Today I found out about Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife written just a few days before the first major land battle of the American Civil War, the First Battle of Bull Run, fought this day (July 21) in 1861 in Manassas, Virginia. Ballou was a major in the U.S. Army and a member of the Rhode Island Volunteers. Before […]
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Today I found out how deaf people think in terms of their “inner voice”. It turns out, this varies somewhat from deaf person to deaf person, depending on their level of deafness and vocal training. Those who were born completely deaf and only learned sign language will, not surprisingly, think in sign language. What is surprising is those who were […]
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Today I found out that the idiom used for the notion of someone “getting what’s coming to them”, whether good or bad, is actually “just deserts”, not “just desserts”. The misconception primarily stems from the fact that most people are unfamiliar with the word ‘desert’ (pronounced dizert), which more or less means the same thing as the word ‘deserve’. Instead, […]
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Today I found out humans have a lot more than five senses. It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical […]
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Today I found out the person who did the voice and puppeteer work for Jedi Master Yoda also did the same for Miss Piggy and the Cookie Monster. The man was Frank Oz and not only did he do the voice of Yoda and most of the puppetry work, he is also responsible for quite a bit of Yoda’s character […]
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Today I found out why the Adam’s Apple is called the Adam’s Apple. The origins of this term go all the way back to the Biblical event where Eve gave Adam a forbidden fruit, which is commonly misrepresented as an apple. The term then basically comes from the legend that when he ate of the “apple”, the piece got stuck […]
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Today I found out how the completely blind dream. It turns out that if they went completely blind before around the age of 5-7 years old, they will typically dream without any visual experiences. In the very few cases where some report having visual experiences in their dreams, these experiences are more in the abstract sense where they feel like […]
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Today I found out that sugar does not make kids hyper. In fact, it has been proven in numerous studies that it doesn’t affect their behavior at all. In one such study, it was found that mothers who think their kids have been given sugar (even though their kids haven’t been given any), will almost always say their kids are […]
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Today I found out Camels’ humps are not filled with water. So what are Camel humps filled with? It turns out, fat. These fat humps can weigh as much as 80 pounds and allow the Camel to comfortably go one to two weeks without eating, if necessary. Now, some of you out there might be saying to yourselves, “Well, but […]
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Today I found out everything you probably think you know about Velociraptors is a lie. Now to be fair, everything I “knew” about Velociraptors came from the Jurassic Park movies and so I shouldn’t really be surprised it was all wrong. So if, like me, you thought that Velociraptors were slightly bigger than a human; reptilian looking; hunted in packs; […]
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Today I found out that the word ‘Dinner’ used to refer to breakfast. The word “dinner” comes from the Old French word “disnar”, which in fact means “breakfast”. So how did this word that meant breakfast end up being pushed back in the day to describe the meal latest in the day? Traditionally dinner (meaning ‘breakfast’) was the first meal […]
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Today I found out why popcorn pops. First a little background, Popcorn or “zea mays everta” is a special kind of Flint corn, also known as “Indian corn” and sometimes “Calico corn”. Flint corn is readily recognizable as the kernels have a hard outer shell, likened to flint, hence the name. This hard outer shell is essential in making popcorn […]
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Today I found out the iconic “live long and prosper” hand gesture was originally a Jewish sign. The hand gesture itself is a slight modification of the Hebrew gesture forming the letter “Shin”, which represents the name “Shaddai” meaning “Almighty” (God). This gesture is still used today by orthodox Jews of the Kohanim, which are priests descended from Ahron by […]
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Today I found out UPS was started by two teenagers with one bicycle and $100 borrowed from a friend. The date was August 28, 1907 and the two kids were 18 year old Claude Ryan and 19 year old Jim Casey. The two had one bike between them and $100 (about $2400 today) borrowed from a friend to found the […]
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Today I found out why soap operas are called soap operas. This all started out in the 1920’s; a simpler time where Jazz was swell; the Soviet Union was in its infancy; Robbert Goddard became the first rocket man; and the world only existed in black and white… In this bustling time, radio was the Bee’s Knees. On the radio […]
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Today I found out why some countries drive on the right and some countries drive on the left. The origin of this varies based on the time period and country, but primarily throughout history people used the “keep-left” rule. It has only been very recently that the world has predominately switched to the “keep-right” rule. The first real archaeological evidence […]
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Today I found out the origin of the word “soccer”. For all you out there who love to complain when Americans, and certain others, call “Football”, “Soccer”, you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of the first names of what we now primarily know of as “Football”. In fact, in […]
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Today I found out nearly all commercial banana plants are perfect clones of one another and most originate from one single plant from Southeast Asia. Now to be clear, there are approximately 1000 different types of banana plants in the world today and within each variety most are generally clones of one another, although some do have a bit of […]
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