Mark Y. asks: Why were people who made alcohol during prohibition called bootleggers? Although Prohibition officially began on January 16, 1920, the impetus for banning the production, sale, importation and transportation (though not the consumption) of alcohol had been brewing for decades before. Part of a string of reforms introduced by Progressives, Protestants and other activists to cure all of […]
Read more
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader COPS has been a Saturday night TV staple for so long—29 seasons—that it’s easy to forget what a groundbreaking show it was when it debuted in 1989. FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE In the early 1980s, an aspiring filmmaker named John Langley began work on Cocaine Blues, a documentary about the crack cocaine […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The U.S. Military’s Proposed “Gay” Bomb One doesn’t commonly associate the slogan “make love not war” with the U.S. military. Indeed, the United States military is feared and formidable precisely because it has proven so effective at conceptualizing clever and innovative […]
Read more
Therese R. asks: Is it true that there is a substance seeping up from the ground on a road in Venezuela that no one can identify? First appearing in 1986 on a highway between the city of Caracas and its airport, La Mancha Negra, meaning literally a black stain, began as an approximately 50-yard (46 meter) long smudge, seen by […]
Read more
M. Silverman asks: Why aren’t the windows aligned with the rows of seats on planes? While airplane manufacturers do design the planes with general row positioning and pitch (the measurement from one seat to the same exact point on the seat in front or behind it) in mind, with the windows often lining up with the seats, the designers’ exact […]
Read more
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader George Washington was inaugurated as president in 1789 and John Adams was inaugurated in 1797…but the White House didn’t open its doors until 1800. So where did America’s first two presidents live? First Presidential Address: 3 Cherry Street, New York City Moving In: New York served as the nation’s capital […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. How Dick Came to Be Short for Richard The name Richard is thought by most etymologists to derive from the Proto-Germanic ‘Rikharthu’, meaning more or less “hard ruler” (‘Rik-‘ meaning ‘ruler’ and ‘-harthu’ meaning ‘hard’). This was adopted into Old High […]
Read more
The 1890s were a gilded age of sports in America. Backed by the country’s moral and intellectual elite in the form of ministers and urban reformers, institutions like the YMCA were popularized, enforcing the rather novel idea of healthful recreation via organized sports. While this may seem obvious to us today, this was only decades after a time when watching […]
Read more
Marco Rossi asks: Is it true that the queen of England isn’t required to have a passport when she visits other countries? As the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, the commonwealth, and certain other countries that have since declared independence but decided they kind of like having the Queen on their money, Queen Elizabeth II enjoys a number of […]
Read more
Initially designed and produced during WW2 for British soldiers, the Sten was developed as a direct response to both dwindling supplies of American made Thompson machine guns and the evacuation of Dunkirk, during which the British abandoned many thousands of guns. In an effort to re-arm its troops as quickly as possible for the defense of the homeland, the British […]
Read more
Melissa T. asks: What is the process involved with climbing Mount Everest? Do you need a permit or something or can anyone just try and climb it if they want to try it? Standing at a foreboding 8,848 metres (or 29,029 feet) high, Mount Everest is recognised as the Earth’s highest mountain. While Everest isn’t generally considered to be the […]
Read more
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Ted Williams’s lifelong dream was to be known as “the greatest hitter who ever lived.” It’s sad, then, that today many people know him as “that baseball player who got cryonically frozen.” HEADING FOR HOME In the summer of 2001, some old friends went to Hernando, Florida, to pay a […]
Read more
Jared M. asks: Why are breasts called boobs? There’s an oft repeated and decidedly untrue claim that Eskimos have hundreds of words for “snow”. (Beyond the fact that there is no single “Eskimo language”, when talking about the wider Eskimo-Aleut language family, these actually have roughly the same number of root-words for snow as English.) The false claim that they […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Strange Story of the First Olympian Disqualified for Doping Olympians have been bending (and occasionally breaking) the rules in an effort to give themselves an edge over the competition since the games began. Despite this, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) […]
Read more
Packed tighter than a sardine in the one-man Freedom 7 capsule, 37-year-old Alan Shepard couldn’t wait any longer. His mission – which originally was going to make Shepard the first human in space – had already been delayed weeks, allowing Yuri Gagarin and the Russians to beat him in blasting off for the stars. Now, in his fourth hour sitting […]
Read more
Howard Hughes, the legendarily reclusive billionaire business magnate, is a man about whom much has been written and most people know at least a little bit about. However, as we did when we covered JP Morgan’ giant, purple, knobbly nose that he largely managed to keep hidden from the world, today we’re going to focus on a lesser known aspect […]
Read more
There’s a long history of rulers bragging about their athletic talents. Ancient Egyptian kings sometimes used sporting prowess to show off masculinity and inspire fear. The Roman Emperor Commodus liked to step into the gladiator ring, often asking for already wounded or weakened opponents so he could look superior. (Yes, he was the partial inspiration for the movie Gladiator. Also […]
Read more
Dan L. asks: Why is 18 the age that people are considered adults? People continue to mature and grow as individuals throughout our lifetimes (at least ideally). So the 45 year old you would probably not only be better equipped to make decisions than the 25 year old version, but also in all likelihood be a very different person, both […]
Read more