houston Texas (48 inches), New Orleans (60 inches), Mobile AL (65 inches), Memphis (52 inches), […]
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Today I found out how to speed tie shoes.
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