In the city of Seattle, Washington there exists a vending machine that over the years has become something of a local landmark amongst residents who are familiar with its mysterious history. Situated on the corner the John Street and 10th Avenue East in the bustling Capitol Hill neighbourhood, the seemingly ancient machine is well known for dispensing random, sometimes rare, […]
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Outside of wine snobs, I think we can all agree that wine snobs are just the worst. This is not because virtually every study ever conducted into the field of wine tasting as a whole has concluded that it’s ridiculously easy to convince even the top sommeliers that $5 boxed white wine is the finest red wine ever bottled. Nor […]
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Jeremy B. asks: Is it true that pot is legal in Amsterdam? Amsterdam is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe- a city famous for its canals, its museums, its history and, well, it’s weed. Except, it turns out the common idea that marijuana is legal in the Netherlands isn’t accurate at all. This is despite the fact […]
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Nathan K. asks: How did Pomp and Circumstance get to be the tune always played at graduations? Every year, hundreds of thousands of students march across a stage in a gown and a squared hat to receive a piece of paper that says they’ve completed a particular phase in their education. This school graduation will undoubtedly be marked by cheering, […]
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It was a cool California November afternoon in 1947 when the HK-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose, finally flew. It was supposed to be a simple taxi test, nothing more than motoring through the water of Long Beach Harbor to show off its speed and test out the plane in open water. But having endured years of people mocking […]
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Only nine months after the near-disaster of Apollo 13, NASA decided to try again with Apollo 14. For the mission, three astronauts were chosen – Edgar Mitchell, Alan Shepard, and Stuart A. Roosa. Shepard had already earned international fame for being the first American, second human overall, in space in 1961, funny enough soaking in his own urine owing to […]
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Laura S. asks: Who was the first to come up with the idea of using passwords for computers instead of other authentication? Something akin to passwords have seemingly been used for at least as long as humans have been recording history. For example, one of the earliest references to something like a password is mentioned in the Book of Judges, […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Sometimes the most intriguing whodunits aren’t found in mystery novels, they’re found in real life. Take this curious case, which has puzzled investigators for more than 40 years. COLD CASE One chilly afternoon in November 1970, a father and his two daughters were hiking up a remote, rocky hillside overlooking […]
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In 1983, Paul Mockapetris proposed a distributed database of internet name and address pairs, now known as the Domain Name System (DNS). This is essentially a distributed “phone book” linking a domain’s name to its address, allowing you to type in something like todayifoundout.com instead of the IP address of the website. The distributed version of this system allowed for […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader THIS IS NOT A DRILL In March 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent their honeymoon at a posh hotel in Amsterdam, where they staged their infamous “Bed-in for Peace.” Among the reporters and well-wishers that Lennon invited was a 34-year-old Dutchman named Bart Huges. He was summoned there because […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Stealing the Eiffel Tower In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we discuss that time a man managed to successfully sell the Eiffel Tower… even though he didn’t own it. We also lament the lack of awesome World’s Fairs in […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader The story of a sad and tragic epidemic that happened just 70 years ago, but which few people know about today. (But you’re familiar with at least one of its victims.) MONTEREY On February 14, 1941, Dr. Stewart Clifford, a pediatrician in Boston, made a house call to check on […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader One of the harsh realities of life in space is that in an emergency, astronauts may have to live in their space suits for days on end. If that ever does happen, how will they go to the bathroom? That’s the question NASA hopes to answer. WHEN YOU GOTTA GO… […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Forgotten Heros: The Accidental Farmer Shortly before 8:00 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese military forces attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. More than 2,400 soldiers were killed in the attack, […]
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It was a century ago when famed World War I German fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen was fatally shot out of the sky. Yet, his nickname – “Red Baron” – remains part of American vernacular. Charles Schulz’s comic strip character Snoopy famously took on the Red Baron in his imaginary air battles aboard his doghouse, often yelling “Curse you, Red Baron!” […]
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Orlando D. asks: Does it matter what you sign on contracts? Could you draw a picture or put an X and have it still be legally binding? With so many facets of modern life being automated, signatures being easy to forge, and given how difficult it is to prove based on signature alone whether a given person actually signed something, […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Bob Fletcher was an agricultural inspector working in California’s Central Valley in the early 1940s. He might have stayed one, too, had the outbreak of World War II not changed everything. INFAMY Shortly before 8:00 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese military forces attacked the U.S. naval […]
Read moreWhen you die, your body is, in a quite real sense, never more alive. Beyond the amazing number of microbes that already call your body home (more of their cells than your own at any given time), other bacteria and varying fungi and fauna colonize the body with great rapidity after death. As the body becomes biome, flesh undergoes a […]
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