The common wombat (AKA, Vombatus ursinus) is an Australian marsupial with a unique claim to fame. You see, the common wombat and its two cousins, the Northern hairy-nose wombat and the Southern hairy-nose wombat, all poop pellets more or less in the shape of cubes, producing over 100 cubic pellets per day. If your day hasn’t been made by the phrase, […]
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“Elementary, my dear Watson“, sometimes quoted as, “Elementary, dear Watson“, is one of those phrases that everybody knows the character of Sherlock Holmes said. You know, just like everyone knows that Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty” and Darth Vader said, “Luke, I am your father”. The thing is, none of those characters ever said any of those things. They […]
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The Hindenburg disaster will probably always be remembered as the singular event that killed airship travel. In truth, there were other events that occurred which also contributed, but none stand out in the public consciousness more than the demise of the Hindenburg. The image of that huge ship falling from the sky and erupting into flames before burning to nothing […]
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The speed of light in a vacuum stands at “exactly 299,792,458 metres per second“. The reason today we can put an exact figure on it is because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant that has been measured with lasers; and when an experiment involves lasers, it’s hard to argue with the results. As to why […]
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Myth: Bumblebee’s shouldn’t be able to fly. There’s an oft repeated “fact” that the humble bumblebee defies all known laws of physics every time it flaps its tiny little bee wings and ascends to the sky. Now obviously this is false, since, well, bumblebees fly all the time and if every time a bee took off it was tearing physics […]
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Kyle asks: What is the record for the most languages spoken by a human? If you speak one language, you’re a normal, functioning human being. If you speak two, you’re bilingual. If you speak three, you’re trilingual- four and you’re quadrilingual. But what about if you speak 10? Or 20? Or 30? Well, then you’re considered a polyglot or a […]
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Car accidents are a sad fact of life. Every day thousands lose their lives in collisions, crashes and accidents. Though the car itself is a fairly recent invention, the first recorded accident involving them could have happened almost 300 years ago, depending on what your definition of a car is. Though it looked nothing like the modern cars you see […]
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The Tsar Bomba, or “Big Ivan” as the Soviets nicknamed it, is the single most powerful man-made explosive device in human history. But why was such a device even made? Well, for similar reasons as to why the U.S. once thought it would be fun to nuke the moon– basically, the bomb was little more than Russia demonstrating its military […]
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Kathy asks: Why do people think Area 51 contains alien bodies? Area 51 is now so ingrained into popular culture that it’s virtually synonymous with Aliens; it’s impossible to mention one without the other somehow creeping into the conversation, but why are the two so intrinsically linked? Why do we automatically picture little green men any time someone so much […]
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The dodo, or Raphus cucullatus if you want to get fancy, is an extinct species of flightless bird that was native to the tiny island nation of Mauritius before it sadly died out. But enough of the Discovery Channel stuff, you’re reading this to find out how this sucker went extinct. And the answer is, well, complicated. It’s commonly believed that […]
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