The Ebers papyrus tells us the Ancient Egyptians had an interesting way to deal with noisy crying babies: just give them a draft of opium. This practice was still very much use in the Victorian era, when it gained notoriety for the dangers the use of children’s opiates posed to general health.

We know in this era opium was readily used as a cure for a bad cough, or aches and pains, but it is less well known that opium was also given to children, and even babies. Restless or teething babies and small infants would be given concoctions such as Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, which contained morphine (an opium derivative). There were at least ten brands of mixtures aimed at children and infants including Atkinson’s Royal Infants’ Preservative, and Street’s Infants Quietness. The most famous preparation of children’s opiates was Godfrey’s Cordial, which was a mixture of opium, treacle, water and spices.

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Early and mid-20th century American cookbooks offer plenty of sloppy joe-type recipes, though they go by different names: Toasted Deviled Hamburgers, Chopped Meat Sandwiches, Spanish Hamburgers, Hamburg a la Creole, Beef Mironton, and Minced Beef Spanish Style.

Marilyn Brown, Director of the Consumer Test Kitchen at H.J. Heinz in Pittsburgh, says their research at the Carnegie Library suggests that the sloppy joe’s origins lie with the “loose meat sandwiches” sold in Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1930s and were the creation of a cook named Joe.

References to sloppy joes as sandwiches begin by the 1940s. One example from Ohio is a 1944 Coshocton Tribune ad under the heading “‘Good Things to Eat’ says ‘Sloppy Joes’ – 10c – Originated in Cuba – You’ll ask for more – The Hamburg Shop” and elsewhere on the same page, “Hap is introducing that new sandwich at The Hamburg Shop – Sloppy Joes – 10c”.

The term sloppy joe’s had an earlier definition of any cheap restaurant or lunch counter serving cheap food quickly or of a type of casual clothing.

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The tradition of naming helicopters after Native Americans was once an official regulation. That regulation no longer stands, but the tradition continues.

According to an unnamed Army museum official, the naming convention goes back to before the Air Force split from the Army in 1947 when Army Gen. Hamilton Howze was assigned to Army aviation. His mission was to develop doctrine and the way forward when it came to employing Army aircraft and how they would support warfighters on the ground.

According to the museum official, Howze wasn’t a fan of the names of the first two helicopters – Hoverfly and Dragonfly. So, he laid out instructions for naming the helicopters after their abilities.

Howze said since the choppers were fast and agile, they would attack enemy flanks and fade away, similar to the way the tribes on the Great Plains fought during the aforementioned American Indian Wars. He decided the next helicopter produced — the well-known H-13 of “M.A.S.H.” fame — would be called the Sioux in honor of the Native Americans who fought Army soldiers in the Sioux Wars and defeated the 7th Calvary Regiment at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

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The Vatican has its own observatory.

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Guava is one of the most protein-rich fruits around. You’ll get a whopping 4.2 grams of the stuff in every cup. This tropical fruit is also high in vitamin C and fiber.

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By 1860, moustaches had become mandatory in the British Army. Command No. 1695 of the King’s Regulations read: ‘……..The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers if worn will be of moderate length’

However by the end of the 1880s, the popularity of moustaches was in decline. Fashionable men in London started preferring a clean shave. Facial hair was considered to harbour germs and bacteria. Shaving beards, while patients were hospitalized, became a norm. In 1895, American inventor King Camp Gillette (he himself with a prominent moustache) came up with the idea of disposable razor blades. The practice of being hair free had never been so cheap and easy.

Another serious blow to beards and moustaches came at the onset of the First World War. It was difficult to put your gas mask on if you had facial hair, as the seal would work only on a hair-free skin. Finding clean water at the front was tough too, so shaving became a luxury. Also, as many as 250,000 boys under the age of 18 fought for Britain in the Great War. These recruits were too young to sport a moustache; all they could manage was a thin mousey streak. Even before the war started in 1914, there were reports regarding the infringement of the military order that a moustache had to be worn.

An army council was set up to debate this further and on 8th October 1916, it was decided that moustaches would no longer be mandatory in the British army. The King’s Regulations were amended to delete ‘but not the upper lip’. The decree was signed by General Sir Nevil Macready, who himself hated moustaches and who dropped into a barber shop that very same evening to set the example.

