Today in History: October 15, 1917 On this day in history, 1917, famed femme fatale exotic dancer and convicted spy, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle MacLeod, a.k.a. Mata Hari, was executed. Mata Hari first showed up in Paris in 1905. In need of money after having recently left her abusive husband, she began performing exotic Asian dances, for which she quickly gained […]
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Today I found out that Denny’s started out as a doughnut shop. For those not familiar, Denny’s is a restaurant popular throughout North America whose slogan is “America’s Diner is always open.” It also has some branches in various South American countries, and a few as far afield as Japan, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates, though it hasn’t […]
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Today I found out the man who gave the world one of the most enduring fictional characters of all time, James Bond, also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The man was Ian Fleming. Born May 28, 1908 to a wealthy family in London, he and his three brothers were educated at Eton College, the same school Princes William and Harry […]
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This Day In History: October 14, 1066 The Battle of Hastings, like so many other battles, was a dispute over the line of succession to the English throne. But it ending up being much more than that – the Battle of Hastings, fought on this day in history, 1066, ushered in a new era in the English legal system, language […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The First Person to “Walk” in Space Nearly Got Stuck Out There That lucky individual was Alexei Leonov, who was born in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1934. He was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force Pilots to be chosen […]
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One doesn’t commonly associate the slogan “make love not war” with the U.S. military. Indeed, the United States military is feared and formidable precisely because it has proven so effective at conceptualizing clever and innovative ways to search, find and destroy, often with the simple push of a button. However, in a departure from these hostile traditions, in 1994 the Wright Laboratory, part of […]
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In August 1864, the Sixteenth President of the United States of America was nearly assassinated about nine months before he was actually assassinated. This is the story. The Soldier’s Home Throughout the Civil War (1861-1865), President Abraham Lincoln and his family spent the summer and fall in a cottage on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home in the country outside […]
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Today in History: October 11, 2002 On this day in history, 2002, ex-United States President Jimmy Carter was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of effort through his Carter Center to “wage peace” using peaceful negotiations to resolve conflict. The Peace Prize has often been used through the years to make political statements, and in 2002 […]
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Between 1923 and 1951, a diminutive Floridian single-handedly and without heavy machinery moved 1,000 tons of limestone, creating out of it a castle. This is his story. The Builder Very little is known of the mysterious creator of the Coral Castle, Ed Leedskalnin. Born in Riga, Latvia in 1887 to a family of stonemasons, Ed immigrated to the U.S. sometime […]
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Just like when we told you, Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson“, today we’re going to blow your mind by telling that nowhere, in the entirety of the original Star Trek, were the words, “Beam me up, Scotty” ever uttered. They did come close several times, such as in the 1969 episode of the original series, The Savage […]
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Today in History: October 10, 1991 On this day in history, 1991, one of the series of killing sprees that would help inspire the phrase “going postal” occurred. A former postal worker, Joseph Harris, who was angry that he had been fired eighteen months previously in April of 1990, murdered his ex-supervisor Carol Ott and her boyfriend in the home […]
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Janet Jackson and wardrobe malfunction. Peanut butter and jelly. Sonny and Cher. Some things just go together. Sort of how I feel about Canadian-American actor Rick Moranis and the movies Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or Ghostbusters. Whenever I hear his name, I have immediate flashbacks of oversized Cheerios and milk splashing out of a giant bowl. But what happened […]
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Karla asks: What exactly is Worcestershire sauce? Worcestershire sauce, sometimes known as “Worcester sauce” is a savoury sauce that is often added to meat and fish dishes or, if you like your alcoholic beverages, the Bloody Mary cocktail. It may (or may not depending on how much you research your sauce choices) surprise you to learn that it’s literally made […]
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This Day In History: October 9th While not given the fanfare of Columbus Day, today in the United States is, in fact, Leif Eriksson Day. Leif Eriksson (other spellings include Ericson, Erikson or Eiriksson), also called “Leif the Lucky”, was the second son of the famous Norse explorer Eric the Red, who, after being booted out of Iceland somewhere around […]
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“Pardon my French, but you’re an asshole! Asshole!” –Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) Centuries before Cameron shouted this over the phone to principal Ed Rooney, English-speaking people had been using the phrase “Pardon my French” to excuse their use of profanity. But why is it French and not Chinese, Swahili or nothing at all? The answer lies in European history. […]
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Hollywood Medical Myths Part 3: You should put a bite block in the mouth of someone having a seizure. Seizures seem to be an ailment that befalls numerous actors in everything from movies to television shows. Whether it’s the condition that leads to their immediate death on screen, or just a reaction to some dramatic situation, the quivering usually leads […]
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Today in History: October 8, 1918 Corporal Alvin C. York, while at the head of a small detachment near the Meuse River in the Argonne Forest in France, killed at least 20 German soldiers and captured an additional 132 men, which later earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. York was born in a log cabin near the Tennessee-Kentucky border […]
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Falling into the category of “you can’t make this up,” is the parasitic barnacle Sacculina. Shedding its hard shell and injecting itself into the body of a host crab, Sacculina becomes its puppet master, preventing the crab from molting, growing, regenerating, digesting and reproducing. Instead, the reprogrammed crab directs all of its energy to nourishing the Sacculina and caring for […]
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