Anthony Johnson first came over to America as an indentured servant, arriving in 1620 in the Colony of Virginia. He did not come over willingly, as many did, agreeing to become indentured servants in exchange for passage to the New World. Rather, Johnson was captured in Angola by neighboring tribesmen and eventually sold to a merchant who transported him to […]
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Today I found out about the Rosewood Massacre of 1923. Rosewood, Florida was established around 1845. It was a quiet place that prospered in 1870 when a railway depot was set up to transport the abundant red cedar, from which the town got its name, from Rosewood to a pencil factory in cedar key. Unfortunately, within thirty years the population […]
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It was 5:12am, local time on April 18, 1906, when residents of the San Francisco Bay area in California experienced major shaking. 20-25 seconds later, they learned the hard way that that shaking was nothing compared to what they would experience for the next 45-60 seconds. The epicenter of the 7.7 – 8.25 quake was about 2 miles from the city of […]
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The Hindenburg disaster will probably always be remembered as the singular event that killed airship travel. In truth, there were other events that occurred which also contributed, but none stand out in the public consciousness more than the demise of the Hindenburg. The image of that huge ship falling from the sky and erupting into flames before burning to nothing […]
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The speed of light in a vacuum stands at “exactly 299,792,458 metres per second“. The reason today we can put an exact figure on it is because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant that has been measured with lasers; and when an experiment involves lasers, it’s hard to argue with the results. As to why […]
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At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a propeller-driven, four-engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft lifted off from the unassuming island of Tinian, its destination due North. Inside, as was customary for the B-29, was a bomb. However, unlike the bombs with which the US Air Force had scorched Japan for roughly a year, this bomb was not filled with […]
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Twister has been a sure fire way to break the ice at parties for decades now. Earlier centuries had waltzes and minuets as socially sanctioned ways to get physically closer to the opposite sex. In the 20th century, for a time this popularly switched to the game of Twister; a very different activity, but the same underlying concept. Before we […]
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Car accidents are a sad fact of life. Every day thousands lose their lives in collisions, crashes and accidents. Though the car itself is a fairly recent invention, the first recorded accident involving them could have happened almost 300 years ago, depending on what your definition of a car is. Though it looked nothing like the modern cars you see […]
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Today I found out how the French flag came to be as it is today. As with several other countries, the original flag of France was that of a saint—in this case, the oriflamme, the flag of St. Denis. The original banner had three to five pointed ends, more like our idea of a pennant than a flag, and was […]
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May 19, 1780 began like any other day. Then, between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., the sky above most of New England grew dark and eventually pitch black. The darkness was witnessed from Maine to New Jersey, plunging what was then almost half of America into fear and chaos. The event was reported to last well into the evening in […]
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The Tsar Bomba, or “Big Ivan” as the Soviets nicknamed it, is the single most powerful man-made explosive device in human history. But why was such a device even made? Well, for similar reasons as to why the U.S. once thought it would be fun to nuke the moon– basically, the bomb was little more than Russia demonstrating its military […]
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Today I found out about the secret life of Jean Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Born Jeanne Baret to a farming family in 1740, not a lot is known about her childhood and early life. It’s speculated that she likely had an interest in plants from a young age and later became an herb woman with a […]
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Katie asks: Why is the Newbery Award called that? The Newbery Award is named after a man, John Newbery, who is considered more or less the “Father of Children’s Literature”. Newbery was born in 1713 in England. He was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a printer named William Ayers and later to William Carnan. When Carnan died, he […]
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Kathy asks: Why do people think Area 51 contains alien bodies? Area 51 is now so ingrained into popular culture that it’s virtually synonymous with Aliens; it’s impossible to mention one without the other somehow creeping into the conversation, but why are the two so intrinsically linked? Why do we automatically picture little green men any time someone so much […]
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On a relatively mild January day in 1919, Boston was the setting for one of the more bizarre disasters to ever happen on American soil. The incident was also the impetus behind the longest court battle in the city’s history. 21 people lost their lives that day, while another 150 were seriously injured. The price tag to address the damage […]
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Mark asks: When did people first start cutting the foreskins off penises? Having served variously as a mark of virility, servility and gentility, circumcision has throughout the centuries worn many symbolic hats. While anthropologists disagree as to the definitive origins of circumcision, the earliest hard evidence comes from the first ancient Egyptian mummies of considerable vintage, around 2300 BC. That […]
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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.. For a few centuries ending in the late 1800s, stocks were common in town centers in the United States and Europe. The device, used as a way to humiliate those who violated cultural norms […]
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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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