Randrew asks: Why do people say the human soul weighs 21 grams? It’s often said that it’s impossible to put a price on a human life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t define it by other metrics, something physician Duncan MacDougall tried to do in the early 20th century by setting up an experiment to discern the weight of […]
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The Room is a cinematic paradox. Simultaneously considered one of the worst films ever made and an unintended work of comedic geniuis, it has enjoyed remarkable success since its original 2003 release. Despite being the subject of numerous documentaries and most recently a film starring James Franco, The Disaster Artist, that ironically eclipsed the film it was inspired by’s box […]
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On August 9, 1991 at about 6:30 in the evening, thousands of motorists heading home after a long day of work across the UK were forced to pull over and stop due to a brief comment they’d just heard during a sports broadcast. The comment wasn’t reporting a shock loss or injury, but a joke made by cricket commentator, Jonathan […]
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Briday asks: Is it true that Bill Gates didn’t take any days off work in his 20s? Bill Gates has frequently stated, “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” He goes on, “When I was in my 20s and early 30s, my whole life was focused on work. I didn’t take vacations or weekends off. I […]
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The universe has been finding ways to mess with people long before Edward A. Murphy uttered his famed statement in the aftermath of Dr. John Paul Stapp strapping himself onto a rocket powered sled. One of the earliest instances of this “law” being stated explicitly happened in 1877 where Alfred Holt, in an address to the Institution of Civil Engineers, […]
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Stacey asks: Before Spinal Tap, did anything else “go up to 11”? In the hilarious rockumentary This is Spinal Tap released in 1984, Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel proudly boasts of his Marshal amp, “This is a top to what we use on stage, but it’s very, very special because, if you can see, the numbers all go to 11. […]
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In the 1970s, BP oil pipeline workers came across a curious item about 12 miles southwest of Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire sitting about 86 meters under the surface- an old German U-Boat. In fact, one of the last U-Boats ever sunk in WWII. Unlike so many of its fellow subs, however, this one’s demise came about owing to a sequence of […]
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In modern times if you want to show off extreme wealth, you may purchase expensive sports cars, buy a private jet, wear flashy jewelry, or, as boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been known to do, travel around carrying suitcases filled with sometimes millions of dollars in cash. Such extravagant displays of wealth are a trademark of the boxer with Mayweather […]
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Neikoptic asks: If I was transported back in time to Medieval times like in a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court could I still talk to people or would we not understand each other? Contrary to what many a Grammar Nazi the world over would have you believe, language is constantly evolving, occasionally extremely rapidly, and there is nothing wrong […]
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Back in the halcyon days of the 1980s, when all people of the world had to worry about was total annihilation via widespread nuclear war, an American called Dennis Hope made international news when he revealed that after exploiting a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, he had become the sole owner of our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon. […]
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Considered to be little more than a historical curio today, the early 18th century Puckle Gun was nonetheless one of the most advanced firearms of its age, capable of firing one shot every 6 seconds in an era when even the most highly skilled soldier equipped with a musket typically topped out at a rate of only about one shot […]
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The favoured instrument of the likes of Lisa Simpsons, former President Bill Clinton, and the co-author of this article and founder of TodayIFoundOut, the saxophone has variously been described as everything from “the most moving and heart-gripping wind instrument” to the “Devil’s horn”. Rather fittingly then the instrument’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, was a similarly polarising figure and led a life […]
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Alex K. asks: Is it true that sommeliers can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap wines? Having a seasoned tongue that can detect the subtle differences between different kinds of adult grape juice is a sure sign of class. In fact, the go-to Hollywood trope for showing that a character is refined is to give them a penchant for […]
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Peter E. asks: What could I do during freefall after falling out of a plane to maximize my chances of surviving? According to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes without a parachute during a crash and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those […]
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In the world of food advertising there’s a concept known as “propping” which is industry jargon for making the food look as good as possible via sometimes rather, shall we say, unusual means. While proper lighting and setting are a given, a good food stylist, which is a thing by the way, will do much more than that. For example, […]
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While getting divorced in modern times in most nations isn’t exactly a walk in the park, options at least do exist in much of the world, even in cases where one spouse would rather stay together. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon. Classically, getting divorced was almost impossible. So much so that at one point about the only way […]
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San dro asks: What happens if you never give your child a name? It turns out there are a shocking number of rules and regulations concerning what parents can name their children, when the naming has to happen by, and even a section of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child that specifically states that all people, […]
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Contrary to popular belief, a decent percentage of the human population has known definitely the Earth was roughly spherical for over two thousand years. Hardly impressive, as noted in our BrainFood Show podcast, bees also use this fact in their own absurdly fascinating navigation and in communicating directions to other bees. As for humans, we took a little longer to […]
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