{"id":49663,"date":"2016-11-06T04:23:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T12:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=49663"},"modified":"2016-11-06T04:23:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T12:23:13","slug":"weekly-wrap-volume-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/weekly-wrap-volume-123\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Wrap Volume 123"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is a weekly wrap of our popular Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\"soviet\"The Secret Race to the Moon<\/a><\/p>\n

Not too long after 9:00 p.m. on the evening of April 11, 1961, a United States government listening post off Alaska picked up the sound of human voices speaking in Russian. That wasn\u2019t unusual; in the early 1960s, the Cold War was at its height, and the listening post had been set up for the purpose of intercepting Soviet communications.But as the analysts studied the transmission, they realized that one of the voices was coming from space\u2014low-Earth orbit to be exact\u2014and the other voices were transmitting from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan, headquarters of the USSR\u2019s space program. As the entire world would learn in a few hours, the 27-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had just become the first human being to fly in space. As was typical with the Soviet space program…(more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"amundsen-scott-south_pole_station_2007\"What Time Zones are the Poles In?<\/a><\/p>\n

Given that they are every possible hour all the time, or more aptly technically in every time zone, it may come as no surprise to you that there are no official time zones at the poles. Nevertheless, groups working at or visiting the poles still have a need to keep track of and coordinate time, so what do they use? To begin with, some choose to synchronize their watches with the closest or last point of civilization. For example, the U.S. research center on Antarctica, McMurdo Station, uses the time zone of Christchurch, New Zealand, as it is the last (or first) city most travelers to and from McMurdo pass through and where they get most of their supplies from. Other bases use the time zones of their home countries, while still others just go with…(more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"birthday-cake\"How the Practice of Putting Candles on Cakes for Birthdays got Started<\/a><\/p>\n

For most of human history, ordinary people\u2019s birthdays weren\u2019t cause for much celebration. In fact, in the ancient world if you weren\u2019t among the elite, odds are your birthday would have mostly just been noted for things like astrological purposes, rather than throwing parties in your honor annually. One of the commonly cited \u201cfirst\u201d known instances of something like a birthday being celebrated appeared in the book of Genesis<\/em>(40:20-22<\/a>),\u00a020\u00a0<\/sup>And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh\u2019s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants…(more<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"duct-tape\"Why Things that are Haphazardly Built are Called “Jury-Rigged”<\/a><\/p>\n

Although many describe shoddy workmanship or a hasty, temporary repair as jerry-rigged<\/em>, in its original incarnation, the term was actually jury-rigged.\u00a0<\/em>While jury<\/em> as a noun meaning a group of peers that decide the outcome of a legal proceeding has been in use English since the early 14th century, by the early 17th century, sailors had taken to using jury<\/em> as an adjective that meant temporary<\/em> \/ hastily contrived<\/em>, first referring to jury-masts<\/em>. It is unclear why, however, and unfortunately all we have are speculative hypotheses with nothing in the way of evidence backing them up. One such hypothesis is that French speaking sailors had been describing their quick repairs as ajurie<\/em>, which meant help <\/em>or relief<\/em>, and English speakers mistakenly…(more<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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