This Day In History: December 15, 1892 Jean Paul Getty, more commonly known as J. Paul Getty, was born on December 15, 1896 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The son of a self-made man, George Getty (a blue collared laborer turned lawyer turned oil prospector), J. Paul Getty used a business loan from his father to go on to create a global […]
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In this video from our YouTube channel (click here to subscribe), we take a look a look at the fascinating and unlikely origin of one of the most popular Christmas stories of all time. To make sure you don’t miss out on many more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to our new daily channel! If you liked this […]
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Ron L. asks: Did George Washington’s doctors kill him with their treatments? After the Revolutionary War, George Washington looked forward to a quiet retirement as a gentleman farmer in Virginia. But this was not to be as he was repeatedly called back to serve the needs of the new nation he helped create. When he was called to serve as […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Throughout most of history, if you lost a limb, the replacement of choice was a wooden peg (which only looked cool if you were a pirate). But that all changed after a young soldier lost a leg in the Civil War and refused to take his injury lying down. WALKING […]
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In this video from our YouTube channel (click here to subscribe), we take a look at why you definitely shouldn’t keep a goldfish in a small, featureless fish bowl by themselves. To make sure you don’t miss out on many more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to our new daily channel! If you liked this video, you might […]
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Characterized by a remarkable return of mental faculties and sometimes physical skills to terminal patients who were thought to have lost such abilities, Terminal Lucidity, while extraordinary, is also a very real and extremely mind boggling phenomenon that has largely been ignored by modern scientists, despite references to it going all the way back to Hippocrates. A relatively recent term, […]
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This Day In History: December 11, 1978 There were many groups that wanted the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi gone from Iran in 1978, and they were rallying around Ruhollah Khomeini to replace him as head of the government. Born in 1902, Khomeini was a scholar and cleric who earned the title of Ayatollah after rigorous religious study. In addition to […]
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Christmas music, for the most part, tends to be both non-offensive and fairly generic- two things you can’t really say about the song, Killing in the Name by rap metal band, Rage Against the Machine, which somehow managed to become the 2009 UK Christmas #1 thanks to the efforts of a couple who was really annoyed with the coveted spot […]
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This Day In History: December 10, 1963 On December 10, 1963, Frank Sinatra received a phone call from a group of co-conspirators who had been holding his son, Frank Jr., hostage since December 8th. They demanded a ransom payment of $240,000 (about $1.8 million today), which Sinatra paid immediately. It was a bizarre crime to say the least. The kidnapping […]
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While Danny Trejo might not be a name as many people would recognise as say, Tom Cruise, with over 300 film credits to date since his acting debut in the mid-1980s, not to mention his distinctive hard-as-nails look, he’s certainly one of the more recongisable faces in Hollywood. Unlike most, however, Danny’s trail to becoming one of the hardest working […]
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In this video from MinuteEarth, they look at how learned behavior can get passed on to one’s offspring genetically. If you like TodayIFoundOut, odds are you’ll also greatly enjoy their videos. So go check them out and subscribe to their channel here. You can also join us in supporting their efforts to make more videos like this by donating via […]
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This Day In History: December 8, 1542 On December 8, 1542, Mary, Queen of Scots, renowned for her beauty and quick wit as well as her sad fate, was born at Linlithgow Palace. Her father, James V, was away fighting the English at the time of her birth. He had suffered a crushing defeat to Henry VIII at Solway Moss […]
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David S. asks: Here’s one for you, why exactly does Bond, James Bond, like his Martinis shaken and not stirred? A properly made martini is mostly dry gin with a bit of dry vermouth and ice (Epicurious recommends 5 parts gin to 1 part vermouth). All three should be placed into a cocktail shaker, but rather than shaking, they should […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader To some people, the word “corporation” has negative connotations, and not without reason—names like Enron and Lehman Brothers come to mind. But it’s also one of the greatest tools for economic growth ever invented. Here’s a brief, fascinating history of the corporation. BACKGROUND Most of us have a simple understanding […]
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According to the National Christmas Tree Association each year in the U.S. alone between 25 and 30 million live Christmas trees are sold. To accommodate this annual chopping fest, at any given time there are around 350 million trees growing on various Christmas tree farms in the United States. As for the other side of things, it’s not clear how […]
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For those of you interested in nerding up your wardrobe or otherwise finding a great inexpensive gift for someone, our good friends over at Neatorama are wrapping up their Cyber Week sale at their NeatoShop (ending tomorrow) including free world-wide shipping on all their shirts. They have a pretty ridiculous number of designs to pick from, so you’re sure to […]
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Today I found out the “ye” as in “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe” should be pronounced “the”. The “Ye” here is not the “ye” as in “Judge not, that ye (you) be not judged”, but is rather a remnant of the letter “thorn” or “þorn” (Þ, þ). The letter thorn was used in Old Norse, Old English-Middle English, Gothic, and Icelandic […]
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As of 2014, the SpongeBob SquarePants brand has generated in excess of $13 billion since the pilot episode was released about a decade and a half ago. But have you ever stopped to wonder how on Earth a cartoon about an anthropomorphic kitchen sponge came to exist in the first place and how networks were convinced that it could not […]
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