In an era where full service gas pumping seems to be a thing of the past, Oregon not only still offers this type of service to its citizens but the “beaver state” also does not offer them any other choice – Oregonians are not allowed to pump their own gas! Of fifty states, only two do not allow “self-service dispensing of […]

To call Pac-Man a mere game would be an injustice.  It’s a cultural icon, a symbol of an entire decade, as well as an entity that redefined gaming itself. Evidence of this can be found not only in its initial success, but also by the fact that it continues to be loved and valued by every new generation of gamers. […]

It is one of the first things we notice about someone upon being introduced:  Hair.  Even Donald Trump’s combover, or whatever you call that thing on his head, has its own Facebook page, but only 51 Likes. Here’s a look back over the years at the various ways we’ve styled our locks and the origin of the names of those […]

John asks: Did pirates really make people walk the plank? For thousands of years, pirates of various sorts have preyed on innocent ships at sea. Their exploits have been documented by the likes of Cicero and Homer in ancient Rome and Greece, and Vikings were once the scourge of the sea, plaguing seaside towns throughout the middle ages. However, the […]

So mysterious, no one even knows exactly which century it was written in, the Voynich Manuscript has stumped medieval scholars, linguists, cryptologists and the curious for hundreds of years. The Manuscript Approximately 6″ x 9″ x 2″, this octavo contains 240 pages of indecipherable text and a host of illustrations drawn with iron gall ink on vellum. Many of the […]

Today I found out it’s only been very recently that people in the U.S. started using toilet paper. Despite toilet paper having been around since at least the 6th century AD (initially in China), it wouldn’t be until the late 19th century when toilet paper would be first introduced in America and England and it wasn’t until the 1900s, around […]

Ryan asks: What is a Ponzi scheme and why do we call it that? With our short memories, many of us have forgotten that long before Bernie Madoff defrauded his clients and lost $65 billion, another swindler, Charles Ponzi, ran a similar scam in 1920, bilking thousands of people out of millions of dollars by making them an offer that […]

A time-honored tradition in the U.S. military, contingency plans have been drawn up for the defense against, and invasion of, most major military powers. In fact, in response to recent events on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. and South Korea recently signed on to such a plan. One of the most interesting episodes in this rich history of preparing for […]

About eleven thousand years ago, in a remote corner of the cradle of civilization, Stone Age people who lacked cities, agriculture and metal tools built an enormous complex of multi-ton stone pillars called Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) in a region in modern day Turkey. The high degree of artistic skill and organizational wherewithal discovered at the site has caused the […]