Author Archives: WeRaven
CANDU: Canada’s Ingenious but Doomed Nuclear Reactor
At 3:45 PM on September 5, 1945, history was made at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario as the Zero Energy Experimental Pile or ZEEP achieved criticality for the first time. In that moment, Canada entered the nuclear age – only the second country after the United States to do so. While rarely thought of as… Read More »
That Time the British Rioted for Three Months Over a 15% Increase in the Cost of Theater Tickets
In September of 1808 Covent Garden Theatre in London burned to the ground. The exact cause of the fire has never been established but due to the extensive amount of flammable items throughout combined with an amazing number of flaming light fixtures, fires of some sort at theaters were relatively common, even inspiring a London… Read More »
Season 5 of Stranger Things reportedly had a wild budget, industry estimates put it around $50–$60…
Is It Really Possible to Bite Through Your Own Finger?
The human body is capable of surviving a frankly astonishing amount of trauma to the point that even the loss of entire limbs isn’t necessarily something that will inherently kill us so long as we keep a sufficient amount of blood circulating and avoid a deadly infection. Curiously, despite stories of people surviving things like… Read More »
Is There Any Hard Evidence That Jesus Actually Existed?
Throughout history humans have many stories discussing various supposed humans and other beings that we dismiss as legend as a matter of course. Perhaps no source of such legendary figures is more robust than figures related to various religions, with basically no one today, for example, thinking that Hercules ever actually existed, despite the countless… Read More »
11 Strangest Gifts Unboxed During Boxing Day
Did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Actually Ever Exist?
The Pyramids of Giza. The Pharos of Alexandria. The Colossus of Rhodes. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Mausoleum at Halicanarnassus. These are the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, celebrated for millennia as the greatest architectural achievements of antiquity. Sadly, today only… Read More »
The Nazi Space Shuttle
On December 8, 1941, the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States declared war on the Empire of Japan. Three days later on December 11, Japan’s ally Nazi Germany declared war on the United States. This was to prove a major strategic blunder for the Nazis, for not only was the… Read More »
unbfacts: Tom Cruise helped push Ray-Ban back into “cool” mode…
unbfacts: Tom Cruise helped push Ray-Ban back into “cool” mode in the 1980s. Ray-Ban’s Wayfarers were close to being discontinued after sales sank, then product placement and Cruise wearing them in Risky Business (1983) helped sales surge, and his Top Gun (1986) aviators got another big boost. Source