John asks: Why are vitamins named via the alphabet? Easily identifiable by simple terms, the vitamins we recognize today were only recently isolated, identified and named. Roots of Vitamins Scientists studying why animals failed to thrive (deficiency diseases) were the first to discover vitamins. One of these early researchers, Cornelius Adrianus Pekelharing, opined in 1905 that milk had “some unrecognized […]
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Burritos are one of the most popular Tex-Mex items on the menu. Anyone who knows a little Spanish has probably raised their eyebrows at the name, however. In Spanish, a “burro” is a donkey, and “burrito,” the diminutive form, means “little donkey.” As far as we know, donkey was never a popular ingredient in the famous dish, so how exactly […]
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Today I found out about the Union Army Balloon Corps. If you thought that air warfare was reserved for a time after airplanes were invented, you thought wrong. During the American Civil War, the Union troops used hot air balloons to spy on Confederate troops. The idea to use balloons was the brainchild of Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of […]
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A new baseball season is upon us and, to kick it off, we thought we’d do a roundup of all the interesting baseball facts we’ve covered on TodayIFoundOut to date to give you some interesting things to talk about as you while away the hours watching the games. Without further ado: Abner Doubleday Did Not Invent Baseball This myth has […]
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Over two days in April 1975, as the forces of the North Vietnamese Army were poised to take the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, members of the U.S. armed forces, its embassy in South Vietnam and its Defense Attaché Office evacuated over 7,000 people using only helicopters. The End of the War Although the United States had withdrawn its combat […]
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Why There is an Area of New York Called “The Bronx” This is thanks to a seventeenth century Scandinavian man by the name of Jonas Bronck, originally from Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands. In 1639, Bronck immigrated to New Amsterdam in New Netherland, which was right next to what is today called Bronx River, named after Jonas Bronck. Why? In […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why Cashews are Not Sold to Consumers in Their Shells and Why Pistachios Used to Be Dyed Red Cashews are a member of the same family as poison ivy, Anacardiaceae. Like poison ivy and many other members of the family, part of […]
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It was lunch time on a muggy late September day in 2013 when an explosion shook downtown Orlando, Florida. A warehouse on west Jefferson street was the casualty. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks were already on their way by the time Tim Roth, a good Samaritan, was on the scene. As he searched through the rubble and debris for […]
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M. Havens asks: Where did the Taps song come from that is played during military funerals? Since 1862, “Taps” has played at military funerals to honor the sacrifice of fallen service members. Originally, however, it was intended to send soldiers off to a less permanent sleep. During the Civil War, Union buglers signaled “lights out” to their comrades with a […]
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By necessity, this one contains a bit of profanity. So you may or may not want to read through it first if you normally share these articles with humans of the particularly youthful persuasion. 🙂 In its various incarnations, the F-word can be a noun, verb, adjective, and even an infix. The Crescent wrench of the English language, the F-bomb […]
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After just about three and a half months since launching, our Daily Knowledge Podcast has reached 1 million downloads. Thanks for listening! If you have any feedback for us on it, we’re always interested. If you haven’t checked it out, you can listen to the podcast episodes here online, or subscriber via iTunes here, or simply use this xml link […]
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Karla asks: Why do we need sleep? It left Hamlet’s father vulnerable to fratricide, sent Alice down the rabbit-hole, enabled Delilah’s betrayal of Samson and facilitated Gregor’s transformation into a giant beetle. Yet without sleep, we can become dull, slow and irritable in the short-term, and chronic insomnia can cause migraines, seizures and even, in extreme cases, death. Although we […]
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Our resident medical expert, Scott, and a buddy of his recently started The Medicine Journal, where you can learn all sorts of interesting facts about all things medical related. Below is a sample article from their site. Every summer we slather layers of sunscreen with the highest SPF we can find, and bravely venture outside hoping our slimy cloak will […]
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It turns out this has nothing to do with the mammaries of the fairer sex, but rather has its origins in the Spanish word “bobo,” meaning “stupid,” “fool,” or “naïve.” This Spanish word in turn comes from the Latin “balbus” meaning “stammering”, which to the Romans was thought to be a sign of stupidity. So, essentially, a “booby trap” is […]
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Why Police Officers are Sometimes Called “Pigs” Unlike so many other nicknames for the police, such as cops and the fuzz, this particular term has a relatively well known origin. You see, starting around the sixteenth century “pig” began being used in English as a derogatory term for people, whether police or not, as it still sometimes is used today. […]
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In the connected 21st century, it can be hard to imagine how, for most of history, different cultures existed in relative isolation from each other. Even as late as the 19th century, those living in self-sustaining and remote rural communities had little commerce with the outside world, and scant news made it in or out. In a handful of these […]
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Greg H. asks: Diseases from Europe wiped out most of the Indians, so why didn’t the Europeans also get wiped out by diseases from America? While estimates vary, approximately 20-50 million people are believed to have lived in the Americas shortly before Europeans arrived. Around 95% of them were killed by European diseases. So why didn’t 19 out of 20 […]
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We’ve partnered up with our good friends over at the ever popular Neatorama to hold a contest with super awesome prizes and a bunch of easy ways to enter. The Grand Prize winner will receive a $100 Amazon gift card, a crazy cool Captain America Mystery Box (pictured here), and one t-shirt from each of Neatorama’s and TodayIFoundOut’s shops. Runner […]
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