Back in the halcyon days of the 1980s, when all people of the world had to worry about was total annihilation via widespread nuclear war, an American called Dennis Hope made international news when he revealed that after exploiting a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, he had become the sole owner of our nearest celestial neighbour, the Moon. […]
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Considered to be little more than a historical curio today, the early 18th century Puckle Gun was nonetheless one of the most advanced firearms of its age, capable of firing one shot every 6 seconds in an era when even the most highly skilled soldier equipped with a musket typically topped out at a rate of only about one shot […]
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The favoured instrument of the likes of Lisa Simpsons, former President Bill Clinton, and the co-author of this article and founder of TodayIFoundOut, the saxophone has variously been described as everything from “the most moving and heart-gripping wind instrument” to the “Devil’s horn”. Rather fittingly then the instrument’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, was a similarly polarising figure and led a life […]
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Alex K. asks: Is it true that sommeliers can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap wines? Having a seasoned tongue that can detect the subtle differences between different kinds of adult grape juice is a sure sign of class. In fact, the go-to Hollywood trope for showing that a character is refined is to give them a penchant for […]
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Peter E. asks: What could I do during freefall after falling out of a plane to maximize my chances of surviving? According to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes without a parachute during a crash and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those […]
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In the world of food advertising there’s a concept known as “propping” which is industry jargon for making the food look as good as possible via sometimes rather, shall we say, unusual means. While proper lighting and setting are a given, a good food stylist, which is a thing by the way, will do much more than that. For example, […]
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While getting divorced in modern times in most nations isn’t exactly a walk in the park, options at least do exist in much of the world, even in cases where one spouse would rather stay together. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon. Classically, getting divorced was almost impossible. So much so that at one point about the only way […]
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San dro asks: What happens if you never give your child a name? It turns out there are a shocking number of rules and regulations concerning what parents can name their children, when the naming has to happen by, and even a section of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child that specifically states that all people, […]
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Contrary to popular belief, a decent percentage of the human population has known definitely the Earth was roughly spherical for over two thousand years. Hardly impressive, as noted in our BrainFood Show podcast, bees also use this fact in their own absurdly fascinating navigation and in communicating directions to other bees. As for humans, we took a little longer to […]
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zhiyu89 asks: When I was a kid we used to blow on Nintendo games if they didn’t work and I’ve always wondered if this actually did anything? Once upon a time a seemingly universally known trick to get a Nintendo game cartridge to work was to simply pull it out, blow on it, then re-insert. If this didn’t give the […]
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Mandy R. asks: In movies they always act like it’s important for a person to stay conscious when they’ve been seriously injured. Does that really help someone live? Special thanks to Scott from the Medical Confessions podcast for answering this one for us! We’ve all seen movie scenes where someone is seriously injured and slowly drifting in and out of […]
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MmmJeremy asks: If I’m drunk and can’t drive, could I legally ride my horse home instead? To begin with, in the vast majority of countries on Earth, “driving under the influence” is usually defined as “operating a vehicle after imbibing an alcoholic beverage or drug to the extent that [your] mental faculties are impaired”. So, given nobody in day to […]
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Chloe M asks: What items does Batman have in his utility belt? Over the years, it has become a running joke of sorts that Batman’s glorified fanny pack contains whatever items he needs to fulfill his current mission, regardless of how unlikely a scenario the caped crusader may find himself in. This leads us to the query of the hour- […]
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Throughout a certain portion of history in the western world, getting a divorce was almost impossible. Even the royals had issues on this front, with perhaps the most famous example being the plight of King Henry 8th, a man whose desire to get an annulment famously led to him starting an entirely new branch of Christianity virtually identical to the […]
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Willow T. asks – Is it true that you soil yourself when you die? Depending on your current religious affiliation, at the moment of death a number of things may happen to your soul, from being judged by Anubis to being conscripted to kick an endless amount of ass for the glory of Odin in Valhalla. The things that happen […]
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Robert R. Taylor is a name you’ve probably never heard before. But this serial entrepreneur made his mark on the world of business by coming up with several products you are almost certainly very familiar with. Today we’re going to talk about, on the surface, the most boring of those- liquid hand soap. Something you can thank Mr. Taylor and […]
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During the Cold War, the U.S. government was hell-bent on one upping the commies in any way possible. In the process, they came up with a number of outlandish plans, such as that time they proposed nuking the moon, interestingly enough a project a young Carl Sagan worked on. There were also many more down to Earth projects like the […]
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The Queen is likely one of the single best protected people on the entire planet. But on June 13, 1981 a 17 year old young man who held a marksman’s badge from the Air Training Corps somehow managed to circumvent the endless layers of security put in place to protect the Queen and fired a revolver at her from about […]
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