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In a 2004 interview with The New York Times, Walmart officials revealed that sales of strawberry Pop-Tarts increase by as much as seven times ahead of hurricanes, which is why they make sure their shelves are flush with the beloved toaster pastries ahead of time.

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Although not related to commercial pepper (Piper nigrum) the pink/red berries are sold as pink peppercorns and often blended with commercial pepper. Pink peppercorns came to be called such because they resemble peppercorns, and because they, too, have a peppery flavor. As they are members of the cashew family, they may cause allergic reactions including anaphylaxis for people with a tree nut allergy.

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Lamborghinis are typically bought by wealthy middle-aged men. While it is true that wealthy middle-aged men do watch TV, it’s not effective to use TV adverts, and could even be counter-productive, for two reasons.

First, only while TV adverts can reach almost all Americans, only 1% of those people are potential buyers of Lamborghinis. This makes advertising on TV an expensive waste of time and money because all an advert will ever do is entertain people who can’t afford to buy a supercar.

Second, affordable car manufacturers already flood TV time with adverts. This means that Lamborghini runs the risk of cheapening their brand identity and perhaps even appearing comical by running their adverts next to those for Ford and Kia.

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The Nasal Ranger, a field olfactometer advertised as allowing users to conduct “complete odor monitoring, regulation, enforcement and documentation,” has been employed by officials in Denver and Las Vegas. Correspondence obtained by Motherboard via a freedom of information request between officials in one Michigan city and St. Croix Sensory, the company that manufactures the Nasal Ranger, shows that cities are interested in the device for one smell in particular: weed.

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In the game Go, black stones are slightly larger in diameter to compensate for optical illusion of the white stones appearing larger when placed with black stones of the same diameter.

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In neurourology, post-micturition convulsion syndrome (PMCS), also known informally as pee shivers, is the experience of shivering during or after urination. The syndrome appears to be more frequently experienced by males.

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Dune is one of the high-points for science fiction collectors and was first published in 1965 by Chilton Book Company in Philadelphia (an interesting departure for the publisher, who to that date had only published automotive repair manuals).

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The anatomy of the clitoris was not determined until 1998.

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Firefighters in NYC carry a PASS (personal alert safety systems) alarm that beeps if the sensors do not detect movement for 30 seconds. In a lot of the 9/11 footage, the beeps in the aftermath of the collapse were PASS alarms.

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Gulliver’s Travels was unique in its day; it was not written to woo or entertain. It was an indictment, and it was most popular among those who were indicted — that is, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and Englishmen in general. Swift was roasting people, and they were eager for the banquet.

Swift himself admitted to wanting to “vex” the world with his satire, and it is certainly in his tone, more than anything else, that one most feels his intentions. Besides the coarse language and bawdy scenes, probably the most important element that Dr. Bowdler deleted from the original Gulliver’s Travels was this satiric tone. The tone of the original varies from mild wit to outright derision, but always present is a certain strata of ridicule. Dr. Bowdler gelded it of its satire and transformed it into a children’s book.

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Vanessa Audi Rhys O’Brien (born 2 December 1964) is a British and American mountaineer, explorer, aquanaut, author and former business executive.[1] On June 12, 2020, O’Brien became the first woman to reach Earth’s highest and lowest points, receiving a Guinness World Record.[2] She became the first American woman to climb K2 and the first British[3][4][5] woman to climb K2 (as a result of her dual nationality) on 28 July 2017, successfully leading a team of 12 members to the summit and back on her third attempt.[6][7][8] She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and a Member of The Scientific Exploration Society (SES).[9]

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The first known democracy in the world was in Athens. Athenian democracy developed around the fifth century B.C.E. The Greek idea of democracy was different from present-day democracy because, in Athens, all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. If they did not fulfill their duty they would be fined and sometimes marked with red paint. The Athenian definition of “citizens” was also different from modern-day citizens: only free men were considered citizens in Athens. Women, children, and slaves were not considered citizens and therefore could not vote.

Each year 500 names were chosen from all the citizens of ancient Athens. Those 500 citizens had to actively serve in the government for one year. During that year, they were responsible for making new laws and controlled all parts of the political process. When a new law was proposed, all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote on it. To vote, citizens had to attend the assembly on the day the vote took place. This form of government is called direct democracy.

