Today I found out men wore high heel shoes long before women. The first high heel wearers are believed to have been Persian horseback warriors sometime around the ninth century. The extended heel was reportedly developed specifically for riding, to keep the rider’s foot from slipping out of the stirrups. It also helped to hold the rider steady when standing […]
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We are all familiar with the colloquialism “gaydar” which refers to a person’s intuitive, and often wildly inaccurate, ability to assess the sexual orientation of another person. In the 1960s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) attempted to use a slightly more scientific, though equally flawed, approach- a machine to detect if a person was gay or not. This was […]
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Today I found out the origin of the phrase “once in a blue moon” and what a blue moon actually is. “Once in a blue moon” today means “very rarely,” though it used to mean something that was absurd, right along the lines of “when pigs fly.” The first known recorded use of a form of the phrase is in […]
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Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer. The cancer part perhaps isn’t surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Note: There were actually well over a 100 or so others as well, perhaps as many as 165; they just have never […]
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Dev asks: Why does XOXO mean hugs and kisses? You’ve seen XO as a sign-off representing love, affection, or friendship on letters, cards, emails, chat rooms and text messages. You may have even been torn on whether or not to include both the X and the O, considering one signifies hugs and the other means kisses. Use the incorrect symbol, […]
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Today I found out that the makers of Barbie used to sell a doll whose breasts grew when her arm rotated. Yes, you read that correctly. It was 1975 and the doll was called “Growing Up Skipper”. When you rotated her arm, she grew an inch taller and her small breasts grew out of her plastic chest. She could return […]
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They’re coming. If you live on the Eastern seaboard of North America, prepare this summer for a large-scale invasion of a species of cicada (“cicada” being the Latin for “tree cricket”) that hasn’t happened in 17 years. You will probably hear them before you see them, as a male swarm of these insects can produce noise at over 100 dB. The […]
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Ben Franklin was a man of many and varied accomplishments- a Renaissance man in the grand tradition of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a writer, scientist, musician, inventor and innovator, despite only ever receiving 2 years of formal schooling. His ideas and principles helped shape his fledgling nation, and his diplomatic skills assured the newly born United States of America […]
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Myth: The Great Chicago Fire was started by a cow. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed 3.3 square miles of Chicago, Illinois, burning for two days in 1871—between October 8th and October 10th. It killed hundreds of people, left more than 100,000 homeless (nearly one third of Chicago’s residents at the time), destroyed roughly 17,000 buildings, and caused a couple hundred […]
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This is a post by the authors at List25.com. For more interesting lists, subscribe to their newsletter here. 1) Pankration: While today we have MMA, the Ancient Greeks had something known as Pankration, which was something like a free-for-all hand to hand fight that mixed boxing, kicking, and wrestling. There were only two rules: don’t bite (nobody likes a biter) […]
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Corsets dominated the undergarments of wealthier women in the Western world for centuries, until WWI. So how did the war help popularize the bra? In a word, or two words in this case: metal shortage. The making of corsets required quite a bit of metal. Thus, in 1917, the U.S. War Industries Board asked American women to help their “men […]
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Although modern medicine has made tremendous advances in many areas, even mapping the human genome, there remain aspects of human health that continue to elude our full understanding. Alien hand syndrome is one of these puzzles- with its sufferers having one of their hands, usually the non-dominant one, acting as if it has a mind of its own. Many of […]
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Embed This Infographic [Source: Today I Found Out] For more Language Facts see: 10 Common Word & Pronunciation Mistakes 10 Interesting Word & Phrase Facts 10 More Interesting Words & Phrases Facts The Origins of 10 Words & Phrases 10 Interesting Language Facts 10 Interesting Language Facts (Part-2)
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Steph B. asks: Why do we make toasts with drinks and why is it called that? Humans throughout history have made a habit of basing a great deal of our traditions and customs around food. The curious practice of raising our drink containers is one of the most ancient of these. To answer your question, for starters, we’ll dispel a […]
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Today I found out the origin of the Loch Ness Monster myth. Loch Ness is a long, narrow lake southwest of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. It is the second largest loch in Scotland by surface area and the largest by volume. It is also the second deepest loch, at an astounding 755 feet (230 meters) at its deepest point. […]
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While history knows him as a great Enlightenment thinker and writer, Voltaire was once Francois-Marie Arouet, the charismatic and rebellious youngest son of an upper middle-class French family. (His father was a minor treasury official and his mother from a low-ranking noble family.) After going against his father’s wishes and abandoning a promising career in law in favor of writing, […]
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Not set in stone, the English language is constantly evolving to describe new developments and experiences and to match the zeitgeist of the times. With words created out of necessity to describe a new technology, like tweet and telephone, their origins are relatively easy to trace back to the people who first invented them. With others that seem to rise […]
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Today I found out why storks are associated with delivering babies. We all know how babies are made. The stork can be seen flying over rooftops with a little cloth bundle before landing at the doorstep of a happy couple who then unwrap their precious, smiling newborn—right? This myth was once a common story to tell children who were deemed […]
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