In 1968, an expert on animal behaviour and population control called John B. Calhoun built what was essentially a utopia for mice that was purpose built to satisfy their every need. Despite going out of his way to ensure the inhabitants of his perfect mouse society never wanted for anything, within 2 years virtually the entire population was dead. So […]
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Few feats of engineering are as impressive as a military-grade helicopter. Today worth millions of dollars each, these high-tech birds are a formidable military asset, including, among many other uses, for rescue operations- all a fact US military personnel helpfully chose to ignore during Operation Frequent Wind when they pushed several dozen of them into the sea, in one case […]
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Dan P asks: Did mobsters ever really use cement galoshes on the feet of people they sent to sleep with the fishes like in the movies? If there’s one thing everyone knows about the mob it’s that they had an astonishing number of ways to off the various wiseguys, shysters and snitches who got in the way of their business. […]
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Wayne T. asks: What’s the deal with movies showing sea captains performing marriages? They can’t actually do this, right According to countless movies and TV shows, sea captains, in addition to getting to wear dapper uniforms and snazzy hats, have the ability to marry couples aboard their ships thanks to the power bestowed upon them by… the sea we guess? […]
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Michael S. asks: Do people get anything when they’re knighted by the Queen? As we’ve discussed before and will no doubt talk more about in the future, as a direct result of her position as sovereign of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, the Queen has a large array of powers at her disposal entirely unique to her. Of these […]
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Sawmillturtle asks: Would you be willing to look into the origins of “one for me and one for my homies” while pouring some drink on the ground? To most people the idea of “pouring one out” in regards to the act of pouring a small amount of some manner of alcoholic beverage onto the ground in remembrance of one’s dead […]
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Dave R. asks: A friend and I were arguing the other day about whether or not it’s legal to land a helicopter in a fast food parking lot like in Mr. Deeds when they landed at Wendy’s? While the question of whether a helicopter can legally land in a fast-food parking lot may seem absurd on the surface, given the […]
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Jeremy R. asks: I wanted to know what the point of the crazy clothes you see at fashion shows is? Does anybody actually buy these? Fashion is an evolving beast with the fashionistas of the world endlessly attempting to create impossibly fabulous and unique new outfits for fashion shows. A commonly seen element of such outfits is that they’re often […]
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While it might seem a little odd at first glance, it turns out the first helicopter pilot ever to receive the United States’ prestigious Medal of Honor, John Kelvin Koelsch, was born and and mostly raised in London, England. Considered an American citizen thanks to his parentage, Koelsch moved back to the US with his family in his teens, and […]
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Mike A. asks: I was recently playing the game Tomb Raider & I got to thinking about the trope of the booby trapped or puzzle in an ancient ruin. We see it in comics, movies like Indiana Jones, & games. Is this pure fantasy or were there ever there traps, puzzles, or just intricate mechanical mechanisms from the ancient world […]
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Jill T. asks – Would you be able to explain what happens to peoples money and property if they end up going to jail forever? Prison, by design, is a place where a number of your rights are either stripped away or are severely limited in some manner. The right most pertinent to the topic of conversation today is the […]
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Jared asks: Why do racehorses have such weird names? Who picks them? In the world of horse racing, the name of a given horse is considered to be almost as important as its ability to run. Thanks, in part, to a large number of rigid rules put in place by the the various governing bodies of the sport, picking a […]
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Prior to WW2, knowing that they couldn’t compete with the numbers of the US navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy quietly authorised the construction of the two largest battleships by weight ever seen in warfare- the Musashi and her sister ship, the Yamato. The origins of these two behemoths can be traced back to Japan’s 1934 withdrawal from the League of […]
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The pilot community, on the whole, is surprisingly close-knit, with fellow pilots seemingly always willing to extend a helping hand to their winged brethren. This is seemingly the case even during war amongst pilots otherwise trying to kill one another, as illustrated previously in our article on the real Red Baron and in the subject of today’s article- that time […]
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Few companies have a rivalry as fierce and longstanding as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola and in their never ending battle for soda market dominance each company has gone to some spectacular lengths to screw over the other. Arguably the most fiendishly genius move of all was one made by Coca-Cola in the early 1990s- a move that basically involved intentionally releasing […]
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Kathy B. asks: Why do we call white people Caucasian? Throughout history a variety of ways to scientifically classify different groups of humans have popped up, most notable to the story today being a system suggested by pioneering social scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, often considered the “father of scientific anthropology.” Building upon other’s classification schemes, including Carl Linnaeus and Christoph […]
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Travis T. asks: Why do Americans say “math” and other English speaking countries say “maths”? Aluminium or aluminum, zee or zed, and removing u’s from certain words or not- among the many discrepancies between American and British English, perhaps none conjures as much religious fervor as math vs. maths. So which one is correct? Well, really neither is technically more […]
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Mike L. asks: What is the chemtrail smoke behind airliners? So called “chemtrails,” though more technically known as contrails, first appeared behind planes going all the way back to the earliest days of high altitude flight. One of the earliest known surviving references of such occurred when an American soldier by the name of Captain Ward Wells observed a peculiar […]
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