Today I found out Moon dust smells like spent gunpowder. This is according to the astronauts that have had the opportunity to smell fresh Moon dust that had been tracked into the lunar module after excursions out on the surface of the Moon. The astronauts didn’t just smell the dust though, they also touched and tasted it. They say it […]
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Today I found out how glow in the dark stuff works. Glow in the dark products all contain some type of phosphor. Phosphors are any substance that radiates light after being energized in some way. There are literally thousands of chemicals that are phosphors. These chemicals all have varying degrees of brightness, color, and length of time they glow after […]
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Today I found out the song “Happy Birthday” is copyrighted and brings in about $2,000,000 per year to the copyright holders (currently an investment group that purchased Warner Music who in turn was the most recent owner of the copyright for the song). The original tune for the song was created by sisters Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill in […]
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Today I found out the red juice in raw red meat is not blood. Nearly all blood is removed from meat during slaughter, which is also why you don’t see blood in raw “white meat”; only an extremely small amount of blood remains within the muscle tissue when you get it from the store. So what is that red liquid […]
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Today I found out that the Swastika in Buddhism represents universal harmony, dharma, the balance of opposites, and, originally, eternity and good luck or “all is well”. Now of course in the western world the Swastika has a pretty bad reputation thanks to a certain German tree hugging vegetarian and his political party. However, Hitler and his crazy gang weren’t […]
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Today I found out, before the 17th century, almost all cultivated carrots were purple. The modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot and gradually developed them into the sweet, plump, orange variety we have today. Before this, pretty much all carrots were purple with mutated versions […]
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Today I found out what “OK” stands for, namely “oll korrect”. So how does that make any sense at all? I’m glad you asked, because otherwise this article would have been way to short to publish. 😉 The time was 1839. In Boston and New York, slang abbreviations were all the rage with the abbreviations often representing deliberately misspelled slang […]
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Today I found out that Seattle doesn’t really get that much rain compared to most U.S. cities. In fact, Seattle ranks 44th among major U.S. cities in average annual rainfall, getting approximately 38 inches annually. Cities that get more rainfall than Seattle include such as Houston Texas (48 inches), New Orleans (60 inches), Mobile AL (65 inches), Memphis (52 inches), […]
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Today I found out how to speed tie shoes.
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Today I found out that almonds are not nuts. In fact, an almond is the seed of the fruit of the almond tree. This tree bears fruits with a “stone-like” seed within. Fruits with these characteristics are called “drupes”. Specifically, a drupe is a fruit that has an outer fleshy part surrounding a shell that contains a seed. Other drupes […]
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Today I found out the words moron, imbecile, and idiot mean different things. In psychology, an idiot has the least intelligence on the IQ scale (this now is equivalent to someone who is mentally retarded or the more politically correct “mentally challenged”); an imbecile is not quite as dumb as an idiot and is now considered equivalent to moderate retardation; […]
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Today I found out why your stomach growls when you are hungry. Generally speaking stomach growling, or as the Greeks named it and Doctors call it today “borborygmi” (which is an onomatopoeia), is the noise created during rhythmic muscle contractions in your stomach and intestines. Your digestive system is one big long tube that goes from your mouth to your […]
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Today I found out what causes people to have red hair. It turns out, it is not because they are the spawn of Satan or otherwise evil at heart (Well, supposedly. Everyone knows a group of red-heads known as “The Fire of Rankin”, lead by the Septi Caput Capitis counsel, secretly rules the world in Edinburgh, Scotland; coincidentally this is […]
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Today I found out that Hitler was a vegetarian. Now he wasn’t always a vegetarian. In fact, it was later in his life that he became one. Around the same time he was killing millions of Jews and millions more from other cultural backgrounds and trying to take over the world. Coincidence? I think not! see note According to transcripts […]
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Today I found out that Napoleon Bonaparte was not in fact especially short. The myth that he was short stems primarily from the fact that he is listed as 5 feet 2 inches tall at the time of his death. However, this is 5 feet 2 inches in French units. In modern international units, he was just shy of 5 […]
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Today I found out around 85% of humans only breathe out of one nostril at a time. Even more interesting is that the pattern of switching from breathing out of one nostril to the other happens in a cyclical fashion, with about four hours or so between each switch typically; although, this can vary from person to person and vary […]
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Today I found out how a sewing machine works. Modern day sewing machines typically use something called “lock stitch”; in older machines a “chain stitch” was fairly popular, but is generally no longer used due to the fact that it pulls out very easily. A lock stitch on the other hand is quite strong and is created by using two […]
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Today I found out it’s “daylight saving time”, not “daylight savings time”. “Daylight saving time” uses the present participle “saving” as an adjective, as in “labor saving device”. Bonus Facts: Ben Franklin often gets credit for being the “genius” who came up with daylight saving time. Interestingly though, the letter he proposed something like what we now call daylight […]
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