Transcript In the very days of the United States, the country was mostly made up of farmers. They primarily ate the food which they grew, and maybe hunted to supplement their diet. They also drank. Alcohol. A lot of alcohol. In fact, the amount of alcohol consumed by early Americans on average might have been …
Transcript At 12 noon on March 4, 1849, the presidential administration of James Polk ended. 24 hours later, at noon on March 5, President Zachary Taylor took the oath of office to become president. During those 24 hours in-between, who was the president? According to some, it was a member of the United States Senate. …
Transcript Comeback stories are some of the best stories in sports. Whether it is coming back from a huge deficit, or being on the brink of elimination in a series, these are often some of the most dramatic moments in sports history. They don’t happen that often because once you are down by a large …
Transcript “E Pluribus Unum”, “Habeus Corpus”, “Carpe Diem”, “Caveat Emptor”. All of these phrases are known by most people, yet they come from a language that has been dead for 1500 years: Latin. Latin is on our money, serves as mottos for universities, and is the foundation for our entire naming system in biology. Many …
Transcript Even if you aren’t a fan of classical music, you are probably at least familiar with what an orchestra is. But have you ever wondered why orchestras use the instruments they do? Or why they have them in that combination, or why it is even called an orchestra at all? And what exactly is …
Transcript In the early hour of March 18, 1990, two police officers enter Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The problem was, they weren’t police officers. They were thieves. In a little over an hour, they stole 13 valuable works of art which had a combined value of over $500 million dollars. It was the largest …
Transcript Humans and rats have lived in an uneasy relationship for millennia. Rats have spread diseases like the bubonic plague, destroyed grain harvests, and stolen our pizzas. In return, rats have given humans……pretty much nothing. As such, humans have waged a relentless war against rats, which for the most part has gone nowhere. However, there …
Transcript New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks. While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1, as …
Transcript There are lots of stories about technologies and knowledge from ancient peoples that have been lost to us through history. In reality, most things that were lost have been figured out independently by modern people, and we have better modern versions of almost everything the ancients had, including things like Damascus Steel. That is, …