Today in History: November 12, 2004 After a two-year ordeal that dominated the headlines and engrossed the entire nation, a jury found Scott Peterson guilty of murder 23 months after his heavily pregnant wife Laci Peterson suddenly vanished from her home in Modesto, California on Christmas Eve. Peterson stated that Laci had gone for a walk with their dog while […]
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In 1975, George Lucas was casting for his upcoming sci-fi film The Star Wars (name later changed to simply Star Wars). After a joint casting session with Brian De Palma, who was looking to hire actors for his new horror movie Carrie, Lucas was able to cast many of his principal actors. He decided on two young no-names, Carrie Fisher […]
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Today I found out about the origin of the phrase “in the limelight.” Today it means “at the centre of attention,” but back in the day “in the limelight” meant, well, being in the limelight. “Limelight,” which is also known as “calcium light,” was used as stage lighting for years after being discovered by Goldsworth Gurney in the 1820s. Gurney […]
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Today in History: November 11, 1988 During the early 1980s, ex-nurse’s aide Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house for the elderly in Sacramento, California. She was a schizophrenic who had numerous run-ins with the law. She served time for forging checks, and also was incarcerated for drugging and then robbing random people she had met in bars. She opened her […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Fascinating Origin of the Word “Abracadabra” These days you might hear this word before some stage magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, but hundreds of years ago people actually believed that “abracadabra” was a magical spell. The exact origin […]
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Today I found out about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, the wife of famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and who the video game character of “Zelda” was named after. Zelda Sayre was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1900. She was named for characters in two different books, Zelda: A Tale of the Massachusetts Colony and Zelda’s Fortune, both of […]
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While there are a million plotlines and hundreds of explanations of how various superheroes got their special powers, there was one superhero in the 1960s who maintained his powers to fight evil by lighting up. “8-Man” originally ran as a weekly comic strip in Japan from 1960 to 1963, then a half-hour cartoon from 1963 to 1964. The show eventually moved […]
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Today in History: November 8, 1960 On November 8, 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the youngest man to be elected as United States President, beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon by one of the narrowest margins in history. One of the factors that may have tipped the scales ever so slightly in the election was Kennedy’s shrewd willingness to address […]
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Despite her future successes, Nancy Wake had humble beginnings. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, but her family moved to Sydney, Australia when she was almost two and she grew up there. A Maori midwife delivered her and, at the time of her birth, allegedly pointed at a fold of skin on her head and said, “’This […]
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When actress Michelle Pfeiffer was just starting out in Hollywood, long before her hit movies Batman Returns and Hairspray hit theatres, she admits to being roped into the cult of “breatharianism.” Breatharians believe that humans can survive without food or water—they get all the nutrients they need from air and sunlight. Obviously as even plants can’t survive with only air […]
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Today in History: November 7, 1916 A full four years before the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote, Jeannette Rankin was elected to a seat in Congress in 1916, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to hold such an office. Even though women had yet to achieve suffrage across the nation, there was no legislation forbidding […]
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With the possible exception of boozy, reckless ingénues, there is no animal more bent on its own ruin than the giant panda. With its low population (only 1600 remain in the wild and 300 in captivity) and self-destructive lifestyle, giant pandas are in danger of extinction. Luckily, scientists and conservationists are hard at work unlocking the secrets of panda behavior […]
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Today I found out why your palms get sweaty when you’re nervous. Ever been on the edge of a cliff or looking out the window at the top of a skyscraper and your hands start to sweat? Or maybe it’s when you’re about to speak in front of an audience? The individual who introduced you might shake your hand and […]
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Today in History: November 6, 1860 The election of Abraham Lincoln to the United States presidency is the spark that ignited the Civil War in April of 1861. Lincoln was the first Republican to become President, a feat made even more impressive considering the party had only been in existence for a decade. He was the first President to be […]
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Gracen asks: Do moths really eat clothes? The common “clothes moth”, “clothing moth” or to give its street name, Tineola bisselliella, doesn’t actually eat clothes. In fact, clothing moths don’t even possess the ability to eat- they don’t have a mouth. Once they become a moth, rather than waste their time eating, they simply mate, the female lays her eggs, […]
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Just over a century ago in the Mediterranean Sea in between Greece’s Peloponnese and the Isle of Crete, a sponge diver came across an amazing discovery: an ancient shipwreck from classical times, filled with pottery, jewels, wine and so many marble and bronze statutes that, upon surfacing, he “gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women“. The […]
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Today in History: November 5, 1605 On this day in history, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators planned to blow up Parliament during the State Opening on November 5, 1605 when King James I was present. As a Catholic, he and his co-conspirators meant to do this in protest for how badly Catholics were treated in England at the time. […]
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Ken Laha asks: How long would someone’s heart have to be stopped before you’d stop trying to revive them? The question of how long someone’s heart would have to be stopped for before you can safely say that regardless of what you do, you’re not going to be able to revive them is a very tricky question. It’s not as […]
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