Myth: Proper CPR technique should include frequent use of “mouth to mouth” in between compressions. In fact, the 2010 guidelines set out by the American Heart Association (AHA) do not recommend breathing for someone while performing CPR (and not for your health, as you might think, but for the person experiencing cardiac arrest’s chances of survival). If you’re a person […]
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Leaves are the food processing factories for trees. The plants use their roots to take in water and other essential nutrients. The leaves then use the water and carbon dioxide from the air, in combination with sunlight, to turn the water and carbon dioxide into glucose, also giving off the byproduct oxygen in the process. It then uses the glucose […]
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The now common “Fish and Chips” combo originated in Britain around 1860. For nearly 200 years before that, fish vendors had been serving fried fish on the streets of Britain. Sometime around the mid-19th century, one of them got the bright idea to serve thick cut French fries with the fried fish, with the first known “Fish and Chip” eatery […]
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Cricket was originally played with a stick that more or less looked like a hockey stick. Bowlers, at the time, typically kept the ball on the ground or at least skimmed the ground, instead of pitching the ball as they do today. As a response to the change towards pitching and bouncing the ball, in the late 18th century the straight […]
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Common foods that are naturally radioactive include potatoes, bananas, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, and kidney beans, among others. Brazil nuts are the most radioactive by far at 6600 picocuries per kg or about 1.875 BED (banana equivalent dose). The radium in Brazil nuts does not come from especially high levels of radium in the soil where the trees grow, but […]
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In 1891, Ellen Martin was the first woman to be able to vote in Lombard, Illinois. She noticed that the Lombard charter on who could vote didn’t mention gender. This charter superseded Illinois law and, thus, she was legally allowed to vote. She and 14 other women voted in the 1891 elections before the charter was promptly amended. Reference
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Today I found out the can opener wasn’t invented until 48 years after the invention of the can. In 1795, Napoleon Bonaparte was having problems with his supply lines. Specifically, they were too long for the food preservation methods at the time, making it difficult to adequately supply his troops with needed food. Thus, he offered a 12,000 franc prize […]
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Ben Franklin fought hard for the Turkey to become the nation’s official bird, but he obviously lost out to the supporters of the Bald Eagle. His case for the Turkey being the national bird on the Great Seal is laid out in the following letter to his daughter Sarah Bache: “For my own part I wish the Eagle had not […]
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Negative forty degrees is the temperature where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales correspond with one another (-40°F = -40°C). Forty is also considered a semi-perfect number owing to the fact that a subset of its divisors added together gives 40 (i.e. 1, 4, 5, 10, and 20). Reference
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Today I found out Lyudmila Pavlichenko sniped a confirmed 309 Axis soldiers, including 36 German snipers, during WWII. While most of the world shied away from putting women on the front line, the Soviet Union did not, including recruiting about 2000 women as snipers during WWII, one of which turned out to be one of the most successful snipers in […]
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Camels have three eyelids. Two of the eyelids have eye lashes which help protect their eyes from sand. The third is a very thin lid which works as a sort of “windshield wiper” to clean off their eyes. It closes/opens from side to side rather than up and down. It is also thin enough that the Camels can see through […]
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The term “Swiss Army Knife” was coined by United States soldiers after WWII. The soldiers had trouble pronouncing the original name of “Schweizer Offiziersmesser” (Swiss Officer’s Knife) and thus began calling the multi-tool a “Swiss Army Knife”. The company that makes Swiss Army Knives is Victorinox, named after the founder, Karl Elsener’s, deceased mother, Victoria. The “nox” part comes from […]
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Kyle asks: Why do doughnuts have holes? Because bakers make them that way… 😉 In truth, nobody knows for sure why people started putting holes in the fried cakes. There are some outlandish tales from a sailor, Captain Hanson Gregory, who claimed to have invented the holed doughnut in 1847 at the age of 16. There is even a plaque […]
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This Day In History: May 30, 1806 On this day in history, 1806, Andrew Jackson dueled with famed marksman Charles Dickinson, killing him, after Dickinson insulted Jackson in a variety of ways including calling Jackson’s wife of bigamist. This latter point was a sore spot for Jackson as his wife really had married him while she was still married to […]
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Country music was originally called “hillbilly music”. In the 1940s, Ernest Tubb helped re-brand this type of music “country music”. In an interview about this, Tubb stated, “Hillbilly, that’s what the press used to call it, ‘hillbilly music’. Now, I always said, ‘You can call me a hillbilly if you got a smile on your face.’ We let the record […]
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Today I found out there once was a baseball player traded for baseball bats. “Bat Man”, as he was nicknamed after the trade, was actually named John C. Odom. His life ended tragically just six months after the momentous trade. After being signed by the San Francisco Giants in 2003 out of Tallahassee Community College, Odom was assigned to play […]
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