History often remembers the great men of each era, their very public accomplishments, and the trials and tribulations they may or may not have gone through to get there, sometimes to the extreme. What’s often forgotten in many cases is the men generally didn’t do any of it alone. For most, there was their partner… Read More »
If ever there was a living embodiment of the Roaring 20s, it was Eben Byers. The scion of a New York steelmaking fortune, Byers indulged in every hobby and luxury his wealth and social status allowed. He kept luxury homes across the United States, collected fine art, owned stables of racehorses, held titles in trap… Read More »
Of all the various hand gestures we humans commonly use, few are as complicated and versatile as the “V-sign,” AKA “the forks” or the “two-finger salute”. With just a twist of the wrist, this simple sign can go from a symbol of victory, peace, or Kawaii cuteness to an extremely rude gesture roughly translating to… Read More »
In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive armada set sail from southeast England and steamed south across the English Channel. Comprising more than 7,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft, and 156,000 troops, it was the largest amphibious invasion force in history. At 6:30 AM, after some 23,000 airborne troops had landed behind enemy… Read More »
In the pantheon of origin stories for some of the world’s biggest businesses, there are no shortage of fascinating tales. From that time Colonel Sanders of KFC fame quite literally tried to kill his competition (via a gunfight that saw one dead and his competition jailed for it, even though said competition was just defending… Read More »
If ever there was a criminally underrated natural resource, it would have to be Helium. Though most commonly associated with party balloons and making one’s voice sound like a cartoon, Helium’s most important application is in cooling the magnets of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI machines. While the finite and ever-dwindling global supply of this… Read More »
Who invented the telephone? How about the airplane? The lightbulb? If you paid attention in high school history class, you’ll probably know the standard answers: Alexander Graham Bell, The Wright Brothers, and Thomas Edison. But if you’ve been watching our channels long enough, you’ll also know that when it comes to the big inventions that… Read More »
It is by far the most famous equation in the history of science – and one of the shortest: E=mc2. Derived by Albert Einstein in 1905, the equation describes the relationship between mass and energy, stating that the total energy contained in a given piece of matter is equal to its mass times the speed… Read More »
Among the most horrific facets of the Holocaust were the medical experiments performed by Nazi doctors upon concentration camp inmates. This sadistic practice was epitomized by the work of Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death,’ who between 1943 and 1945 performed hundreds of cruel human experiments at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp – including on over… Read More »
In the 1969 science fiction film Marooned, a trio of astronauts manning an experimental space station attempt to return to earth, only for their spacecraft’s main engine to fail. Without sufficient fuel either to initiate reentry or return to the space station, the astronauts find themselves – well, marooned – in orbit, doomed to slowly… Read More »
While dropping your drawers and flashing your no doubt abnormally attractive derriere at those you wish to express your contempt for may seem a relatively harmless act, it turns out at one point in history combining said act with expelling the gaseous contents of one’s colon once resulted in the deaths of at least 10,000… Read More »