This Day In History: September 11, 1921 On this day in history, 1921, silent film star Fatty Arbuckle was arrested for murder, in Hollywood’s first major scandal. Over Labor Day weekend in 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, the first in a long line of overweight and over-the-top comedians beloved by movie goers, decided to take a break from his hectic filming […]
Read more
Today I found out about Han van Meegeren, the great art forger. Han van Meegeren was born in 1889 and developed an interest in painting at a young age. He wasn’t supported in his dream to become an artist by his father, who forbade van Meegeren’s artistic development, trying to steer his son in the direction of architecture instead. Undeterred, […]
Read more
Perfecting a method of foretelling and predicting the passage of time preoccupied our ancestors from the earliest recorded history. The unending journey of the Sun, Moon and stars across the great expanse of the sky provides clues for numerous methods of marking time, the most obvious to primitive man being the passage of a day (light/dark) and that of a […]
Read more
Today in History: September 10th This Day In History, 1608: John Smith Becomes President of Jamestown The first permanent English settlement of the American colonies, Jamestown, Virginia, elected the larger-than-life John Smith to be their first council president, thanks to his superior organizational abilities and his diplomatic skills when dealing with the indigenous tribes of the area. Around 100 English […]
Read more
lev radin / Shutterstock.com Text Version: Fact 591: In 2005, a 22 year old man by the name of Ronald MacDonald robbed a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant (stealing the money in the store’s safe) where he worked at the time. Fact 592: Nearly 1/3 of the world’s socks (about 8 billion pairs per year) are made in the district of Datang […]
Read more
Today I Found Out has teamed up with Destin from SmarterEveryDay to show some his awesome videos here. You can subscribe to the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel here. If you liked this video and the Bonus Facts below, you might also enjoy: How to Read an EKG What Causes Hiccups What the Numbers on a Blood Pressure Test Mean and What […]
Read more
Today I found out that the paperclip was used as a symbol of resistance during World War II. In April of 1940, just a few months into World War II, Adolf Hitler knew that he needed a way to break past the Allied blockade of Germany if he had a hope of winning the war. He set his sights on […]
Read more
Today in History: September 9th This Day In History, 1513: James IV of Scotland is Slain at Flodden Field In 1513, as King Henry VIII of England was waging one of his many invasions on the kingdom of France, the French King Louis XII asked his fellow Henry-hater James IV of Scotland if he wouldn’t mind heading south and causing […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why Multivitamins Make Your Urine Bright Yellow If you’ve ever taken a daily multivitamin you too might have noticed your urine turning a bright yellow-ish color. Take your vitamins and eat some asparagus and you might just think you’re dying the next […]
Read more
Melissa asks: Was there really a “Craig” who started “Craigslist” or is that just a marketing gimmick? Craig Newmark is the Craig of Craigslist whose estimated net worth as of 2010 was around $400 million. This is in direct contrast to his financial wealth during childhood, where his mother struggled to support Craig and his brother, Jeff, after the death […]
Read more
Even after our most heart breaking failures, parents, teachers and coaches encourage us to get back up and try again. Perhaps this is because they know that rather than being a permanent condition, failure is an opportunity to learn and improve. This was certainly the experience of Manfred von Richthofen. After cracking up his aircraft on his first solo attempt, […]
Read more
This Day In History: September 6, 1997 On this day in history, 1997, Princess Diana’s funeral took place. Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, on July 29, 1981 at the tender age of 20. She immediately captivated not only those living in the UK, but also soon evolved into a global sensation, becoming the most […]
Read more
Kaden asks: What was the first language spoken by humans? It is virtually impossible to know which language developed first, but that doesn’t mean linguists haven’t taken a good whack at it. The main problem is that scientists think language probably developed around 100,000-200,000 years ago. That’s around when modern humans, Homo sapiens, developed with the same skull structure—with the […]
Read more
Today I found out that Marie Curie once had two duels fought over her after she had an affair with a married man. Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, were no strangers to the press. In 1903, the pair won a Nobel Prize “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena […]
Read more
This Day In History: September 5, 1774 On this day in history, 1774, the first Continental Congress convened. At Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress met for the first time to address the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts, a legislative measure intended to quell rebellion in Massachusetts and teach those Bostonians a lesson for that whole Tea […]
Read more
Myth: George Washington once chopped down his father’s favorite cherry tree. The story goes that a young George Washington was about six years old when he was given a hatchet that he enthusiastically used to chop at just about anything in sight. One morning, he even chopped at a cherry tree, eventually cutting it down. When confronted about it by […]
Read more
Candace asks: What makes a fruit a fruit and a vegetable a vegetable? An apple is a fruit, right? So is a banana. How about a cucumber? A vegetable, right? Not really, from a botanical standpoint. The good news is that, nutritionally speaking in terms of what you should eat daily, fruits and vegetables are typically grouped together, so you can […]
Read more
This Day In History, September 4, 1962: The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” Sessions On an early September day a band from Liverpool, England called the Beatles, provincial and a bit rough around the edges, entered EMI studios at Abbey Road in London for what some consider to be their first official recording session, as it was the first time Ringo […]
Read more