Page 69 – Today I Found Out

Do Olympic Medalists Receive Cash Prizes, Why are Potatoes Called Spuds, Does Sex Before an Athletic Event Hinder Performance and More

August 16, 2016 Dusti

In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss whether Olympic medalists receive cash prizes, why potatoes are called spuds, if sex before an athletic event will hinder performance, where mosquitoes go during the daytime, the ridiculous nuclear launch code previously used by the US at all minuteman silos and why vitamins make urine bright yellow. Click here to […]

Educational Videos

Can Anyone Try to Climb Everest?

August 16, 2016 Karl Smallwood

Melissa T. asks: What is the process involved with climbing Mount Everest? Do you need a permit or something or can anyone just try and climb it if they want to try it? Standing at a foreboding 8,848 metres (or 29,029 feet) high, Mount Everest is recognised as the Earth’s highest mountain. While Everest isn’t generally considered to be the […]

The Strange Fate of Ted’s Head

August 15, 2016 Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Ted Williams’s lifelong dream was to be known as “the greatest hitter who ever lived.” It’s sad, then, that today many people know him as “that baseball player who got cryonically frozen.” HEADING FOR HOME In the summer of 2001, some old friends went to Hernando, Florida, to pay a […]

Why are Breasts Called “Boobs”?

August 15, 2016 Karl Smallwood

Jared M. asks: Why are breasts called boobs? There’s an oft repeated and decidedly untrue claim that Eskimos have hundreds of words for “snow”. (Beyond the fact that there is no single “Eskimo language”, when talking about the wider Eskimo-Aleut language family, these actually have roughly the same number of root-words for snow as English.) The false claim that they […]

Weekly Wrap Volume 111

August 14, 2016 Dusti

This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. The Strange Story of the First Olympian Disqualified for Doping Olympians have been bending (and occasionally breaking) the rules in an effort to give themselves an edge over the competition since the games began. Despite this, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) […]

Most Popular

“Don Draper in a Spacesuit” – The Life of Alan Shepard

August 12, 2016 Matt Blitz

Packed tighter than a sardine in the one-man Freedom 7 capsule, 37-year-old Alan Shepard couldn’t wait any longer. His mission – which originally was going to make Shepard the first human in space – had already been delayed weeks, allowing Yuri Gagarin and the Russians to beat him in blasting off for the stars. Now, in his fourth hour sitting […]

That Time Howard Hughes Purchased a TV Station So He Could Have Netflix in the 1960s

August 11, 2016 Karl Smallwood

Howard Hughes, the legendarily reclusive billionaire business magnate, is a man about whom much has been written and most people know at least a little bit about. However, as we did when we covered JP Morgan’ giant, purple, knobbly nose that he largely managed to keep hidden from the world, today we’re going to focus on a lesser known aspect […]

Did Fidel Castro Really Almost Pitch in the Major Leagues?

August 10, 2016 Matt Blitz

There’s a long history of rulers bragging about their athletic talents. Ancient Egyptian kings sometimes used sporting prowess to show off masculinity and inspire fear. The Roman Emperor Commodus liked to step into the gladiator ring, often asking for already wounded or weakened opponents so he could look superior. (Yes, he was the partial inspiration for the movie Gladiator. Also […]

How Do They Decide the Age When You Become an Adult?

August 10, 2016 Melissa

Dan L. asks: Why is 18 the age that people are considered adults? People continue to mature and grow as individuals throughout our lifetimes (at least ideally). So the 45 year old you would probably not only be better equipped to make decisions than the 25 year old version, but also in all likelihood be a very different person, both […]

How Soap Actually Works, Why No One Would Be Caught Dead Using the Official Olympic Salute Anymore and More

August 9, 2016 Dusti

In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss how soap actually works given that it does not kill bacteria, why no one would be caught dead using the official Olympic salute anymore, why Michael Jackson’s skin turned white as he got older, why Olympians wear colored tape, that time the Olympics flag went missing for almost a century […]

Educational Videos

The Strange Story of the First Person Disqualified From the Olympics for Doping

August 9, 2016 Karl Smallwood

Olympians have been bending (and occasionally breaking) the rules in an effort to give themselves an edge over the competition since the games began. Despite this, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) only started testing for performance enhancing substances in 1968, and only seem to have really started taking the issue seriously in the 1990s. As for the 1968 Games, despite that a […]

That Time the BBC Deleted Almost Every Episode of Doctor Who from Its Archives

August 8, 2016 Karl Smallwood

For over half a century, Doctor Who has proven itself to be one of the best known, most profitable, and most culturally significant series ever produced. Nevertheless, in the 1960s and 1970s the BBC decided to just up and delete pretty much every episode of the show from its archives. So thorough was this purge that, even today, there are […]

The Story Behind The Godfather

August 8, 2016 Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader The Godfather is considered one of the best movies ever made—the American Film Institute ranks it #3, after Citizen Kane and Casablanca. The story of how it got made is just as good. BOOKMAKER In 1955 a pulp-fiction writer named Mario Puzo published his first novel, The Dark Arena, about […]

Weekly Wrap Volume 110

August 6, 2016 Dusti

This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. What Does the Dangly Thing in the Back of Your Throat Do Hanging from the back edge of your soft palate, the palatine uvula seems to serve several functions, none of which are particularly necessary for most people, which is why […]

The Story of Pasteurization and How It Changed the World

August 5, 2016 Matt Blitz

In the mid-19th century, French scientist Louis Pasteur made a discovery that has reverberated through the ages. Perhaps working at the behest of Emperor Napoleon to figure out why wine and beer sometimes soured during fermentation, he found out that this was due to unwanted microorganisms, or “germs,” converting the alcohol into acetic acid. This produced the sour or vinegary […]

Fascinating Olympics Facts

August 5, 2016 Daven Hiskey

Here’s a round-up of all the interesting Olympic facts we’ve covered over the years, including eighteen articles and seven Quick Olympics Facts. Why Do Olympians Wear Colored Tape? The colored tape the Olympians and other athletes wear is called “Kinesio® Tex Tape”, which is essentially just an elastic cotton strip with an acrylic, heat activated adhesive. The tape was designed […]

Blue and Green Pigments Don’t Exist in the Human Iris, So How Do Some People Have Blue and Green Eyes?

August 3, 2016 Melissa

Terran N. asks: Why do some people have different colored eyes? The Basics of Eye Color Eye color is a function of pigmentation both at the back of the iris (iris pigment epithelium) and in its stroma (the front of the iris), as well as the density of the cells in the stroma. In most cases these factors, and hence […]

How Drilling a 14 in Hole Created a 1.3 ft Deep Saltwater Lake Out of a 10 ft Deep Freshwater One, What Causes Dark Circles Under Your Eyes, What Happened to the Dogs Aboard the Titanic and More

August 3, 2016 Dusti

In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss what causes dark circles under your eyes, the dogs aboard the Titanic, the shocking record for the youngest person to ever give birth and more. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for many more videos like this. How Drilling a 14 in. Hole Created a 1.3K ft Deep […]

Educational Videos

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