Katie asks: Why is the Newbery Award called that? The Newbery Award is named after a man, John Newbery, who is considered more or less the “Father of Children’s Literature”. Newbery was born in 1713 in England. He was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a printer named William Ayers and later to William Carnan. When Carnan died, he […]
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John Cochran impressed Survivor fans this past season by winning a food challenge in which he had to eat beetle larvae, shipworms, a balut (duck/bird embryo complete with feathers and a beak), and finally pig brains. So gross but at least they are all digestable right? There are people in this world who suffer from an eating disorder called pica, […]
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When asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” most children reply with the standard, “firefighter, police officer, teacher”. Some go less traditional with “circus performer, singer or professional athlete”. I have yet to hear a child answer with “professional farter”; yet believe it or not, this is actually the way a select few in the world […]
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Today I found out about the largely forgotten colorful benevolent dictator of the United States and protector of Mexico, Emperor Norton I. His Imperial Majesty Joshua Abraham Norton I was born between 1811 and 1818 in England. Records of his birth date vary considerably, but it’s likely that the latter date is the correct one. His family immigrated to South […]
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What was supposed to be just another day on the job for 25-year-old Phineas Gage turned out to be anything but, with events transpiring to make him a legend – in neurology anyway. On that fateful day, Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic brain injury when a very large iron rod went through his head. Despite this, he survived and became one of […]
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He died nearly 800 years ago, and yet we all still know his name. From 1190 to 1227, Genghis Khan ruled an empire that eventually stretched from Russia to China. He is responsible for millions of deaths, but he also unified warring factions and brought peace and security to 5000 miles of trade routes. The complicated legacy of his Mongol […]
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Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer. The cancer part perhaps isn’t surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Note: There were actually well over a 100 or so others as well, perhaps as many as 165; they just have never […]
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Ben Franklin was a man of many and varied accomplishments- a Renaissance man in the grand tradition of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a writer, scientist, musician, inventor and innovator, despite only ever receiving 2 years of formal schooling. His ideas and principles helped shape his fledgling nation, and his diplomatic skills assured the newly born United States of America […]
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Most remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy as our youthful and inspiring 35th President who, with his elegant wife, turned the White House into Camelot until his assassination in November 1963. But what few today recall is that long before his presidency, JFK was a well-respected author and even won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1957 with Profiles in Courage. Born […]
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To this day, the Siberian wilderness is still one of the most isolated places in the world. Known as the Siberian taiga (meaning “forest” in Russian), its harsh, cold climate greatly discourages human habitation. Its steep hills and difficult terrain makes it nearly impossible to travel through it, much less live there. It’s filled with pine and birch trees, nearly […]
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Today I found out about Vasili Blokhin, the “Most Prolific Executioner” of all time, according to the Guinness World Records. Born to a Russian peasant family in 1895, as a young man he quickly earned a reputation for “chernaya rabota”, or “black work”, while serving in the Tsarist army during World War I- gaining recognition from Stalin himself for his […]
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Bob Young was born in Bakersfield, CA., on January 15, 1916. As a relay runner, he was to compete in the 1936 Olympics and would go on to win a silver medal. But despite these two historic (and very cool) accomplishments, Bob Young’s “coolest ever” accomplishment was a very unique one. He gave the finger to Adolf Hitler. Bob was […]
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Joseph Samuels (some sources list his surname as “Samuel”) was an English criminal, born in 1780. After being arrested for robbery at the age of 15, Samuels was eventually convicted and shipped to Australia in 1801. At the time, Australia had a penal colony at Sydney Cove. Security in these early penal settlements was reinforced by the isolation of the […]
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The man was Lt. Col William Rankin. How did he almost drown in the sky? In 1959, while ejecting from his F-8 Crusader at 47,000 ft (14,325 meters) and at a speed of Mach .82 (624 mph or 1004 km/h), he got caught up in a cumulonimbus tower (basically a dense, vertical cloud, generally found in areas of extreme atmospheric […]
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1) His name was originally Michael, not Martin. His father was also Michael King, hence why Martin Luther King Jr. was originally named Michael King Jr. However, after a trip to Germany in 1931, Michael King Sr. changed his own name in homage to historic German theologian Martin Luther. Michael King Jr. was two years old at the time and […]
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The man was Adam Rainer born in Graz, Austria sometime in 1899 (the exact date isn’t known). Rainer’s parents were neither tall nor short for the time, with his father measuring in at 5 feet 8 inches (1.72 m) and his mother at 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m). He even had a brother who matched his father’s height at […]
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The man was Eric Moussambani Malonga, later nicknamed “Eric the Eel”. Moussambani is from Equatorial Guinea in Africa and only managed to get into the Olympics at all because of a wildcard drawing system put in place by the International Olympic Committee, designed to try to encourage developing countries to participate in various Olympic events. Thanks to this drawing, Equatorial Guinea […]
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He is one of the most admired actors in the history of the movies. Marilyn Monroe called him “the sexiest man” she had ever seen. And if you watch his early, incredible performances in “On the Waterfront” (1954), “Streetcar Named Desire” (1951), “The Wild One” (1953), “The Men” (1950), and my favorite Brando film “Guys and Dolls” (1955), you can […]
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