The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Audiences cheered when the hero of the 1999 movie Office Space unscrewed the walls of his cubicle and watched them come crashing down. Yet 30 years earlier, when the very first cubicle walls went up, employers and workers alike cheered them as the “workplace of the future.” SEA OF DESKS […]
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This Day In History: November 13, 1687 Nell Gwynne was that rarest of creatures – a royal mistress who was as popular with the people as she was with her exalted lover. Although England’s Charles II had many mistresses throughout his lifetime, his “pretty, witty Nell” held a special place in his affections. Born on Feb. 2, 1650, probably in […]
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This is a video from the very talented CGP Grey in which he gives a brief, but fascinating, history of the British Royal family. If you like this video, please subscribe to Grey’s awesome YouTube channel here. You can also join us in supporting his videos on Patreon here. If you liked this video, you might also enjoy: How is […]
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Erica H. asks: How do we pee in terms of the nuts and bolts of it? Why can we only pee sometimes and not just anytime there is liquid in our bladders? What’s the trigger and how exactly is the pee expelled once the floodgates do open? Is it just gravity or do our stomach muscles squeeze our bladders? Inquiring […]
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This Day In History: November 10, 1865 On November 10, 1865, Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison in Georgia (a.k.a. Camp Sumter), was executed for his actions during the Civil War. A Swiss immigrant, Wirz was the only Confederate officer convicted and put to death for war crimes. (Even Confederate President Jefferson Davis ultimately got off more or less […]
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The commonly held notion that WW1 was started out of outrage over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie at the hands of the Serbian nationalist secret society known as the “Black Hand” isn’t entirely correct. In fact, the Emperor Franz Josef himself expressed relief over the assassination because it rid him of an heir […]
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In this video from our YouTube channel (click here to subscribe), we take a look at why people think that Area 51 secretly houses evidence of alien activity on Earth. To make sure you don’t miss out on many more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to our new daily channel! If you liked this video, you might also […]
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In this video from MinutePhysics, Henry Reich looks at exactly why even a freshly tuned piano isn’t actually in tune. If you like this video, go check out and subscribe to MinutePhysics here. You can also join us in supporting Henry’s efforts to make more videos like this by donating via MinutePhysics’ Patreon page here. If you liked this video, you […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Modern shopping malls are so common that we forget they’ve only been around for about a half century. Here’s the story of how they came to be…and the story of the man who invented them, Victor Gruen—the most famous architect you’ve never heard of. FATEFUL LAYOVER In the winter of […]
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This Day In History: November 9, 1520 The situation in Sweden in 1520 was chaotic. The point of contention was Swedish sovereignty. The pro-union faction that championed allegiance to King Christian II of Denmark was headed by Archbishop Gustavus Trolle. The supporters of Swedish independence were led by Sweden’s Regent Sten Sture the Younger. King Christian II had already stepped […]
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This Day In History: November 6, 1479 On November 6, 1479, Juana, the third child and second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was born. All of their daughters were raised to marry foreign royalty and spread Spain’s influence across Europe (Juana’s sister Catherine married King Henry VIII of England.) Juana had been promised since birth to the Holy […]
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On February 9, 1964, The Beatles made what is often incorrectly considered their American television debut when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. (For you of the younger persuasion, The Ed Sullivan Show was a legendary variety show which ran in the U.S. from 1948 to 1973.) In truth, The Beatles had been seen in film clips and recorded […]
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When 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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This Day In History: November 4, 1879 William Penn Adair Rogers, “Oklahoma’s Favorite Son,” was born on November 4, 1879 at his family’s ranch in present day Oklahoma (becoming the 46th state in the United States in 1907). Rogers was the youngest of eight children of his parents, Clement and Mary Rogers, who were part Cherokee. Precocious, intelligent, and personable, […]
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Lance H. asks: Who currently receives the royalties for Mein Kampf? Mein Kampf, the autobiographical, anti-Semitic hate-manifesto written by Adolf Hitler in the 1920s is one of the most controversial and infamous books of all time. As you might imagine, this has resulted in millions of copies of the book being sold since Hitler did the world a major favour and heroically […]
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In this video from our YouTube channel (click here to subscribe), we take a look at the origin of 7-UP, the real reason it was named that, and what lithium has to do with it. To make sure you don’t miss out on many more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to our new daily channel! If you liked […]
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The immutable ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi, is, and always has been, 3.1415926 . . . ad infinitum. However, in the winter of 1897, the Indiana State legislature nearly changed this mathematical constant with a civil law. The ridiculous story starts with amateur mathematician Edward Goodwin who, in 1894, believed he had finally solved […]
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Sara M asks: Why are Boeing planes so randomly numbered for their names? Although it may seem as if Boeing planes are randomly numbered, there actually is a method to their madness. Founded in July 1916 as the Pacific Aero Products Co, but changing into Boeing Airplane Company in 1917, Boeing was re-tooling and adapting to the end of World […]
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