This Day In History: July 8, 1776 Like many beloved tales of early Americana, such as Betsy Ross creating the flag, the Declaration of Independence being signed on July 4th (it was actually about a month later), and Paul Revere doing that midnight ride as a solo act, the tale of the Liberty Bell ringing to mark the first reading […]
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Our very good friends over at Neatorama are currently running a big sale offering their awesome T-shirts for up to 20% off with free worldwide shipping on orders of $75 and up. The sale ends soon (this Saturday), so if you’re looking to stock up on some great T-shirts for the summer at a great price, go check it out […]
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Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta is arguably one of the most famous men in the history of Mexico and yet, rather paradoxically, there are few people who know his name and even fewer who know his face. This is because for almost five decades Huerta was known to the public only as a silver faced luchadore called El Santo. And in that time, […]
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Diane F. asks: Who started the tradition of girls jumping out of cakes? Almost everyone has seen depicted the bizarre bachelor party tradition of a scantily-clad woman jumping out of a giant cake. It turns up most often in decades-old films, TV shows, and comics, but it still persists today at lavish Vegas shindigs—though the cakes are now usually made […]
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This Day In History: July 7, 1980 In the late 1970s, the members of Led Zeppelin were plagued by misfortune. Singer Robert Plant was put out of commission by a serious car accident in 1975. When he had almost fully recovered two years later, his 5-year-old son died suddenly of an infection. Just days before little Karac’s death, drummer John […]
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader As 1972 approached, President Richard Nixon started to get more and more concerned about his coming reelection campaign. He became convinced that his political adversaries weren’t just opponents-they were “enemies” and had to be stopped. He and his advisers compiled this list of 20 public figures who they felt could […]
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First discovered back in the 1930s, chlorine trifluoride is a rather curious chemical that easily reacts, sometimes explosively, with just about every known substance on Earth. Just to get the ball rolling, here’s a few of the more unusual things chlorine trifluoride is known to set fire to on contact: glass, sand, asbestos, rust, concrete, people, pyrex, cloth, and the dreams of children… […]
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This Day In History: July 6, 1535 “Let not your spirits be cast down, for I hope we shall see one another in a better place, where we shall be free to live and love in eternal bliss.” – Sir Thomas More It wasn’t just Henry VIII’s wives that bore the brunt of his ire. His closest pals also met […]
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This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why Some Cheeses Come in Wheels and Others in Blocks Whether a block, a wheel, a cylinder or a pyramid, a cheese’s shape is dictated by concerns with pressure, salt absorption, ripening, economics and/or tradition. Cheeses that are made in wheels, […]
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For those in the United States celebrating Independence Day and looking to have something interesting to talk to your friends and relatives about at your respective barbeques, here is some conversation fodder to both make yourself look smarter and avoid having to discuss once again how your cousin’s three year old daughter is already showing every sign of being the […]
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This Day In History: July 3, 1775 Just a couple of weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill, there was an uneasy stalemate between the British troops and the American colonists as both sides took their measure and regrouped. The British stationed at Bunker Hill had a lovely view of the 20,000 Colonial troops and their sturdy fortifications across the […]
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Ben W. asks: Who invented darts? While throwing rocks and dart-like objects in battle has been around seemingly as long as there have been humans, rocks, and dart-like objects, the game of darts itself is generally thought to have stemmed from the Middle Ages. Legend has it that everyone’s favorite pub game was originally invented by bored (and possibly tipsy) […]
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This is the first video from our new movie trivia YouTube channel, Flick Facts, where we’ll cover all the interesting tidbits surrounding various movies. Subscribe here! TRANSCRIPT Released in 1985 on a relatively shoe-string budget of around $6.5 million, The Terminator is a bona fide cinema classic, but few are aware of how close this Sci-Fi cornerstone came to never […]
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This Day In History: July 2, 1566 Michel de Nostradame was born on December 14, 1503 in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France. His family’s roots were Jewish, but they converted to Catholicism to avoid the terrible persecution inflicted on the Jews during the Inquisition. His grandfather saw potential in the boy and taught him Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, as well as mathematics, and […]
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In this week’s “best of” our YouTube channel, we discuss why we call the seasons Summer, Autumn (or Fall), Winter, and Spring; what PEZ stands for and some interesting things about its creator; the fact that soon enough the type of banana we eat today probably won’t be available in the supermarkets anymore; who was the first to pee on […]
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Shristi U. asks: Why did trains used to have cabooses but now don’t? For well over a century, cabooses, the cute quintessentially red cars at the rear of trains in years past, served an integral function in train operations. Carrying a brakeman and a flagman back when brakes were set by hand, when it was time to slow the train, […]
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This Day In History: July 1, 1961 “I was supposed to be a boy,” she often said. And yes, her birth must have been somewhat of a disappointment to an aristocratic family with two daughters who had suffered the death of baby boy the year before. Unlike her older sisters, her christening was a relatively subdued affair, and she boasted […]
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This is a video from the very talented CGP Grey in which he gives a brief history of the Confederate flag, and discusses the fact that the flag so many people think today was the Confederate flag, technically never really was officially. If you like this video, please subscribe to Grey’s awesome YouTube channel here. You can also join us […]
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