It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Oh… it’s, a blimp… 1925 marked the year when the first Goodyear airships ascended to the skies. More than 85 years later, the iconic Goodyear blimps can still be spotted drifting through the clouds during football games, basketball tournaments, and even over the 2012 London Olympics. While today the Goodyear blimps are invariable associated […]
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Today I found out that for something that’s supposed to be clean and pure, soap has a murky past. No one knows for sure when soap was first invented, although it appears to have been around since the dawn of civilization. One of the reasons it’s so hard to pin down soap’s first appearance is that it can be made […]
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Perhaps one of the most iconic images to come out of the Vietnam War (see photo here), this photo depicts a uniformed South Vietnamese officer shooting a prisoner in the head. When you look into it, however, there is much more to this photograph than first meets the eye. There is an undeniable brutality to this photo, but even Eddie […]
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“The war began in my front yard and ended in my parlor.” This statement about the start and the end of the U.S. Civil War was spoken by Wilmer McLean and is surprisingly almost perfectly true. A little background- Wilmer McLean was born on May 3, 1814 in Alexandria, Virginia, one of fourteen children. When his parents passed away at […]
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For those not familiar, the “First Lady” is a title which refers to the official hostess of the White House. Although it is not a firm prerequisite for the title, the First Lady is commonly thought to be the wife of the President. But who was actually the first-ever “First Lady”? If you guessed the logical answer, you, of course, […]
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Today I found out the English “alphabet song”, also known as “The A.B.C.”, is based on a tune by Mozart, which in turn is based on a French tune, “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman” (“Ah! Would I tell you, mother?”), which popped up in 1761. A couple decades later, Mozart used this tune in his Twelve Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je, […]
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Much of the genesis of the Beatles is a bit nebulous and is often argued, but most Beatles historians cite the date, July 6, 1957, as the official beginning of the Beatles. John Lennon, a neighborhood guitar-player (local trouble-maker, part-time shoplifter and full-time egomaniac) had been playing around at a few local gigs in the area for a year or […]
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Gracen asks: How did the tradition of predicting weather by checking to see if a rodent did or didn’t see their shadow get its start? Like so many holiday traditions, the origins and progression of Groundhog Day to what we think of it today as are a bit murky. However, we’ll try to shed some light on the subject, starting […]
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This is a guest post by Adam Kutner. (more on Adam at the bottom) Today I found out about a shocking weather incident that happened in London not very long ago. In December of 1952, the city of London experienced a 5-day bout of “fog” that killed at least 4,000 people and made an estimated 100,000 sick. Fog? Isn’t that […]
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On the whole, people don’t generally like to kill one another. Most wars throughout history are often more about the agendas of the state’s leaders than the soldiers on the field actually inherently feeling any real malice towards those they are asked to try to kill or otherwise defeat. Few events in history illustrate this as well as a remarkable […]
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Despite how it sounds, “Tulipmania” does not refer to just a general love of tulips; it was actually one the world’s first recorded major financial bubbles. Long before the dot com frenzy or the real estate bubbles of recent decades, there was Tulipmania in the Netherlands beginning around 1624 and reaching its peak from 1636 to 1637. While the extent […]
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This is a guest post by Shoshana Davis Brushing your teeth after every meal, visiting the dentist for cleanings, and having a relatively painless mouth is not just desired but expected in the year 2012. However, that was not always the case. Dentistry has come a long way since its inception and is often overlooked for other scientific advancements. The […]
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What do a thimble, a sack of money, a battleship, and a top hat have in common? Not much, other than that they are among the eleven playing tokens you receive in a standard Monopoly set. And don’t forget the wheelbarrow, which you’ll need to carry all that cash you are going to appropriate from your hapless opponents. The history […]
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It was to be one of the strangest chapters in the storied history of the Beatles. In most Beatle controversies, John Lennon, the most outspoken and controversial Beatle, was usually at the bottom of it, but not this time. George Harrison “The Quiet Beatle” brought on the 1963-64 Jelly Bean controversy that was to drive the Beatles batty. In a […]
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Trevor A. asks: Why did Coke try to switch to “New Coke”? It turns out there was actually (if you squint at the problem hard enough), a semi-good reason for doing the switch. It didn’t work out, of course… But then, it kind of did work out amazingly well at the same time, as you’ll soon see. Now, before I […]
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The real name of the “Birdman” was Robert Franklin Stroud. Seattle born Stroud ran away from home at the age of 13 and was first arrested in 1909 at the age of 19 after turning himself in for murder. He shot and killed a bartender, F. K. Von Dahmer, who had allegedly failed to pay a prostitute for whom Stroud was […]
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Romi asks: How did the “pie in the face” gag get its start? The very first known “pie in the face” gag, also known as “pieing”, was in a movie- which movie is a matter of dispute. It is definitely agreed that the first film “pie in the face” was thrown in a silent comedy in the early days of […]
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This is a guest post by Noah Wass- Plastics Engineer, bicycle expert, and owner of BikeInReview.com where you will find professional bike related reviews and interesting biking news. Subscribe to his newsletter here. The bicycle was invented all the way back in 1817. A certain Baron Karl von Drais needed to get around easier while working in the Royal Gardens […]
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