{"id":41662,"date":"2015-06-21T02:26:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T09:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=41662"},"modified":"2015-06-21T02:26:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T09:26:29","slug":"weekly-wrap-volume-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/weekly-wrap-volume-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Wrap Volume 86"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\"Eric_Liddell-340x538\"<\/a>The Heroic Death of Chariots of Fire\u2019s Eric Liddell<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine you dedicated your adult life to helping those less fortunate than yourself -that you spent your entire adult life trying to make the world a better place, and when you died (after sacrificing your own life for someone else\u2019s) all most people remembered about you was that you once ran really fast\u2026 You\u2019d be pretty annoyed right? Well that\u2019s what happened to Eric Liddell. Although, as you\u2019ll see, he probably wouldn\u2019t have minded. Liddell is mostly famous for being one of the subjects of the film Chariots of Fire,<\/a><\/em> along with running buddy, Harold Abrahams. If you\u2019re unfamiliar with the film or just want to see us clumsily stumble our way through describing the plot, the film basically follows Liddell and Abrahams through… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"t-rex\"<\/a>Is It True That a T-Rex Couldn\u2019t See You If You Didn\u2019t Move?<\/a><\/p>\n

In the immensely popular (despite the sins<\/a>) movie Jurassic Park<\/em>, there\u2019s the famous scene where the giant T-Rex is attacking a jeep during a thunder storm. As it attacks, Dr. Alan Grant, a self-respecting paleontologist, yells, \u201cDon\u2019t move! He can\u2019t see you, if you don\u2019t move.\u201d Here\u2019s the thing \u2013 that\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 (If that comes as a blow, you\u2019re definitely not going to want to learn the shocking truth about Velociraptors<\/a>.) The Tyrannous Rex not only could see just fine, whether the object was moving or non-moving (which helps one not run into things), there\u2019s also quite a bit of evidence that the T-Rex\u2019s sight was extremely good, very possibly better than modern-day hawks and eagles. This non-moving \u201cfact\u201d from the hit 1993 movie inspired a good deal of research into the subject. Professor Kent Stevens at the University of Oregon began the project DinoMorph in 1993. His goal was to develop \u201ca means to create scientifically useful yet simplified… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"barry\"<\/a>The Phantom of the Forest, The Story of Barry Prudom<\/a><\/p>\n

For 17 days in the summer of 1982, Barry Prudom was the most wanted man in all of England. Barry\u2019s uncanny ability to blend into the woods of North Yorkshire and evade capture, even when hundreds of polices officers were searching for him in a relatively small area, earned him the nickname \u201cThe Phantom of the Forest\u201d. According to the British papers who dissected his life following his short, bloody stint as a fugitive, Barry Prudom had \u201can unremarkable youth\u201d that was punctuated with bouts of criminal mischief that more often than not landed the youngster in trouble. Born in Leeds in 1944, Prudom was the result of an illicit and short-lived affair between a dressmaker and a soldier. Prudom\u2019s father abandoned the pair shortly after his birth and was never heard from again by… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"earl-manigault\"<\/a>The Greatest Basketball Player You\u2019ve Probably Never Heard Of<\/a><\/p>\n

Ask a casual fan of basketball to tell you who the greatest player in history is and they\u2019ll probably say that it\u2019s either Michael Jordan or Bugs Bunny, depending on how many times they watched Space Jam as a kid. When basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was asked who the greatest player he ever played against was, after a long an illustrious NBA career playing against many of the legends of the sport, he gave a surprising answer- \u201cThat would have to be \u2018The Goat’\u201d- a man who has variously been described by players and sports writers alike as the \u201cthe greatest basketball player to never play in the NBA\u201d. Born in 1945 in a rural area of Charleston, South Carolina, \u201cthe Goat\u201d, otherwise known as Earl Manigault, started out life in extreme poverty and hardship. The youngest of 9 children, Earl was taken in by a woman named Mary Manigault at around 7 years of age when it became… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"h-tracy-hall\"<\/a>A $25 Bonus<\/span>– H. Tracy Hall and the Invention of the Synthetic Diamond<\/a><\/p>\n

As you may know, naturally created diamonds are formed from carbon subjected to extreme pressure (725,000 pounds per square inch or so) and heat (1,650 to 2,370 \u00b0F) some 90-120 miles down. The world\u2019s natural diamond supply (that has come to the surface) was formed in this way some 1-3 billion years ago. However, scientists only realized that diamonds are the crystallized form of carbon in 1772 when Antoine Lavoisier<\/a> made the discovery. Despite work by numerous scientists in the intervening years, the first synthetic diamonds weren\u2019t created until 1954 by one Howard Tracy Hall. Born in 1919 in Ogden, Utah, Hall grew up in nearby Marriott. His family were members of the Mormon Church and lived on a farm far enough from town that heading there for supplies meant the whole… (more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This Week’s YouTube Videos:<\/strong><\/p>\n