The Statue of Freedom sitting atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in Washing D.C. has more alternate names than the obscure half of the Wu Tang Clan. Over the years, the names attributed to it have ranged from things like “Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace” to the far simpler, “Armed Freedom“. However, the one, common thread is […]
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Joe T. asks: What causes the smell after rain? There are three primary sources of smells that commonly occur after rain. The first, the “clean” smell, in particular after a heavy thunderstorm, is caused by ozone. Ozone (scientifically known as trioxygen due to the fact that it is comprised of three oxygen atoms) is notably pungent and has a very […]
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Saccharin is noted as being the first artificial sweetener, outside of the toxic Lead(II) acetate, and the first product to offer a cheap alternative to cane sugar. Interestingly enough, like the Chocolate Chip Cookie, it was also discovered entirely by accident. The chemical was discovered in 1878/9 in a small lab at Johns Hopkins University. The lab belonged to professor […]
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Very little is known about Lance-Corporal James Welch prior to his actions during WWI. However, we do know some basic details. According to Welch’s grave in Bournemouth crematorium, he was born in 1889 on July 7th in the small English village of Stratfield Saye. Welch must have had a fairly boring childhood because literally the next thing recorded about his […]
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Aluminium is literally one of the most common elements on Earth. So how did it come to be that aluminium cost more than gold? Was it similar to how the relatively common and easily acquired mined diamond came to be seen as valuable in the last century due to strict control of supply to consumers and some of the best marketing […]
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Chellie asks: Do people really only have the right to one phone call when put in jail in the United States? Being arrested is a terrifying and frightening thing with all the horror stories about police abuses of power and other prisoners being absolutely dead-set on making your life miserable in a variety of horrifying ways… at least that’s what […]
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Damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) was a punishment reserved for certain people the Romans decided to dishonour for one reason or another. Rather impressively, it involved trying to get rid of all records that the person ever existed. Understandably, historians aren’t aware of any people to whom this dishonor was successfully applied, since if they did, it wouldn’t have been […]
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Have you ever said something that you ended up immediately regretting or wanted to take back straight away? Well, unless your words cost someone nearly a billion dollars, then you haven’t messed up quite as bad as Gerald Ratner did back in 1991. Yet. Ratner was the CEO of the Ratners Group, jewellers that shook up the usually stiff and inflexible […]
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Jan Zizka (aka Jan Žižka z Trocnova a Kalicha) is regarded as one of the single finest military minds in world history. He also had his skin turned into a drum. Before we get to his death, though, we want to discuss Zizka’s life, because well, frankly it was remarkable. For starters, Zizka, born in 1360, is generally considered to […]
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Remember that scene in the movie Trading Places where Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd bankrupted those two old rich guys by cornering the frozen orange juice market? It turns out that a guy actually once did make many millions of dollars by doing pretty much exactly as they did in the movie, only instead of orange juice, he bought onions… […]
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The Lion King is one of those movies you just have to watch; it’s basically Hamlet with lions instead of pretentious English actors, which as an Englishman, I’m fairly certain scientifically makes The Lion King infinity percent better. Coming to America, however, is more of a cult film. It’s a good film don’t get us wrong, but its distinct lack […]
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Sam asks: If you gave a color blind person something like LSD or some other sort of hallucinogenic drug, would they see colors they couldn’t before? First a little primer on colour blindness from the good people at ColorBlindAwareness.org: Most color blind people are able to see things as clearly as other people but they unable to fully ‘see’ red, […]
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Cindy asks: This is kind of ewww, but I read that eating your own boogers helps boost your immune system. Is this true? Does physically taking boogers out of your nose, putting them in your mouth and swallowing boost your immune system? The short answer is probably not. You ingest your snot all the time without needing to channel it […]
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When it comes to war, innovation is key and WWII saw more insane ideas and weapons of war developed than perhaps any before it. One of the more surreal was the Antonov A-40, colloquially known as the tank that could fly! Known in Russia as the, крылья танка (literally, “Winged Tank”), the Antonov A-40 was the end result of one, […]
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Kipchoge Keino, aka Hezekiah Kipchoge Keino or (thankfully in the interest of avoiding typos) just Kip, is a retired athlete who ran for the country of Kenya. Throughout his career, Kip earned almost a dozen medals, half of which were gold, for being an amazing middle to long distance runner. The story we want to share is the time Kip […]
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Though you’ve likely never given it much thought, a universally accepted unit of measurement like the humble metre is an amazing thing. It lets scientists separated by culture, language, race and even thousands of miles of geography work together on equations and problems like they were sitting next to each other. So how did this unit of measurement come to […]
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Seagulls, or gulls depending on how much you dislike syllables, are considered a pest to many, a minor, avoidable annoyance to many more and the harbingers of death OH GOD LOOK AT THEIR COLD DEAD EYES! to my neighbour who doesn’t get out much. Over the years, there has been a persistent and rather macabre urban myth circulating that gulls […]
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What if we told you that around 90 years ago an epidemic swept across the world that killed over a million people while affecting numerous others, before disappearing, leaving the finest scientific minds of the age absolutely stumped . Then what if we told you that when it didn’t kill you, this illness could instead potentially trap you inside your […]
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