Luke T. asks: How many times can you shoot a bulletproof vest before it stops working? To begin with, it should probably be noted that the name “bulletproof vest” is a misnomer with “bullet resistant vest” being more apt. Or to quote John Geshay, marketing director for body armor company Safariland, “…nothing can be bulletproof, not even a manhole cover. […]
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Killimimes asks: Why do they have the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part of a wedding and what happens when someone objects? While it may come as a surprise to many, it turns out the whole, “If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, let them speak now or forever […]
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Labyrinth900 asks: Were “Wanted Dead or Alive” bounties a real thing? In other words, if you found someone that is wanted dead, could you legally shoot and kill them and collect a bounty, and not be charged for murder? A classic Hollywood trope is the idea of a poster with the photo of a given criminal along with very large […]
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Finkbonner14 asks: Why doesn’t the United States stop using idiot units and go metric? In 1793, noted French scientist Joseph Dombey departed Le Havre, France bound for Philadelphia. His mission was to meet with Thomas Jefferson and give him two of the rarest items on Earth. Unfortunately for Dombey, fate had other intentions and storms pushed the ship he was […]
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Peter R. Asks: If I had to, what parts of my body are healthiest to eat and offer the most caloric benefit? Essentially, what parts of me should I eat first to maximize my survival chances in some extreme situation? Would eating feces be of any benefit? While of course how long one could survive without food and water varies […]
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Jen K. asks: Odd question, but what does being shot feel like? While there are certainly exceptions, as we’ll get into shortly, according to the majority of firsthand accounts from people who’ve been shot we could find, having a hunk of searing hot metal traveling around Mach 1 tear through part of your body doesn’t really hurt much… at first. […]
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Jeremy A. asks: How did flipping the bird come to mean fu? While some common gestures, such as the high five, have pretty well known and surprisingly modern origins, it turns out one of the most popular of all has been around for well over two thousand years, including having various similar connotations as it has today. Unsurprisingly once you […]
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Michael F. asks: Are executions really held at midnight like shown in the movies? If so, why? By the time Rainey Bethea was executed on August 14, 1936, most of the United States had ceased executing people publicly. However, in Kentucky in 1936 an execution could still be held publicly and, according to the jury at his trial, Bethea deserved […]
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Contrary to popular belief, space isn’t actually “cold” per se, at least not in the way often depicted in movies. Space is just mostly empty and all that nothing doesn’t have a temperature. For example, if you were in space without a space suit, the two ways you’d lose heat are just via evaporation of moisture on your skin, in […]
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William K. asks: What’s it like being an extra in a movie? Becoming a Background Actor, or “extra” as they are more widely known, is a fairly simple process that usually involves little more than responding to an ad. Depending on the scope of the project and the kind of extras needed, this ad could appear anywhere from a dedicated […]
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ScrobTheFancyTurtle asks: Love your video on what happens when people are accidentally declared dead. But it got me wondering, what happens if you make a will, go missing, so your will is executed, then turn up alive later? Do you get your stuff back? As we discussed in our article on what happens to a person who is accidentally declared dead […]
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James H. asks: How realistic is the idea presented in video games of shooting explosives to set them off? Given that their main and really only purposes is violently exploding, you might be surprised to learn that most explosives utilised by the military are shockingly stable. So much so, in fact, that, contrary to what is often depicted in movies […]
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Isaac R. asks: When people buy expensive art worth hundreds of millions of dollars, how do they pay for it? Like could they pay with cash or do they have to have their bank wire the money? Just wondering about the nuts and bolts here. As we’ve discussed before, there are a handful of people walking around right now with […]
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Jessica K. asks: Has anyone ever inherited millions of dollars from a long-lost relative they’ve never heard of like happens in movies? If you’re like, well, pretty much everyone, at some point you’ve received an email claiming you’ve inherited a large sum of money from some person you’ve never heard of. All you have to do to get it is […]
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Mavos asks: If the queen happened to kill someone can she be prosecuted? As the current monarch of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and a bunch of other countries that have her on their money, the Queen enjoys something known as sovereign immunity. In a nutshell, sovereign, or crown immunity as it is sometimes known, means that the Queen is […]
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Dan P asks: We see in the old movies and cartoons that the villain ties their victim to the railroad tracks to kill him or her in a gruesome way thought the hero always rescues the victim in the nick of time.Are there any documented cases of someone being tied up and left to die on the railroad tracks? A […]
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Asa K. asks: What happens when people are accidentally declared dead, and how do they prove that they’re alive? As with most legal matters, answering the question of what exactly happens when a person is accidentally declared dead varies from country to country, although, curiously, from our research, with some exceptions like a few instances we found in Canada particularly, […]
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Philip R. asks: Has any scientist ever named a newly discovered creature after someone they dislike out of spite? Naming a newly discovered species is a rather prestigious privilege. As you can probably imagine then, many see the act of choosing a suitable name for a newly discovered creature as a task that requires a great deal of consideration and […]
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