This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why Children Get Summers Off of School The commonly touted explanation for students having summers off from school dates back to a time when the United States’ economy relied heavily on agriculture in order to survive. Students needed to leave school […]
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On January 20, 1961, the newly-elected President John F. Kennedy, at his inauguration in front of the Capital, told Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Over 800 miles away, in Jefferson, Wisconsin in an institution called “St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children” lived a 43 year old […]
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In addition to being an occasional biological necessity, human flatulence has served a variety of uses, including as a way to clear a room, entertain friends, torture a sibling, and tease a child (pull my finger). But while some humans have elevated farting to an art form (see: The Most Famous Farter in History), perhaps no entire species has elevated […]
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Janet B. asks: How does soap kill bacteria? For well over a century, public health officials have been pushing regular hand washing with soap as one of the most effective methods of inhibiting the spread of disease and infection. The result of physical, as opposed to biological processes, proper hand washing with regular soap will thoroughly remove bacteria. Yes, contrary […]
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On April 15, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York, the great Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and became the first African-American in 67 years to play in the Major Leagues. (Yes, Robinson was not the first, as is often stated.) Less than three months later, on July 5, 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio, Larry Doby became the second African-American ball player […]
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Brenda V. asks: Why are elections held on Tuesday? Why not Saturday when most people aren’t working? Americans traditionally head to the ballot box on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November to vote in national elections. Tuesday elections only became the official country-wide rule in 1845, something that hasn’t changed much since. So why Tuesday? The Founding Fathers […]
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Matthew S. asks: Why doesn’t your tongue quickly stick to plastic or wood in freezing temperatures but does to metal? In that famous scene in the movie Christmas Story, a kid “triple dog dares” another kid in the schoolyard to put his tongue on a metal flag pole to see if it will stick. Lo and behold, it sticks. The […]
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Gimly16 asks: What did people use for pain during surgery before modern anesthesia? Other than ingesting alcohol and narcotics in sufficient doses to induce a state of analgesia, for most of its history, people in the West got through surgery with the aid of little more than forcible restraint and grit. Drugs and alcohol were well known in the ancient […]
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Xing U. asks: Why do kids get the summer off of school? The commonly touted explanation for students having summers off from school dates back to a time when the United States’ economy relied heavily on agriculture in order to survive. Students needed to leave school in the summer in order to work on the farm alongside their families. The […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. A Celestial Message in a Bottle Imagine for a moment that it’s 40,000 years in the future in a solar system far, far, away on a planet thriving with intelligent life. Extraterrestrial beings inhabit this place. Perhaps they look like the […]
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Katy J. asks: Why do we say “I was beside myself”? Dating back to the dawn of Modern English, the expression “beside myself” has been used to denote someone not in his right mind. After William conquered England in 1066, French became the language of scholars, clergy and nobility in Britain and remained so even throughout much of the grinding […]
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Tom C. asks: The V in V-Day was for Victory right? So what does the D in D-Day stand for? The Battle of Normandy, also known as D-Day, started on June 6, 1944 and was the beginning of the major invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. But why was it called “D-Day”? You might at first be […]
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B. Halpern asks: 0 degrees Celsius is the freezing point of water. So what is 0 degrees Fahrenheit? Who came up with Celsius and Fahrenheit? Firmly entrenched in American society, the seemingly capricious nature of the Fahrenheit temperature scale could lead one to think that its Dutch inventor, Daniel Fahrenheit, pulled the number for the freezing point (32°F) of water out […]
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When you were a kid, sneaking into a rated R movie was a big deal. Everyone had their own tricks, but this author’s was to buy a ticket to a rated G Disney movie, say, Mulan; when the usher turned their back, I would run into a rated R movie like, for example American History X. But it wasn’t always […]
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Mark asks: Why is a porterhouse steak called that? Essentially two steaks in one, a Porterhouse steak, cut from the short loin of (typically) a steer, has a filet on one side of its T-shaped bone, and a New York Strip on the other. Presenting a massive plate of meat and often big enough for two to share, the Porterhouse […]
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As with a lot of historical events, Hollywood has glamorized and largely fictionalized the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. So what really happened? It is believed that both families came to America before it was even America. The Hatfields were among the first pioneers to make their way to this new land from the shores of Yorkshire in […]
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Jen asks: What are “Blue Laws” and how did they come to be? Rooted in the basic Christian tenet that Sunday is to be reserved as “the Lord’s day,” blue laws were originally enacted across the United States to encourage church attendance and restrict activity only to that worthy (at least according to some) of observation on the Sabbath. Transformed […]
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On the morning of April 5, 1943, about ten miles off the coast of Brazil, a fishing family in their small boat spotted a Chinese man on a much smaller wooden raft bobbing up and down in the Atlantic Ocean. Waving a shirt and jumping, the man was clearly in distress, so the Brazilian family turned their boat around and […]
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