“I think three women who were pregnant went into labour that evening.” This is a quote from BAFTA winning horror writer Stephen Volk discussing perhaps his most infamous work, Ghostwatch. A BBC special released in 1992 that resulted in a quantifiable percentage of the British public watching at home believing that the spirit of a… Read More »
Lasting from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War was among the most dangerous periods in all of human history. For over four and half decades, the communist east and the capitalist west eyed each other suspiciously across the Iron Curtain,… Read More »
On September 1, 1939, 66 infantry divisions, 2,750 tanks, and 1,315 aircraft of the German Wehrmacht thundered across Germany’s eastern border into neighbouring Poland, plunging Europe into the Second World War. Two weeks later on September 17, the Soviet Red Army followed suit, invading Poland from the east with 33 divisions. The Polish armed forces,… Read More »
“I never shall forget the way That Blood upon this awful day Preserved us all from death. He stood upon a little mound, Cast his lethargic eyes around, And said beneath his breath : “Whatever happens we have got The Maxim Gun, and they have not.” This passage, from Hillaire Belloc’s 1898 poem The Modern… Read More »
Ah, instant ramen: friend to starving students and broke individuals everywhere. A convenient and delicious source of cheap calories, it is the perfect meal for getting through exam season or stretching a dollar until the next paycheque arrives. Available in a dizzying array of styles and flavours, instant ramen is enjoyed all around the world,… Read More »
Reach into your pocket and pull out your cell phone. Even if you are rocking the most ancient, stripped-down flip phone from 2002, the object in your hands is still a marvel of modern electronics technology, packing billions of tiny switches into just a few cubic centimetres of space. By contrast, the Apollo Guidance Computer… Read More »
Selfie stick. Electrical banana. Pocket pleaser. Magic wand. Divorce maker. Buzz Nightgear. Battery Operated Boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind’s best friend, found in millions of nightstand drawers across the globe: the vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins then you’ve likely heard the quirky and unlikely story… Read More »
On July 20, 1969, the whole world gathered around their flickering television sets and watched in awe as astronaut Neil Armstrong who, if not for someone secretly slipping his very late application to the astronaut program into the pile wouldn’t have even been there (more on this in the Bonus Facts later), climbed down the… Read More »
It was 8:15 AM on May 5, 1961, and astronaut Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was facing an unexpected crisis. Chosen to be the first American – and the second human – in history to blast into space, at 5:15 AM Shepard had been strapped into his Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 and the hatch bolted shut… Read More »
Caffeine. Alcohol. Nicotine. These are the three most widely-consumed drugs in the world. Every day, around 80% of the world’s population – around 6.4 billion people – consumes caffeine – typically in the form of coffee, tea, or cola – with the average consumer’s daily intake being around 200 milligrams. Meanwhile, 32.5% of the world’s… Read More »
On this channel, we have covered our fair share of weird, wonderful, and sometimes utterly bonkers German ‘secret weapons’ from the Second World War, from rocket-powered fighters that sometimes dissolved their pilots alive to midget submarines cobbled together from old torpedoes, piggyback bombers crammed with explosives, jet fighters designed to be flown by children, and… Read More »