Today I found out American “buffalo” are not actually buffalo. The American “buffalo” are actually bison. Specifically, they are “Bison bison”. The only true buffalo are the Asian water buffalo and the African buffalo. The American bison are actually very closely related to the Wisent, which are European bison. American bison are also somewhat closely related to cattle. In fact, […]
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Today I found out the Earth is hottest when it is furthest from the Sun on its orbit, not when it is closest. During the period when the Earth is furthest from the sun (aphelion), the average temperature of the entire planet is about 4°F (2.3°C) higher than when it is closest to the sun (perihelion). On average, the intensity […]
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This Day In History: December 4, 1872 On this day in 1872, the crew of the British craft Dei Gratia spotted the Mary Celeste (originally named The Amazon before being purchased and rechristened) still under sail, but yawing slightly. Upon closer inspection, they observed that no members of the crew were on deck. After several hours of watching from a […]
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This Day In History: Dec 2, 1942 On this day in history, at 3:25 pm CST, 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, famed physicist and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, the “father of the atomic bomb”, and his team successfully started the word’s first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on a racquetball court under the west stands of Stagg […]
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Today I found out fortune cookies were invented in Japan, not China or America. The commonly held notion that they were invented in China typically comes from the fact that they are primarily served in Americanized Chinese restaurants. However, you will not find fortune cookies in actual Chinese restaurants, nor will you find historical records of a similar food item […]
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This Day In History: December 1, 1955 On this day in history in 1955, Rosa Parks’ simple act of refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott which in turn stimulates the Civil Rights Movement. It also vaulted Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight as […]
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In 1972, a 29 year old Nolan Bushnell and a 35 year old Ted Dabney were fresh off a sort of successful failure in an arcade game known as Computer Space, which was more or less just a very blatant rip-off of a previous game Bushnell had come across called Spacewar! The pair had gotten a company called Nutting Associates […]
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Today I found out Keanu Reeves’ first name is pronounced “Kay-ah-noo”, not “Key-ah-Noo”. That isn’t the only misconception surrounding his name. The name itself means “the coolness”, but is often incorrectly said to mean “cool breeze over the mountains”. Reeves’ was named after his uncle Henry Keanu Reeves. In Keanu Reeves’ early days in Hollywood, his agent thought his name […]
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This Day In History: November 30, 1954 On this date in history in 1954 a meteorite hit 31 year old Ann Elizabeth Hodges who was napping in the living room of her home at the time. This made her the first known human being to be struck by an extraterrestrial object. Somewhat humorously, Hodges lived across the street from the […]
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This Day In History: November 29, 1961 On this day in 1961, Enos the chimpanzee was launched into space, becoming the second chimp to travel to space and the first to orbit the Earth. Enos, along with many other chimps such as “Ham”, the first chimp to be launched into space, were trained as part of Project Mercury, which was […]
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Today I found out the holiday season has the lowest suicide rate of any time of the year, not the highest. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the holiday season actually is the time of the year when there are the least amount of suicides with the lowest point being December 1st and the lowest rate of […]
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Canadians store milk in bags, rather than cartons. Surprisingly, they aren’t alone. You can also find bagged milk in India, Scandinavia, Poland, Israel, Hungary, Argentina, and Uruguay. Source
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This Day In History: November 28, 1907: On this day in 1907, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer, who was struggling to make ends meet with his scrap-metal business, purchased an old 600 seat burlesque house in Massachusetts and re-opened it as a movie theater he named the “Orpheum”. His first theater was such a success that within a few years, […]
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If you have a computer hard drive that failed, you should try putting it in the freezer inside a plastic bag for about 20 minutes. After that, immediatley put it back into your computer. This may sound ridiculous, but sometimes that will cause it to work long enough for you to copy your data to another drive. Repeat as necessary […]
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Today I found out alcohol does not “cook out” of food in most cases. The myth that alcohol does all cook out stems from the fact that alcohol has a much lower boiling point temperature (173° F / 78.5° C) than water (212° F / 100° C). Thus, if the temperature is above 78.5° C, then the alcohol should boil […]
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Most of the characters and names in Winnie the Pooh were based on creator A.A. Milne’s son’s toys and stuffed animals with the exception of Owl, Rabbit, and Gopher. The character of Christopher Robin himself was based on Milne’s son Christopher Robin Milne. Christopher Robin Milne’s toy teddy bear, who Winnie the Pooh was created after, is currently on display […]
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The type of radiation emitted by microwave ovens is non-ionizing. This means that it doesn’t contribute to your chance of getting cancer like x-rays, ultraviolet light, etc. do. Outside of potential burn risks, experiments done with rodents have yet to show any major adverse effect to prolonged exposure to microwaves at the 2.45 GHz range seen in most microwave ovens, […]
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This Day In History: November 26, 43 BC On this day in 43 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, (also known as Caesar Augustus) the great nephew of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed the political alliance that became known as the “Second Triumvirate”, which officially ended the days of Rome as a Republic. Before their alliance, the […]
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