BaKlol asks: Where did the word fuck come from? In its various incarnations, the F-word can be a noun, verb, adjective, and even an infix. The Swiss Army Knife of the English language, this word has been adding spice to our conversations for centuries, even if our forbears were loathe to write it down. So where did it come from? […]
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When looking at a list of most watched videos on youtube, you’ll find the vast majority in the “hundreds of millions of views” club are various music videos. In the top 10, you’ll see a variety of household names like Ed Sheeran with 4.6 billion views on his Shape of You music video, Justin Bieber’s Sorry with 3.2 billion, and […]
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The first known instances of humans noticing that we could affect the weather in some way by industrial-type action go all the way back to around the 4th century BC and one Theophrastus. Along with extensive observations about how climate and weather in a given region seems to affect plant life, he also noted how man could change the climate. […]
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Japanadian asks: How do conjugal visits work in real life? While in the last couple decades in the United States, various states have rapidly been putting an end to so-called conjugal visits, it turns out their benefit to prisoners, wardens, and the general public are surprisingly high, including in the long run saving enormous sums of money for John Q. […]
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In 2003, the town of Erie, Pennsylvania made national news when an unassuming pizza delivery man walked into a local bank and demanded a quarter of a million dollars from the vault. What happened next would baffle authorities for years and see the crime become one of the most intriguing ever committed in the United States. So what happened? At […]
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Long before they were in the business of making movies themselves, Marvel infamously sold off the film rights to some of their most beloved characters for pennies on the dollar compared to their current worth today. Most pertinent to the topic at hand is their sale of the superhero team that helped Marvel redefine the superhero comic genre- the Fantastic […]
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el_juano asks: Is it possible for someone to get infected with cancer from someone else? In an oversimplified nutshell, cancer is, to quote cancer.gov, a disease “in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues.” Given its propensity to spread and divide in an uncontrolled manner throughout a person’s body, it brings up the question of whether […]
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The idea that given enough time, even completely random activity could produce something complex goes back at least a couple thousand years, though not without its detractors even then. For example, Cicero states in his De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) in 45 BC: Is it possible for any man to behold these things, and yet imagine […]
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Brexstacular asks: Why don’t drunk drivers get injured very often in wrecks? There are seemingly never ending news stories involving the mug shot of a drunk driver mostly unharmed after getting in an accident. Meanwhile, their victims are left fighting for their lives, or worse, already dead. The perception from this is that somehow being drunk will protect you from […]
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In the city of Athens, Georgia there exists a rather curious local landmark- a large white oak that is almost universally stated to own itself. Because of this, it is considered one of the more famous trees in the world. So how did this tree come to own itself and the land around it, and does the government agree with […]
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Phillip G. asks: What’s the best way to fire two guns at once? If you’ve ever seen pretty much any action movie involving a badass spy or member of law enforcement, you know a common trope in the industry is to have the protagonist firing away at the bad guys with a gun in both hands. But is this ever […]
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Johnny Pope asks: Why do people on death row get whatever meal they want right before they die? If you happen to ever find yourself slated to have society as a whole decide it would be best if they killed you, the silver lining is that in many parts of the world where this is still a thing, the last […]
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Some of the first stories humans ever deemed worthy of writing down inevitably included tales of a man or men rushing to the aid of some damsel in distress, from Perseus rescuing Andromeda, to the Achaeans assembling to go rescue, or at least reclaim, Helen. As the centuries passed, this basic theme has never gone out of style, even still […]
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To many people adding one of the principal ingredients in antifreeze to wine sounds almost cartoonishly stupid and evil, which is probably why that exact scenario is the basis for an entire episode of The Simpsons. Nevertheless, for at least 7 years, many major wine makers in Austria decided to add this highly toxic poison to their wines, with a […]
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PandaGuy5 asks: Were people ever really tortured in Iron Maidens? The people of the Middle Ages have a reputation for wanton brutality and, as supposed evidence of this, countless instruments of torture sit in museums around the world, arguably the most famous of which being the Iron Maiden. This hellish contraption supposedly caused unthinkable pain and anguish for those unlucky […]
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MasaC asks: Why do fingernails on a chalkboard make us cringe? Few sounds cause humans to cringe more than nails across a chalkboard, a fork scraped on a plate, or a heavy metal chair dragged across a tiled floor. But what exactly is it about this sort of scraping noise that is so offensive to our brains that many even […]
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Literally Everyone asks: Why are outhouses traditionally depicted with a crescent moon on the door? In all the years we’ve been answering questions from our abnormally attractive readers, one that has popped up in our inbox and in comment threads more times than any other is some form of the question “What’s the deal with crescent moons on outhouse doors?” […]
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On the scenic Thai island of Koh Sumai, tucked away in the Wat Khunaram temple is the mummified body of one of Thailand’s most famous monks- Luang Pho Daeng. Remarkably well preserved, Luang Pho Daeng’s body was put on display sometime in the 1970s and is still there today, virtually unchanged from the day he passed away, with the notable […]
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