##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why the Hottest Part of the Summer is Called the “Dog Days” Text Version A white dwarf is a former star that is nearing the end of its life-cycle, with no further nuclear fusion going on at its core. Once most stars have used up the fuel at their core, they go […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Where the Word “Wiki” Comes From Text Version The proper pronunciation of “wiki” is actually “we-key” and is often mispronounced as “wick-ee”.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why the Moon Looks Bigger on the Horizon Text Version The Moon always has the same side pointing towards the Earth due to its rotation speed matching its orbit around the Earth exactly. This isn’t by chance and it wasn’t always this way. When the Moon first formed, its rotation speed was […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn What the Dot Over the Lower Case Letter “i” is Called Text Version The terms “upper case” and “lower case” actually come to us quite recently, from the early days of the printing press. At this time, the letter blocks themselves were stored in specially organized boxes called cases. By convention, the […]
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Today I found out what causes the “sleep” or “eye crusties” you may have around your eyes in the morning. “Sleep” is a type of “rheum”, which is the name for discharge from your nose, mouth or eyes during sleep. More specifically, eye rheum is known as “gound”. Gound is made up of a mixture of dust, blood cells, skin […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn More Interesting Harry Houdini Facts Text Version Harry Houdini’s real name was actually Erik Weisz. When his family immigrated to America, they changed the spelling to Ehrich Weiss, which eventually resulted in people calling him “Ehrie” and later “Harry”. He picked “Houdini” as his professional name in homage to the French magician […]
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Today I found out why spicy foods can cause your nose to run. In most spicy foods, this is thanks to the same chemicals that cause the burning sensation on your tongue, namely capsaicin or allyl isothiocyanate. Capsaicin is chemical found in fruits of the genus Capsicum, which includes peppers. It is present, usually in relatively high amounts, in the […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn What Causes a Hangover Text Version “Hangover” was a common term in the 19th century meaning “unfinished business”. Around the early 20th century, the common meaning shifted slightly to mean as it does today.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Where the Word “Witch” Comes From Text Version Candy corn is made from sugar, corn syrup, glaze, egg whites, honey glycerin, mineral oil, wax, and salt, with coloring added. Each piece of candy corn contains about 6 calories. About 20 million pounds of candy corn is sold annually, the vast majority of […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why Crackers Have Holes Text Version The word “cookie” comes from the Dutch “koekjes” which came from the Dutch “koek”, meaning “cake”; cookie was introduced to English in the very early 18th century. It is thought this term caught on more in the United States due to the strong Dutch heritage in […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why Crackers Have Holes Text Version The term “biscuit”, derives from the Latin “bis coctus”, meaning “twice baked”, which is essentially what many types of biscuits are. The term first showed up in English around the 14th century. In America, the term biscuit now pretty much only means a small, quick rising, […]
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Today I found out why red meat turns brown when cooked. This is thanks to a protein called myoglobin, which also is what makes the raw red meat look red, not blood, as many people think. Myoglobin is a protein that stores oxygen in muscle cells, very similar to its cousin, hemoglobin, which stores oxygen in red blood cells. This […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why Crackers Have Holes Text Version Nabisco originally released the saltine cracker in 1876. Their slogan for this new type of cracker was “Polly wants a cracker?”, which is where that saying came from. Saltine crackers were mildly successful after being released, but received a huge boost in popularity thanks to the […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Why You Used to Have to Use #2 Pencils With Scantron Forms Text Version Classically, scantron forms used blue ink for the lines and outlines to the circles because the original scantron systems couldn’t pick up the light in the blue spectrum. Modern systems are simply designed to ignore whatever color the […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Source and to Learn More About the United States’ Plan to Nuke the Moon Text Version A young Carl Sagan was one of the scientists hired in the U.S.’s Cold War plan to drop a nuclear bomb on the moon. Specifically, Sagan was hired to study how exactly the mushroom cloud would expand on the moon, […]
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn Other Interesting Coffee Facts Text Version The term “cup of Joe” stems from American soldiers in World War II, “G.I. Joes” were known to consume a large amount of coffee, as Maxwell Instant Coffee was included in their rations.
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##EMBED## Click Here for Sources and to Learn What the Color of Bread Twist Ties Indicates Text Version The sour taste of sourdough bread comes from lactobacillus, which lives in symbiosis with yeast, feeding on byproducts of the yeast fermentation. The sour taste itself comes from the lactic acid produced by the lactobacillus. This also helps the bread last longer […]
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Today I found out how anti-static dryer sheets work. There are two primary methods used to get rid of static charge buildup in drying clothing, which happily go hand in hand with one another using the same substance. The first method is to lubricate the clothing. The second method is to use a positively charged material to more or less […]
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