Considering how most dogs in the Western world these days are treated as a member of the family, it’s often easy to forget that the vast majority of our furry friends up until very recently were bred for a specific purpose. Perhaps no dog was bred for a more specific purpose than the now extinct, turnspit. The turnspit was so named […]
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Noah A. asks: Why do roosters crow in the morning? Next to the bark of a dog or the gentle meowing of a cat, the crow of a rooster is one of the most recognisable animal noises on Earth; but why exactly do roosters feel the need to crow and is there any truth to the idea that they crow […]
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Abi K. asks: What does the postal service do when a package is mailed with no valid recipient’s address and no return address? According to the USPS, mail can be considered “undeliverable” due to a number of factors ranging from insufficient postage to the person it’s addressed to refusing to accept it. Regardless of the reason the mail cannot be […]
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Gracen R. asks: Why is someone who is lazy called a couch potato? If you want to call someone lazy, a time-honoured way to do so would be to call them a “couch potato”. But why is it we compare lazy people to potatoes and why on Earth did some random guy own the trademark rights to such a silly […]
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When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon all those years ago during the Apollo 11 mission, literally everything they did became a record because everything they did that day was the first time in human history someone had done that thing on the Moon, which it turns out wasn’t made of cheese after all. While Armstrong’s first words […]
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Mark. K. asks: Why does peanut butter stick to the top of my mouth? Arachibutyrophobia is a proposed humorous name for the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the top of your mouth, coined by Charles M. Schulz in a 1982 edition of his famed Peanuts comic strip. But why does peanut butter have such a tendency to get […]
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Mar.W asks: Why are zombies always depicted liking to eat brains? Zombies have been a pop culture staple for decades, and in that time the concept of the dead coming back to life somehow to feast on the living has proliferated virtually every form of media that exists. One trait that is seemingly synonymous with zombies is their apparent need to feed […]
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Throughout the history of modern warfare, the record for longest confirmed sniper kill is one that has steadily gotten more and more extreme as technology has progressed. At the time of writing this, the holder of that record is British sniper Craig Harrison, who notably broke the previous record twice on the same day by hitting two enemy targets on two consecutive […]
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Pat A. asks: Were Kamikaze pilots all just volunteers or how exactly did they get selected? During WWII, thousands of Japanese pilots made the ultimate sacrifice for their country by becoming, essentially, flying suicide bombers. But what was it that made these men so willing to lay down their lives in such a way? Were they really bright eyed volunteers […]
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Eddie C. asks: How do ducks and other birds keep their feet from getting frostbite in the winter? How a bird reacts to the cold depends on what kind of a bird it is and there are a variety of methods they use to keep their legs warm, from the mundane to the much more fascinating. For starters, many birds […]
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Jason H. asks: Here’s one for you I’ve never found a satisfactory answer on. Why don’t hot dogs and hot dog buns come in packs of the same number? Has it always been this way? Yes, finally today we are going to answer perhaps the most oft asked question we get in our inbox, a question that has been perplexing […]
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Ryan C. asks: How do they make tattoos permanent? In other words, how do they get tattoos to remain even as your skin is constantly regenerating? Depending on the source you consult, anywhere from 14 to 23 percent of American adults and about 24% of British adults have at least one tattoo, a figure that one would think is set […]
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The Little Albert Experiment was a study conducted back in 1920 by famed psychologist, “the father of behaviorism”, John B. Watson. It essentially involved conditioning a baby, identified only as “Albert. B” to experience fear at the sight of anything fluffy. Putting aside the egregious methodology problems and questionable ethics exhibited during the experiment, the reported results of the study, […]
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Keith H. asks: When the police and media report crowd sizes of a parade or something, what do they base their numbers on? Although the task of determining how many people attend something as large as say, a political rally or a protest may seem like a daunting, almost impossible undertaking to do with any accuracy, with some basic information, […]
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Becky E. asks: Why do we call parents mom and dad? Calling our parents anything other than mom, dad or one of the many variations thereof is an almost alien concept to many (and in some cultures is considered downright rude). So why is it we refer to our parents in this way? Where did it come from and perhaps, […]
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G. Franklin asks: Is it true that only two people in the world know the recipe for coke? The idea that the secret formula for Coca-Cola is only known by two people who are never to be allowed near one another in case of some disaster resulting in the recipe being lost forever is one of those pop culture staples […]
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Michael T. asks: Is it true that the thumbs up and thumbs down hand gesture came from crowds in ancient Rome voting on whether a gladiator should live or die? There are few hand gestures out there as well known or ubiquitous as the humble thumbs up. But why is this seemingly innocuous gesture so widespread; how did it come […]
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Scott K. asks: Why don’t vultures get sick when eating dead things? How come humans can’t do the same? As an animal that is synonymous with death and disease, the vulture understandably has a poor reputation in many cultures across the globe, despite, ironically enough, being a huge boon to humans in terms of being able to reduce instances of […]
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