This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Origin of Valentines Day While not thought to be directly related to modern Valentine’s Day traditions, the beginnings of celebrating love (of a sort) in February date back to the Romans. The feast of Lupercalia was a pagan fertility and […]
Read more
For many people, being dead is a fairly limiting handicap that prevents them from doing most of the things the living take for granted. In the 1930s, a man called Charles Vance Millar challenged that unfair stereotype via various stipulations of his will that allowed him to continue playing jokes on people despite being dead. A lawyer by trade, Millar […]
Read more
It was presumably a cold, wintry February day in the United States capital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the capital would not move to DC until 1800) when President George Washington put pen to paper and signed the Postal Service Act of 1792. While a rudimentary colonial mailing service had been around since for nearly a century and a half, this new law […]
Read more
In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, Do athletes really go to Disneyland after saying they will when winning a big sporting event? Why is the Miranda warning called that? Why we sometimes refer to the toilet as a crapper and much more. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for many more videos like this. Do Athletes […]
Read more
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? In 1985, Bary Bertiger, an engineer with the high-tech giant Motorola, had an intriguing idea: If a company could put enough low-orbit satellites in the air to attain direct access to the entire surface of the Earth, and use that network to support a satellite […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Origin of Gatorade and How the Tradition of the “Gatorade Shower” Got Started During a typical sticky, unbearable August weekend in 1965 in Gainesville- the home of the University of Florida Gators- football practices were well underway in anticipation for […]
Read more
Walter Hunt is a man who is simultaneously considered to have possessed one of the finest inventive minds in all of American history while also being an individual almost no one has ever heard. This is despite the fact that it’s almost guaranteed that one of his inventions is currently lying somewhere in your home, the safety pin. This was […]
Read more
Jason H. asks: How does an Islamic person know where to face when they’re in space and supposed to be praying towards Mecca? The first Muslim person in space was Royal Saudi Air Force pilot Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1985 aboard the United States shuttle Discovery. He was followed up by the first Muslimah in space, […]
Read more
In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we look at why lazy people are sometimes called couch potatoes, why red meat turns brown when cooked, why you can’t tickle yourself, the fascinating story of the King of the Dudes, and why we drive on parkways and park on driveways. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for many […]
Read more
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader It’s a good bet that after you read this article, you’ll start paying more attention to background props in movies. A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE It was Christmas Eve 2009. Gergely Barki, an art historian and researcher with the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, had settled in with his daughter Lola to […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Can Fish Get Thirsty and Why Can’t Freshwater Fish Live in Saltwater and Vice Versa? For fish, or at least teleost fish (which make up about 96% of all fish), the desire to drink is an urge that originates from the […]
Read more
chastitydetori. asks: Why do athletes dump Gatorade on their coaches after winning a game? During a typical sticky, unbearable August weekend in 1965 in Gainesville- the home of the University of Florida Gators- football practices were well underway in anticipation for the upcoming season. However, the weather had wreaked havoc on the freshman football team over the weekend. 25 players […]
Read more
In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we look at how a business that sold hot dogs grew into Taco Bell, how the gun on the original Duck Hunt worked, when we used to say “Ahoy hoy” when answering a phone, what started the cops eating doughnuts stereotype, and how the crop circles phenomenon got started. Click here to […]
Read more
Americans eat a lot on Super Bowl Sunday, according to one 2015 study consuming triple the amount of their daily allowance of calories per serving during the Super Bowl. In fact, it’s the second largest food consumption day of the year in the country (behind Thanksgiving). Of the many millions of pounds of snacks eaten in honor of America’s (still) […]
Read more
Becky G. asks: Why are cowardly people called “yellow bellied”? The color of warning signals, smiley faces, rubber duckies and the Sun (at least from our perspective- in fact the Sun is white if viewed from space), for many of us yellow has a favorable connotation; yet, at various points throughout human history, yellow has decidedly been a symbolism of, […]
Read more
Kevin A. asks: Why are significant days called red letter days? While it’s commonly stated that the practice of marking important dates in red didn’t begin until the Middle Ages, in fact, in ancient Rome red ink was sometimes used on calendars to identify significant dates, as well as occasionally used on important text in documents, with the underlying reason […]
Read more
Helen W. asks: Is it possible for a fish to get thirsty or do they always get the water they need automatically? For fish, or at least teleost fish (which make up about 96% of all fish), the desire to drink is an urge that originates from the hindbrain, whereas in land-based animals it originates in the forebrain. It is […]
Read more
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Curious Case of the Pillownauts Today we take it for granted that astronauts can function in the weightlessness of spaceflight, but at the dawn of the space age in the early 1960s, scientists weren’t sure that was possible. Some experts […]
Read more