Today I found out that ‘Uncle Sam’ was a real person- Samuel Wilson, born September 13th, 1766 and died on July 31st, 1854. In 1789, Wilson and his brother Ebeneezer moved to Troy New York where they set up a counting house. Sam Wilson later died, then came back to haunt Ebeneezer on Christmas Eve trying to get him to […]
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Today I found out about an encyclopedia finished in 1408 that contained nearly one million pages. This particular encyclopedia was called the “永樂大典”, which translates to “The Great Canon of the Yongle Era”; today it’s just called, in English, the “Yongle Encyclopedia”. This encyclopedia was originally commissioned by Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty in China. It was not only […]
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Today I found out the first fully professional baseball team was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, ten men on salary for eight months from March 15th to November 15th. The team was organized by Harry Wright, who also played center field for the team and managed the defensive positioning, which was something that typically wasn’t done at that time. The […]
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Today I found out that Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, before starting the Wendy’s franchise helped save the KFC franchise and was a high school dropout. Thomas first worked at a Knoxville restaurant at the young age of 12 years old, from which he was eventually fired due to a misunderstanding with his boss about a vacation. At 15, […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Ben & Jerry Facts Ben and Jerry, creator of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, first met in a Jr. High gym class at Merrick Avenue Middle School. The two were both lagging behind while running, which caused the gym teacher to yell at them and warned them that they’d have […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why Getting Kicked in the Balls Hurts in the Abdomen The testes of the Right whale are the largest of any animal, each weighing around 500 kg (1,100 lb).
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why Crackers Have Holes The name “cracker” comes from a fateful day in 1801 in Massachusetts when Josiah Bent accidentally burned a batch of what we now call crackers. As the crackers burned, they made a crackling noise, which inspired the name. Bent was also the one who pioneered the cracker as […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why You Used to Have to Use #2 Pencils With Scantrons “Pencil” comes from the Latin “pencillus”, meaning “little tail”.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and More Facts About V for Vendetta The scene in V for Vendetta where V knocks over the dominoes forming the giant letter V took four professional domino assemblers 200 hours to set up and included over 22,000 dominoes.
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Today I found out where the word “mouse” comes from. “Mouse” comes from the Sanskrit word for mouse, “musuka”, which in turn derives from the Sanskrit “mus” meaning “thief” or “robber”, presumably referring to the fact that mice like to steal food from humans, particularly grains and fruits. The Ancient Romans then used the word “mus” to refer to rodents […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn How Deaf People Think Ever wondered how the deaf wake themselves up in the morning? Well, there are many different ways, none being quite as fool proof as a blaring loud noise is among the hearing. The most foolproof method, outside of someone just coming to wake you up, is a very […]
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Today I found out the baseball box score was first developed and introduced by Henry Chadwick, “The Father of Baseball”. Chadwick also authored Baseball’s first rule book; devised the batting average and earned run average; compiled the game’s first instructional guides and player and statistical reference books, among a variety of other contributions to the game. He is also the […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn About the History of French Fries The word “potato” comes from the Haitian word “batata”, which was their name for a sweet potato. This later came to Spanish as “patata” and eventually into English as “potato”.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Web Facts The first domain ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. It was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. Since that time, well over 200 million domains have been registered, about half of which are registered with the “.com” extension.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Honey Bee Facts Honey Bees share out jobs based on their age. For instance, worker bees that are 1-2 days old spend their time cleaning cells, starting with the one they were born in, as well as keeping the brood warm; from 3-5 days old, they feed older larvae; from […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn What Causes Red Hair Scientists in 2005 from the University of Edinburgh found that people without souls, a.k.a. redheads, have a higher tolerance for pain than normal people. This is because the MC1R mutation, which all soulless have, triggers the excess release of pheomelanin which, among other things, stimulates a brain receptor […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Tim Allen Facts Tim Allen’s birth name was Timothy Allen Dick, which he later had legally shortened to Tim Allen when his career began to take off.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Learn the Difference Between a Moron, an Imbecile, and an Idiot The word “moron” was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard and was derived from the Ancient Greek word “moros”, which meant “dull”.
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