Category Archives: Featured Facts

Is Masturbation Actually Bad For You?

Choking the chicken. Shaking out the curtains. Spanking the monkey. Lone Rangering. Polishing the jewel. Shaking hands with the milkman. Celebrating Palm Sunday. Romancing the stone. These are but a few of the colourful euphemisms for what is perhaps humanity’s oldest pastime: masturbation. For much of human history, the act of piloting the Millennium Falcon with Hand Solo has been […]

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Is Ockham’s Razor Actually Valid or Just Something People Say to Sound Smart?

If you’ve ever spent any time arguing on the internet, you’ve likely come across a philosophical principle known as ‘Ockham’s Razor.’ Along with ad hominem attacks and comparing people you don’t like to Hitler, Ockham’s Razor is a favourite argument of keyboard warriors everywhere, most often understood as meaning “the simplest argument is most often the correct one.” But where […]

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Rags to Riches- The Jr High Dropout Who Created a Tasty, Tasty Billion Dollar Empire

In 1847 at the tender age of 16, seaman Hanson Gregory looked at some frying dough and said, “Everything is better with holes”… except his ship hull probably… and created the staple of breakfasts the diabetes lovin’ world over- the doughnut! Or so the story goes anyway. In truth, Captain Gregory’s account of how and why he supposedly invented the […]

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How the Nazis Teamed Up with IBM for Mass Murder, and the Incredible Story of the First Ethical Hacker

In the era of Big Data, few figures are more divisive as that of the hacker. On the one hand, malicious or “black hat” hackers cause billions of dollars of damage every year, breaking into private and public networks to steal money or personal data or simply to create chaos. On the other hand, so-called ethical or “white hat” hackers […]

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‘Kaputnik’: America’s Disastrous First Attempt to Launch a Satellite

On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and uttered the immortal words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” While five more Apollo crews would land on the moon over the next three years, for many that moment marked the triumphant end of the Space Race, which over the previous twelve […]

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That Time a Farmer was Given Ultimate Power Twice and Changed the World Forever By Walking Away Both Times

The subject of what a political leader in a democracy does after his term has ended and the merits of gracefully resigning from power has been on the news recently. Enter the subject of today’s story which takes place in ancient Rome, at the dawn of the Republic Era. The person in question was Cincinnatus, whose actions in terms of […]

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Where Did the NASA Expression Steely-Eyed Missile Man Come From?

In the 2011 novel The Martian and its 2015 film adaptation, orbital dynamics expert Rich Purnell devises a maneuver to get NASA’s Hermes spacecraft back to Mars and rescue marooned astronaut Mark Watney. Upon carrying out the maneuver, the crew of the Hermes sends a signal back to Mission Control, stating: “Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile […]

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