Gared O. asks: Who invented the cardboard box? The cardboard box goes largely unappreciated. Yet, it is indispensable to our daily living. It holds all of our knick-knacks and personal mementos when we move or have things shipped. It holds our breakfast cereal. It has been used for countless children’s art projects; fashioned into a robot head or a horse’s […]
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Hollywood often makes up stories about nigh-unkillable, enemy-stomping individuals who laugh in the face of certain death, only to deliver that death to countless bad guys instead. In real life, if you put a single individual up against a large contingent of well armed soldiers, the soldiers tend to effortlessly dispatch said individual, no matter how much courage and determination […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Bizarre Mating Practices of the Arabian Camel Some people are into feet, others like dressing up in furry costumes, and a rare few will even get scatological (See: Mozart’s Much Less Family Friendly Works). But when it comes to weird […]
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Juana R. asks: Why do judges wear robes? Is this still a requirement or just a tradition? Most of us in the western world expect judges to wear a robe when they sit behind their bench in a courtroom, and they usually do not disappoint. But we rarely think about how the long, usually black, robe became the standard outfit […]
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Considering how most dogs in the Western world these days are treated as a member of the family, it’s often easy to forget that the vast majority of our furry friends up until very recently were bred for a specific purpose. Perhaps no dog was bred for a more specific purpose than the now extinct, turnspit. The turnspit was so named […]
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Julie H. asks: Why did lead used to be added to paint? The use of lead in everyday objects dates back to the ancient Romans. They used lead in makeup, as an additive in food and wine, in pewter dinnerware, and many other items, including paint. The inexpensive metal was even used in the pipes that transported water throughout the […]
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While not thought to be directly related to modern Valentine’s Day traditions, the beginnings of celebrating love (of a sort) in February date back to the Romans. The feast of Lupercalia was a pagan fertility and health festival, observed from February 13th through the 15th, that was celebrated at least as far back as 44 BCE (the year Julius Caesar […]
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Older than writing, evidence of the practice of drilling a hole in someone’s head in order to improve their health and well-being has been found from as far back as 6,500 BC. Although most proper physicians today eschew the procedure and write it off as simply a function of superstition, the tradition of trepanning remains alive and well among adherents. […]
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The first Earthlings sent into space were brave, calm under pressure, and heroic. They were also not human and many of them were furry. Yes, before Apollo 13, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Yuri Gagarin, humans sent fruit flies, monkeys, and dogs into space to determine if living beings could survive the trip. These tests helped prove that, given a […]
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Matthew B. asks: Is it true that drinking gasoline will make you go blind? Probably not, although anecdotal evidence shows it has a strong correlation with stupidity. What it may do is cause vomiting, vertigo, confusion, drowsiness, breathing difficulties, burning in the esophagus, sore throat, weakness, and diarrhea, even when ingested in small amounts; in larger portions, it can cause […]
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Mark C. asks: What does the letters in the stinky term P.U. stand for? Often used to accuse someone of exceeding his allotted level of funk, P.U. is, surprisingly, not an acronym, but, rather, likely was derived simply from the pronunciation of its parent word. Dating back to the early 17th century, a common exclamation of contempt for a foul […]
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Marla W. asks: Did Shakespeare really invent the expression “to stand on ceremony” or is this just another expression he gets credit for online that was invented by somebody else? Thanks! Dating back to the early days of the English Renaissance, and quite possibly having been coined by none other than the Bard, himself, the phrase “to stand on ceremony” […]
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Some people are into feet, others like dressing up in furry costumes, and a rare few will even get scatological (See: Mozart’s Much Less Family Friendly Works). But when it comes to weird sexual practices, it would be difficult to top the mating rituals of the one-humped camel. Also known as the Arabian camel and dromedary, Camelus dromedarius is found […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Invention of the Piano The names that come to mind at the mention of the Italian Renaissance are the likes of Medici, Da Vinci, and Galileo. Few, however, know the name Bartolomeo Cristofori, an accomplished craftsman who lived and worked […]
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On April 17, 1955, the greatest scientist of his generation checked himself into Princeton Hospital due to chest pains. By early the next morning, Albert Einstein had died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm – the rupture of the aorta, the heart vessel that’s the body’s main supplier of blood. While word was still getting out that the great Dr. Einstein […]
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Noah A. asks: Why do roosters crow in the morning? Next to the bark of a dog or the gentle meowing of a cat, the crow of a rooster is one of the most recognisable animal noises on Earth; but why exactly do roosters feel the need to crow and is there any truth to the idea that they crow […]
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For years, the knife was the most commonly used tool to sharpen the wooden writing instrument known as a pencil (which historians believe was invented in the 15th or 16th century). But whittling the wood away to eventually produce a point was a time-consuming, tedious, and inexact process. As pencils became more ubiquitous in everyday life, it became apparent that […]
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Matt T. asks: I was in southern California a while back and managed to pick up an AM radio station from Washington, but only at night. I’ve experienced the same thing at night in Washington picking up an L.A. radio station. In the day, it doesn’t work. So my question to you is why do radio signals seem to travel […]
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