Glass bottles make significantly better containers for carbonated beverages due to the fact that air can diffuse through plastic, allowing the CO2 to escape. Thus, carbonated beverages stored in plastic containers have a much shorter shelf life than their glass counterparts. Reference
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The following brands feature fictitious people: Betty Crocker, Mrs. Butterworth, Aunt Jemima, and Ronald McDonald. Some real people behind famous brands include Chef Boyardee, Uncle Ben, KFC’s Harland Sanders, and popcorn’s Orville Redenbacher. Reference
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Sword swallowing was first introduced in India in 2000 BC where it was a demonstration of divinity and power. From there, it spread to China and Japan for theatrical performance. Today, in order to become an approved member of the Sword Swallowers Association International (yes there is one), they require you to swallow a blade between 15 and 20 inches […]
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Large enough quantities of capsaicin may cause your skin to turn blue-ish, severely inhibit your breathing, cause convulsions, and possible eventual death. However, the relatively small amount of capsaicin in peppers makes it unlikely you’d ever come in contact with enough of this to have this actually happen, unless someone sprayed a significant amount of law enforcement grade pepper spray […]
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The term “latrine” comes from the Latin “lavare”, which means “to wash”. The earliest references to this word being used in English goes all the way back to the mid-17th century. As an aside, the term “toilet” comes from the French “toilette”, meaning “dressing room”. “Toilette” in turn derives from the French “toile”, meaning “cloth”. During the 17th century, the […]
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The Ancient Romans favorite wiping item, including in public restrooms, was a sponge on a stick that would sit in salt water and be placed back in the salt water when done… waiting for the next person to use it… Ancient Greeks were a little more sanitary, using stones and pieces of clay.
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According to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes during a crash and without a parachute and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those falls occurred at heights over 10,000 feet! One such incident involved a British Tail-gunner whose plane was shot down in 1944 […]
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Myth: A “heart attack” and “cardiac arrest” are the same thing. The terms “heart attack” and “cardiac arrest” are often used by lay people interchangeably. However, the fact is that they are not equivalent. “Cardiac arrest” simply implies the heart has stopped pumping blood. On the other hand, a heart attack is a lack of blood flow to a specific […]
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The book “The Woman and the Car, A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women Who Motor or Who Want to Motor” (presumably extremely chatty, given the title), by Dorothy Levitt written in 1906, recommended that women carry a hand-mirror while driving as it is convenient to be able to see behind you during traffic by holding the hand mirror up. […]
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There are some words that change their meaning based on whether the first letter is capitalized or not. These words are collectively known as “capitonyms”. These capitonyms are particularly troublesome when they appear at the beginning of a sentence, as there is no way, based on the single word alone, to tell which meaning is being referred to. Examples of […]
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The difference between bacon and salted pork or ham is primarily just the composition of the brine that is used to cure it. Brine for bacon often includes sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, and saltpeter (for curing the meat); sodium ascorbate (for setting the color, as well as speeding up the curing process); and brown or maple sugar (for flavor), among […]
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Sirius-A is the brightest extrasolar star visible to the naked eye from Earth, being almost twice as bright as the second brightest, Canopus. Sirius-A and Sirius-B combine to form a binary system and appear as one star to the naked eye, though the vast majority of luminosity to the naked eye comes from Sirius-A, Sirius-B being a white dwarf which […]
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Leaves are the food processing factories for trees. The plants use their roots to take in water and other essential nutrients. The leaves then use the water and carbon dioxide from the air, in combination with sunlight, to turn the water and carbon dioxide into glucose, also giving off the byproduct oxygen in the process. It then uses the glucose […]
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The now common “Fish and Chips” combo originated in Britain around 1860. For nearly 200 years before that, fish vendors had been serving fried fish on the streets of Britain. Sometime around the mid-19th century, one of them got the bright idea to serve thick cut French fries with the fried fish, with the first known “Fish and Chip” eatery […]
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Cricket was originally played with a stick that more or less looked like a hockey stick. Bowlers, at the time, typically kept the ball on the ground or at least skimmed the ground, instead of pitching the ball as they do today. As a response to the change towards pitching and bouncing the ball, in the late 18th century the straight […]
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Common foods that are naturally radioactive include potatoes, bananas, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, and kidney beans, among others. Brazil nuts are the most radioactive by far at 6600 picocuries per kg or about 1.875 BED (banana equivalent dose). The radium in Brazil nuts does not come from especially high levels of radium in the soil where the trees grow, but […]
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In 1891, Ellen Martin was the first woman to be able to vote in Lombard, Illinois. She noticed that the Lombard charter on who could vote didn’t mention gender. This charter superseded Illinois law and, thus, she was legally allowed to vote. She and 14 other women voted in the 1891 elections before the charter was promptly amended. Reference
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Ben Franklin fought hard for the Turkey to become the nation’s official bird, but he obviously lost out to the supporters of the Bald Eagle. His case for the Turkey being the national bird on the Great Seal is laid out in the following letter to his daughter Sarah Bache: “For my own part I wish the Eagle had not […]
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