James H. asks: How realistic is the idea presented in video games of shooting explosives to set them off? Given that their main and really only purposes is violently exploding, you might be surprised to learn that most explosives utilised by the military are shockingly stable. So much so, in fact, that, contrary to what is often depicted in movies […]
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As a wise man once said, “They say that the best weapon is the one that you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree! I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.” Adhering closely to this mantra, the M65 was indeed only fired once and then simply used as a deterrent in the early days of the Cold […]
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Mary A. asks: How did someone get the job of an executioner in medieval times? Few occupations from history are as maligned as that of Medieval-era executioner. Popularly painted as gleeful dispensers of death and torture, the truth seems to be that many executioners throughout this period usually treated the occupation with a certain reverence and exhibited an extreme dedication […]
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Isaac R. asks: When people buy expensive art worth hundreds of millions of dollars, how do they pay for it? Like could they pay with cash or do they have to have their bank wire the money? Just wondering about the nuts and bolts here. As we’ve discussed before, there are a handful of people walking around right now with […]
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Jessica K. asks: Has anyone ever inherited millions of dollars from a long-lost relative they’ve never heard of like happens in movies? If you’re like, well, pretty much everyone, at some point you’ve received an email claiming you’ve inherited a large sum of money from some person you’ve never heard of. All you have to do to get it is […]
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Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as food began to be more and more mass produced and shipped long distances, instead of locally grown and sold fresh, it was basically the Wild West in regards to food production and there were no real official regulations on what you could add to food, or even that if you […]
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Mavos asks: If the queen happened to kill someone can she be prosecuted? As the current monarch of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and a bunch of other countries that have her on their money, the Queen enjoys something known as sovereign immunity. In a nutshell, sovereign, or crown immunity as it is sometimes known, means that the Queen is […]
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Joshua T. asks: What were all those metal things you see on the beaches in pictures of the Omaha landing? The Normandy Invasions represented one of the single largest military maneuvers in history. Beginning on June 6, 1944, D-Day (see, What does the “D” in D-Day stand for?), the invasion was the largest amphibious assault of all time and involved […]
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Described as “the bravest man you’ve never heard of”, Captain Humbert Roque Versace’s story is one that is not as well known as it should be. So allow us to remedy that by discussing how he spent two years basically being a huge pain in the ass for his captors in a Vietnamese POW camp- so much so that he […]
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Dan P asks: We see in the old movies and cartoons that the villain ties their victim to the railroad tracks to kill him or her in a gruesome way thought the hero always rescues the victim in the nick of time.Are there any documented cases of someone being tied up and left to die on the railroad tracks? A […]
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Asa K. asks: What happens when people are accidentally declared dead, and how do they prove that they’re alive? As with most legal matters, answering the question of what exactly happens when a person is accidentally declared dead varies from country to country, although, curiously, from our research, with some exceptions like a few instances we found in Canada particularly, […]
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Philip R. asks: Has any scientist ever named a newly discovered creature after someone they dislike out of spite? Naming a newly discovered species is a rather prestigious privilege. As you can probably imagine then, many see the act of choosing a suitable name for a newly discovered creature as a task that requires a great deal of consideration and […]
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In the opening days of WW1, Unterseeboots, better known simply as U-boats, proved to be a potent and constant threat to Allied ships, with one U-boat identified as SM U-9 infamously killing nearly 1,500 British sailors in less than an hour by sinking three armoured British cruisers on September 22, 1914. That same U-boat would go on to sink over […]
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Jen M. asks: What did they do with all the dead bodies after huge battles in history? Given we know that even Neanderthals would bury their dead (even including objects with the bodies) and various human hunter-gatherer groups likewise used to bury or cremate people at specifics sites that functioned as sort of pilgrimage locations for these nomads, it should […]
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Mark B. asks: How do artists making paintings with people that have eyes that follow you around the room? Art as they say, is subjective, what one person considers a priceless masterpiece others might see as nothing more than a giant black square… But there’s one very specific kind of painting that most everyone sees the same way- the kind […]
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Pitched as the “ultimate sport”, chess boxing is – depending on who you ask – either a seamless blend of the cerebral and the physical or a joke that got kinda out of hand… Formally invented in the early 2000s, chess boxing is the brainchild of a Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh who has since recognised the appeal of chess boxing […]
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Long considered the greatest of the so-called “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”, the Temple of Artemis located in modern-day Turkey consists of nothing more than a single column of marble surrounded by random pieces of debris. Famously destroyed and rebuilt multiple times over the centuries, the temple is most notable for being burned down by a guy who wanted […]
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For many beer aficionados “tastes like warm piss” is perhaps the most withering insult one can hurl in the general direction of a given beer. While you wouldn’t begrudge a member of the public making such a claim about a particular beer, you’d think brewers themselves would have a little more decorum. Something nobody apparently told a certain Heineken distributor […]
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