Today I found out that Duncan Hines was a real person. The name “Duncan Hines” might not ring any bells for you until you walk down the dessert aisle in a supermarket. His name is plastered on countless cake boxes and frosting jars, and it turns out that it isn’t just the brand name of delicious desserts, but also the […]
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Today I found out how the French flag came to be as it is today. As with several other countries, the original flag of France was that of a saint—in this case, the oriflamme, the flag of St. Denis. The original banner had three to five pointed ends, more like our idea of a pennant than a flag, and was […]
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At the dawn of World War II, although biological and chemical weapons had been used previously in warfare, little was known of precisely how they worked on the human body. Curious, certain Japanese researchers in its army unit 731 conducted a series of indescribably cruel experiments testing the limits of the human body when subjected to harsh conditions, poisonous substances […]
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Rhamit asks: Why are there Bibles in hotel rooms? When did this tradition start? “Hotel Bibles” are also called “Gideon Bibles” after Gideon International, a group of male missionaries and Christian businessmen who took it upon themselves to provide this work to hotels across the nation. Here’s how it all started. In 1898, John H. Nicholson stayed at the crowded […]
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Crystal asks: Why is Chicago named that? The first European to set foot in the area we know today as Chicago was Nicholas Perrot, a French trader, in 1671. He was followed a few years later by fellow French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette. The area was largely populated by the native Algonquian people who had long been established […]
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May 19, 1780 began like any other day. Then, between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., the sky above most of New England grew dark and eventually pitch black. The darkness was witnessed from Maine to New Jersey, plunging what was then almost half of America into fear and chaos. The event was reported to last well into the evening in […]
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The Tsar Bomba, or “Big Ivan” as the Soviets nicknamed it, is the single most powerful man-made explosive device in human history. But why was such a device even made? Well, for similar reasons as to why the U.S. once thought it would be fun to nuke the moon– basically, the bomb was little more than Russia demonstrating its military […]
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So mysterious, no one even knows exactly which century it was written in, the Voynich Manuscript has stumped medieval scholars, linguists, cryptologists and the curious for hundreds of years. The Manuscript Approximately 6″ x 9″ x 2″, this octavo contains 240 pages of indecipherable text and a host of illustrations drawn with iron gall ink on vellum. Many of the […]
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Today I found out about the secret life of Jean Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Born Jeanne Baret to a farming family in 1740, not a lot is known about her childhood and early life. It’s speculated that she likely had an interest in plants from a young age and later became an herb woman with a […]
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Hannah asks: Do elephants really “never forget”? It is obviously impossible to say that elephants never forget anything- and it seems likely they do forget things- but studies have shown that elephants do have exceptionally long memories for certain types of things. For instance, in 1999, an elephant named Jenny was living at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. When […]
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Embed This Infographic [Source: Today I Found Out] For Part 1 of this series go here: 10 Amazing Facts About Animals For Part 2 of this series go here: 10 Amazing Animal Facts (Part-2) For Part 3 of this series go here: 10 Amazing Animal Facts (Part-3) For Part 4 of this series go here: 10 Amazing Animal Facts (Part-4)
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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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It turns out it’s not just politicians that can live without brains, a chicken named Mike lived without his entire head for 18 months! Mike the Headless Chicken was a Wyandotte chicken that was beheaded for the sake of providing a chicken dinner for the mother-in-law of a Fruita, CO farmer, on April 1945. Fortunately for Mike (or unfortunately depending […]
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Jon asks: Was General Tso a real person or just a marketing gimmick? Most of us know the name “General Tso” from the delicious and ubiquitous chicken dish available from Chinese restaurants across the United States. Yet, before Americans were introduced to tangy, spicy, saucy Chinese fried chicken, there was a powerful general and respected leader that helped run China. […]
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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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Kiev.Victor / Shutterstock.com Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com Featureflash / Shutterstock.com Frontpage / Shutterstock.com Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com fmua / Shutterstock.com Text Version: Fact 536: “Seuss” in “Dr. Seuss” is actually pronounced “Zoice” (think “voice”). Theodor Geisel used the name in honor of his mother, whose maiden name was “Seuss”. As most Americans mispronounced the Bavarian name, Geisel eventually gave up […]
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On April 4, 1968, Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa, turned on her television set to learn more about Martin Luther King’s assassination and was appalled at what she heard from a white reporter. With microphone pointed toward a black leader, the white reporter asked, “When our leader (John F. Kennedy) was killed several years ago, his […]
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Today I found out why root beer is called that when it doesn’t contain any alcohol. This popular soft drink pairs well with vanilla ice cream, resulting in root beer floats that are common sights at kids’ birthday parties in North America. The common version that we know today isn’t an alcoholic beverage, but a sweet soda that can be […]
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