This is a guest post by Adam Kutner. (more on Adam at the bottom) Today I found out about a shocking weather incident that happened in London not very long ago. In December of 1952, the city of London experienced a 5-day bout of “fog” that killed at least 4,000 people and made an estimated 100,000 sick. Fog? Isn’t that […]
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On the whole, people don’t generally like to kill one another. Most wars throughout history are often more about the agendas of the state’s leaders than the soldiers on the field actually inherently feeling any real malice towards those they are asked to try to kill or otherwise defeat. Few events in history illustrate this as well as a remarkable […]
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Despite how it sounds, “Tulipmania” does not refer to just a general love of tulips; it was actually one the world’s first recorded major financial bubbles. Long before the dot com frenzy or the real estate bubbles of recent decades, there was Tulipmania in the Netherlands beginning around 1624 and reaching its peak from 1636 to 1637. While the extent […]
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This is a guest post by Shoshana Davis Brushing your teeth after every meal, visiting the dentist for cleanings, and having a relatively painless mouth is not just desired but expected in the year 2012. However, that was not always the case. Dentistry has come a long way since its inception and is often overlooked for other scientific advancements. The […]
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What do a thimble, a sack of money, a battleship, and a top hat have in common? Not much, other than that they are among the eleven playing tokens you receive in a standard Monopoly set. And don’t forget the wheelbarrow, which you’ll need to carry all that cash you are going to appropriate from your hapless opponents. The history […]
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It was to be one of the strangest chapters in the storied history of the Beatles. In most Beatle controversies, John Lennon, the most outspoken and controversial Beatle, was usually at the bottom of it, but not this time. George Harrison “The Quiet Beatle” brought on the 1963-64 Jelly Bean controversy that was to drive the Beatles batty. In a […]
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Trevor A. asks: Why did Coke try to switch to “New Coke”? It turns out there was actually (if you squint at the problem hard enough), a semi-good reason for doing the switch. It didn’t work out, of course… But then, it kind of did work out amazingly well at the same time, as you’ll soon see. Now, before I […]
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The real name of the “Birdman” was Robert Franklin Stroud. Seattle born Stroud ran away from home at the age of 13 and was first arrested in 1909 at the age of 19 after turning himself in for murder. He shot and killed a bartender, F. K. Von Dahmer, who had allegedly failed to pay a prostitute for whom Stroud was […]
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Romi asks: How did the “pie in the face” gag get its start? The very first known “pie in the face” gag, also known as “pieing”, was in a movie- which movie is a matter of dispute. It is definitely agreed that the first film “pie in the face” was thrown in a silent comedy in the early days of […]
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This is a guest post by Noah Wass- Plastics Engineer, bicycle expert, and owner of BikeInReview.com where you will find professional bike related reviews and interesting biking news. Subscribe to his newsletter here. The bicycle was invented all the way back in 1817. A certain Baron Karl von Drais needed to get around easier while working in the Royal Gardens […]
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It was the autumn of 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. The young, fledgling group who had recently changed their name officially to “The Beatles” were playing at a local club called The Kaiserkeller. Hamburg was a vice-ridden city, a 24-hour-a-day unofficial red light district in itself. Hookers, pimps, thugs, gangsters, drug dealers, and various sundry “characters” and habitues roamed the streets […]
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You might think the temporary insanity defense was a relatively new thing. I mean, maybe it began in the 1940s or possibly the ’30s. What with all the psychobabble around in those times. But, no. It was actually much earlier. It all started with a guy named Daniel Sickles. Sickles (1819-1914) was a U.S. Senator and later a Congressman, as […]
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It’s pretty obvious that no Major League Baseball player would be caught dead wearing a dress to the plate. But one batter wore one, and turned the at-bat into an outrageous incident that left fans hooting and hollering. Nightclub singer Kitty Burke hit a ball thrown by St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Paul “Daffy” Dean, becoming the only woman to ever […]
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Today I found out the only victim of the Tacoma Narrows, “Galloping Gertie”, bridge collapse was a three legged dog. The three legged dog in question was a black Cocker Spaniel left in the back seat of the lone car abandoned on the galloping bridge. The dog was owned by reporter Leonard Coatsworth, though his wife stated in an interview […]
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This post is sponsored by Chucker & Reibach Today I found out the first gas/electric hybrid vehicle was invented in 1900. While hybrid and electric cars are often touted by the media and automobile companies as the wave of the future, in fact, we’re more just re-hashing the wave of the past with them, but with updated technologies. Before gas […]
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This is a guest post by Dan Lewis. Dan runs the wildly popular daily newsletter Now I Know (“Learn Something New Every Day, By Email”). To subscribe to his daily email, click here. Today I found Out how candy pumpkins and Halloween helped change Daylight Saving Time. Before 1966, Daylight Saving Time in the United States was set via a […]
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Ron asks: Why did people think the Moon was made out of green cheese? Because it was formed in the Milky Way… *crickets* In fact, nobody really ever thought the Moon was made of green cheese… Well, there are nutters out there, so it’s possible that there was at least one person who thought the Moon was made of cheese, […]
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Today I found out about a 16 year old sentenced to death who had to have that sentence carried out twice. The teenager was Willie Francis, the youngest of 13 children in a poor black family living in Louisiana. Francis supposedly murdered 53 year old pharmacist Andrew Thomas in St. Martinville, Louisiana in 1944. Thomas was found shot five times […]
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