What was supposed to be just another day on the job for 25-year-old Phineas Gage turned out to be anything but, with events transpiring to make him a legend – in neurology anyway. On that fateful day, Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic brain injury when a very large iron rod went through his head. Despite this, he survived and became one of […]
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Today I found out about Silbo Gomero, the whistling language. In Spanish, “Silbo Gomero” means “Gomeran whistling.” It is a language “spoken” on La Gomera in the Canary Islands (which incidentally may have been named after dogs, and certainly wasn’t named after birds) and is made up entirely of whistling sounds. The language was used by the Guanches—the aboriginal people […]
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Myth: Nero played music while Rome burned to the ground. The infamous phrase—“Nero fiddled while Rome burned”—has come to mean a person who is neglecting their duties, probably by doing something frivolous. Nero is painted as an emperor who didn’t care about his people, but it’s likely that he didn’t deserve such a bad reputation. This is extremely similar to […]
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The dodo, or Raphus cucullatus if you want to get fancy, is an extinct species of flightless bird that was native to the tiny island nation of Mauritius before it sadly died out. But enough of the Discovery Channel stuff, you’re reading this to find out how this sucker went extinct. And the answer is, well, complicated. It’s commonly believed that […]
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Today I found out the creator of the Nike “swoosh” logo was originally only paid $35 for it. The woman is Carolyn Davidson. At the time she created the now world famous logo, Davidson was a student at Portland State University where one of the co-founders of Nike, Phil Knight, was teaching as an assistant professor in accounting. On the […]
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Dan Lewis runs the wildly popular daily newsletter Now I Know (“Learn Something New Every Day, By Email”). To subscribe to his daily email, click here.. Google the phrase “magic of compound interest” and you’ll come up with about 4 million or so results. Compound interest — which Albert Einstein may have called ”the most powerful force in the universe” — is the […]
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B.Nice26 asks: Is there really such a thing as a truth serum? It sounds like something taken directly from the pages of Harry Potter—truth serum, or drugs that “make people tell the truth.” Somewhat recently a U.S. judge approved the use of truth serum on James Holmes, the accused Aurora, Colorado “Batman” shooter. So clearly the answer to your question […]
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Myth: Frequently wearing a hat will cause permanent hair loss. I was once told by my mother that wearing a hat would cause me to go bald. I’m not sure if she actually knew what causes baldness or if she simply didn’t like my Seattle Seahawks hat (stupid Pittsburgh Steelers fans!). Either way, the idea that wearing a hat will […]
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Today I found out about the history of the Rosetta Stone and how hieroglyphics were first translated. Hieroglyphics were elaborate, elegant symbols used prolifically in Ancient Egypt. The symbols decorated temples and tombs of pharaohs. However, being quite ornate, other scripts were usually used in day-to-day life, such as demotic, a precursor to Coptic, which was used in Egypt until […]
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Today I found out dogs and cats are typically right pawed or left pawed. This is according to two studies, one done at the Ataturk University in Turkey (in 1991) and another at the University of Manchester in England (in 2006). According to the Ataturk University study, the majority of domestic cats are right pawed (50%), 10% of them are […]
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If you’ve ever been to London, or even seen a picture of London, you’ve probably seen the giant clock tower at the corner of the Palace of Westminster. This tower is one of London’s major icons, ranking right up there with red double-decker buses, the London Eye, and Platform 9 ¾. Contrary to popular belief, the clock tower itself is […]
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Today I found out men wore high heel shoes long before women. The first high heel wearers are believed to have been Persian horseback warriors sometime around the ninth century. The extended heel was reportedly developed specifically for riding, to keep the rider’s foot from slipping out of the stirrups. It also helped to hold the rider steady when standing […]
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We are all familiar with the colloquialism “gaydar” which refers to a person’s intuitive, and often wildly inaccurate, ability to assess the sexual orientation of another person. In the 1960s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) attempted to use a slightly more scientific, though equally flawed, approach- a machine to detect if a person was gay or not. This was […]
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Today I found out the origin of the phrase “once in a blue moon” and what a blue moon actually is. “Once in a blue moon” today means “very rarely,” though it used to mean something that was absurd, right along the lines of “when pigs fly.” The first known recorded use of a form of the phrase is in […]
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Tsutomu Yamaguchi died from stomach cancer. The cancer part perhaps isn’t surprising given that Yamaguchi is currently the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as having lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Note: There were actually well over a 100 or so others as well, perhaps as many as 165; they just have never […]
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Dev asks: Why does XOXO mean hugs and kisses? You’ve seen XO as a sign-off representing love, affection, or friendship on letters, cards, emails, chat rooms and text messages. You may have even been torn on whether or not to include both the X and the O, considering one signifies hugs and the other means kisses. Use the incorrect symbol, […]
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Today I found out that the makers of Barbie used to sell a doll whose breasts grew when her arm rotated. Yes, you read that correctly. It was 1975 and the doll was called “Growing Up Skipper”. When you rotated her arm, she grew an inch taller and her small breasts grew out of her plastic chest. She could return […]
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They’re coming. If you live on the Eastern seaboard of North America, prepare this summer for a large-scale invasion of a species of cicada (“cicada” being the Latin for “tree cricket”) that hasn’t happened in 17 years. You will probably hear them before you see them, as a male swarm of these insects can produce noise at over 100 dB. The […]
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