In this episode, you’re going to learn about “Mitochondrial Eve,” a woman who lived about 75,000 years ago that all humans alive today are thought to be related to. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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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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Today in History: March 28, 1979 At 4 a.m. on the morning of March 28, 1979, a combination of human and mechanical error led to the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, that in truth wasn’t all that bad. It happened at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant just outside Harrisburg, PA, and would drastically escalate public distrust toward […]
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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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In this episode, you’re going to learn about the silly reason why split infinitives were for a time considered incorrect grammatically. Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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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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Today in History: March 27, 1309 As the result of a war with the Doge of Venice Pietro Gradeningo over control of the city of Ferrara in northern Italy, Pope Clement V punished Venice by excommunicating the entire city on March 27, 1309. Clement’s decree not only denied all Venetians access to the sacraments, but declared them entirely outside of […]
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In this episode, you’re going to learn about the story that “Sleeping Beauty” was based on, which was *slightly* less family friendly than the Disney version. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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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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Today in History: March 26,1997 In the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe on March 26, 1997, police found 39 people dead in a spacious Spanish-style mansion from what appeared to be a carefully choreographed mass suicide. It was quickly discovered that the deceased were all members of the “Heaven’s Gate” cult. They believed that the appearance of the […]
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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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In this episode, you’re going to learn about the origin of the alphabet song and the famous tune behind it. [TRANSCRIPT] Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | RSS/XML You can also find more episodes by going here: Daily Knowledge Podcast
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