This Day In History: September 29, 1758 On September 29, 1758, a sickly baby boy was born in Norfolk, England. Short of stature (he was 5’4″) with a slight build, he was frail and frequently ill his entire life. Although he spent a great deal of time at sea, he also suffered from seasickness. This hot mess was legendary English […]
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If you happen to think killing two birds with one stone is a bit inefficient, or you have found your way into a zombie apocalypse, you might be interested in a special type of gun known as a “punt gun,” that used to be somewhat common among commercial waterfowl hunters. What’s so special about this gun? It is capable of […]
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Few items of fictional clothing are more iconic and easily recognisable as the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz. Thanks to a combination of human error, poor record keeping and a sticky fingered ne’er-do-well, these simple pieces of footwear are now considered one of the most valuable film props in history. Figuring […]
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Alli G. asks: Why do people today always start sentences with so? The word so has been in English pretty much as long as there has been English (derived from the Old English swæ). It is alternately an adverb (it’s so hot), a conjunction (eat your dinner so you can have dessert), an adjective (Jim is dead, isn’t that so?) […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Start with a New Jersey businessman who has questionable ethics, add soybean oil, and let it stew in a broth of fraud and greed. Pretty soon you’ve got yourself a nice little scandal. YELLOW GOLD In the late 1940s, a combination of several factors led to an enormous increase in […]
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Amongst the pantheon of notable public television personalities, Bob Ross easily ranks alongside the likes of Mr Rogers and Elmo as a star who is almost universally loved and respected by the public. Despite being famous the world over for his balmy, soothing demeanour, his show The Joy of Painting and his amazing ‘fro, we know surprisingly little about arguably one of the best […]
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Generally speaking, most men these days tend to sport closely cropped haircuts. If you happen to be one of the men that enjoys having a neatly trimmed, easy to maintain ‘do you can thank an unpopular English tax and a bet made by a duke for saving you countless minutes every morning. While the likes of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary […]
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Robert Frost is one of the most critically acclaimed American poets of the 20th century, which is a roundabout way of saying you almost certainly studied one of his poems in school. Most likely, it was a short piece called The Road Not Taken- a poem famous for being one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted poems ever written, and […]
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an institution known and respected the world over for its relative impartiality and objectivity compared to many other news sources, with numerous surveys showing that the BBC is one of the most trusted sources of news in both the UK and the US. But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about […]
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In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss who was the real first person to circumnavigate the globe, the superhero who powered up by smoking, what a “blue moon” really is, the sad story of the exploding anti-tank dogs of WWII, why aluminum foil is shiny on one side and not the other, and what people used for toothpaste […]
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In November of 1557, the Mapuche warrior, Galvarino, led a division of his fellow soldiers in a desperate battle against Spanish colonial forces in the Araucania in central Chile. Remarkably, since he no longer had hands, Galvarino rushed headlong into the fray armed only with his teeth and a knife strapped to each wrist. The Spanish campaign to conquer Chile […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader If you have kids, there’s a good chance that the very first time you laid eyes on them was via a “sonogram” image taken before they were even born. The grainy images are so common that they’ve become a rite of passage for parents all over the world. Here’s the […]
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On June 26, 1975, professional gambler Barney Curley pulled off one of the most famous betting coups in all of sports. With careful planning and skillful execution, Curley and his compatriots won just over IR£300,000 (or about $2.6 million today) on the “slow but steady” mostly unknown horse named Yellow Sam. Curley’s father, Charlie, had been a grocer before sinking […]
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Today, Casual Friday is a day when the conventional dress codes of most offices are cast aside in favour of denim jeans, comfortable t-shirts with movie slogans on them and shirts with the sleeves rolled up. But few people realise that this time-honored tradition of “sticking it to the man” forcing you to wear a noose around your neck four […]
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Over a 20-year career in post-Civil War New York, Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum is estimated to have fenced as much as $10 million in stolen property (around a quarter of a billion dollars when adjusted for inflation). Sitting at the center of a vast crime web the spanned large areas of the United States, Ma Mandelbaum was then known as “the […]
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In the fall of 1885, poet, essayist, travel writer and novelist, Robert Louis Stevenson, had a nightmare so terrifying that his tossing about impelled his wife to wake him up. Rather than being grateful, however, Stevenson chastised his bride, barking: “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” A longtime sufferer of consumption (see: Why Tuberculosis […]
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In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss what causes the smell after rain, whether Nero really fiddled while Rome burned (and whether it really burned at all), when and why people started smiling in photographs, the fascinating origin of Scrabble, and how 911 became the emergency number in the United States. Click here to subscribe to our […]
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Jack Kirby was one of the principle minds and artists behind some of the best known comic characters in history, including, among many others, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, X-Men, and Captain America. Few people realise, though, that like his most patriotic creation, Kirby spent a good portion of WW2 fighting the Nazis as well, though never managing to duplicate […]
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