Myth: “Xmas” is a non-religious name / spelling for “Christmas”. It turns out, “Xmas” is not a non-religious version of “Christmas”. The “X” is actually indicating the Greek letter “Chi”, which is short for the Greek, meaning “Christ”. So “Xmas” and “Christmas” are equivalent in every way except their lettering. In fact, although writing guides such as those issued by […]
Read more
Misconception Junction will be merged with Today I Found Out over the next couple weeks. What this means is that all Misconception Junction’s articles will now be here on Today I Found Out and future “myths and misconception” articles will be posted on Today I Found Out, along with the normal “interesting fact”, This Day In History, etc. types of […]
Read more
Embed This Infographic Source: Today I Found Out 1. What the “Bee” in “Spelling Bee” Means While no one knows exactly where the word derives from, the “bee” in “spelling bee” simply means something to the effect of “gathering” or “get together”. The earliest documented case of this word appearing with this meaning was in 1769, referring to a […]
Read more
Kim Jong-Il was born Yuri Irsenovich Kim. His official biography states that he was born on a sacred mountain (Baekdu Mountain, the legendary birthplace of Korea’s first kingdom) on February 16, 1942, where his father was serving in a secret military base, attempting to overthrow the Japanese. Further, it states that his birth was marked by a double rainbow over […]
Read more
Today I found out the “57” in “57 Varieties of Heinz” has no real meaning; it’s just a lucky number. By 1892, H.J. Heinz Company had grown from a small company selling horseradish in clear glass jars, to having over 60 products. Despite having more than 57 products, at the behest of the founder of H.J. Heinz Company, the business […]
Read more
Today I found out Rowan Atkinson, the guy who played “Mr. Bean”, has a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Atkinson originally received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering (EE) at Newcastle University before enrolling in an EE master’s program at The Queen’s College Oxford in 1975. While working towards this degree, he also pursued acting on the side with a […]
Read more
Today I found out Baby Ruth candy bars really were named after Babe Ruth. The rumor that they were not was actually started by the company who made them originally, the Curtiss Candy Company founded by Otto Schnering. They claimed it was named after Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. Ruth Cleveland supposedly visited their plant and, while […]
Read more
Whew, sorry about that. The intermittent page loading problem the last couple days has been solved now (for real this time) ;-). My apologies for not getting more new articles up the last day or two, I’ve been working on this pretty constantly and didn’t have a chance to put any new ones up other than in the brief respite […]
Read more
Today I found out the origin of the Chinese Fire Drill. In World War I, British soldiers came up with the phrase “Chinese Landing” to describe a clumsy or bad landing. It should be noted that this wasn’t originally meant to imply Chinese citizens couldn’t land a plane well or anything of the sort; rather, it came from the fact […]
Read more
I recently came across a pretty interesting email subscription, which I thought I’d recommend. If you like Today I Found Out, you’ll probably like this: Now I Know It’s sort of similar to Today I Found Out, but through email. Every morning, the author, Dan Lewis, shares something interesting he’s learned over the last few weeks. For example, did you […]
Read more
Today I Found Out has been nominated for the “Best Site of 2011 Award” from All My Faves. If you’d care to vote for Today I Found Out in that contest, I’d very much appreciate it. Just go here to vote : Vote 2011 and click “Like” there near the top. Alternatively, if you’d like to see what other sites […]
Read more
Today I found out sushi is not raw fish, that’s sashimi. Sashimi is just sliced raw fish, sometimes dipped in sauces and sometimes served with sushi. Sushi is any food dish consisting of vinegared rice, usually served with some other toppings, but not always. It happens to often be served with various types of sea food, either cooked or raw, […]
Read more
You may notice that sometimes when you click on posts to read, the page only partially loads. I’m working on fixing the issue at the moment, but no solution is currently presenting itself, or rather, I haven’t figured out yet what’s causing the problem, so it may be a little bit before the issue is resolved. For the present, if […]
Read more
Today I found out gyroscopic effects have almost nothing to do with your ability to ride a bike. The problem with the forces generated from the gyroscopic effect on a typical bicycle is that they simply aren’t very powerful when considering the physics involved in having the majority of the center of mass of the bike at the top (with […]
Read more
Today I found out Albert Einstein did not fail at mathematics in school. In fact, he actually excelled at mathematics throughout his schooling and even considered becoming a mathematician for a time. This rumor actually started while he was still alive and even showed up in a particular issue of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Einstein was shown the article […]
Read more
Today I found out the actor who played Steve Urkel also did the voice for Sonic the Hedgehog. While staring in Family Matters, Jeleel White was cast to do the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog for 65 episodes in the animated series The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1993. From 1993-1994, he also did the voice of the famous […]
Read more
Today I found out it is actually quite safe to fly through an asteroid field. The reality is that the asteroids in asteroid fields are incredibly far apart and most of the objects in these fields are very tiny. There are generally hundreds of thousands of miles between these objects and most of them are no bigger than a tennis […]
Read more
Today I found out about a real life white whale that destroyed over 20 whaling ships and reportedly survived encounters with another 80 or so. The massive 70 foot long albino sperm whale was named Mocha Dick and was one of the two whales that inspired the novel Moby Dick. Mocha Dick was given his name as he was first […]
Read more