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When a corpse was revealed under the dining table in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), none of the actors (except for Tim Curry) actually knew that it was there –so the shock on their faces was absolutely genuine. Tim Curry had known beforehand because he was the one who had to whip the tablecloth off.

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The longest surgery on record occurred in 2001 and lasted more than four straight days—103 hours to be exact. A team of 20 doctors at Singapore General Hospital worked in shifts to separate Ganga and Jamuna Shrestha, 11-month-old twins conjoined at the head. Not only did the girls share a cranial cavity, their brains were partially fused. Typically such separation procedures might take 30 hours—still an eternity in surgical terms—but once underway, doctors discovered that the girls’ brains were even more tightly enmeshed than expected.

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Emergency medical technicians in Vermont have been allowed since 2014 to administer small amounts of pure Vermont maple syrup to patients who have low blood sugar and are able to swallow.

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Before the advent of refrigeration, Russians had a neat trick for keeping their milk from spoiling. They’d drop a live frog in the milk bucket.

The Russians weren’t sure how this amphibian dairy treatment worked, but they were convinced it did.

Since then, researchers have discovered that the goo some frogs secrete through their skin has antibacterial and antifungal properties.

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The state of Texas, with approval from the U.S. Supreme Court, instituted the most draconian set of anti-abortion laws in the last 50 years this Tuesday. While pro-choice advocates scramble to save what’s left of Roe v. Wade, their salvation may come from an unexpected place: The Satanic Temple.

The nontheistic religious group, based out of Salem, Massachusetts, has filed a letter with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arguing that their members should be allowed to access abortion pills without regulatory action. The temple is attempting to use its status as a religious organization to claim its right to abortion as a faith-based right.

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Navel-gazing or omphaloskepsis is the contemplation of one’s navel as an aid to meditation.[1]

Four statues depicting omphaloskepsis
The word derives from the Ancient Greek words ὀμφᾰλός (omphalós, lit. ’navel’) and σκέψῐς (sképsis, lit. ’viewing, examination, speculation’).

Actual use of the practice as an aid to contemplation of basic principles of the cosmos and human nature is found in the practice of yoga or Hinduism and sometimes in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In yoga, the navel is the site of the manipura (also called nabhi) chakra, which yogis consider “a powerful chakra of the body”. The monks of Mount Athos, Greece, were described as Omphalopsychians by J.G. Millingen, writing in the 1830s, who says they “…pretended or fancied that they experienced celestial joys when gazing on their umbilical region, in converse with the Deity”.

However, phrases such as “contemplating one’s navel” or “navel-gazing” are frequently used, usually in jocular fashion, to refer to self-absorbed pursuits.

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Clover hasn’t always been the bane of every lawn lover’s existence.

Sure, ripping it out (or spraying it) as soon as it creeps into your perfectly manicured turf might be a good way to fit into your neighborhood nowadays. But this lawn care tidbit could surprise you: Several decades ago, killing clover was not at all in vogue. It was a standard part of grass seed mixes.

About 60 years ago, a war began on broadleaf plants. The ones who waged it: gardening and agricultural chemical companies, the very same who create herbicides we use today. These herbicides tend to have no effect on grasses — but they kill everything else, clovers included.

Says Sharapova, “Prior to World War II, lawn grass seed mixes actually contained clover seed. [But] by the 1950s, with aggressive marketing by chemical companies of synthetic herbicides … clover became identified as a weed.”

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The British pet massacre was an event in 1939 in the United Kingdom where over 750,000 pets were killed in preparation for food shortages during World War II.

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It is said that in 1933 Einstein had a salary of $10,000, which would be about $178,000 today. This would make him the highest-paid scientist in his field.

At the time of his death, it is said that Einstein had an estimated net worth of $1.25 million in 1955. If we factor in inflation, that would equate to $11 million today.

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The Secret Court of 1920 was an ad hoc disciplinary tribunal of five administrators at Harvard University formed to investigate charges of homosexual activity among the student population. During two weeks in May and June 1920, “the court”, headed by acting dean Chester Noyes Greenough, conducted more than 30 interviews behind closed doors and took action against eight students, a recent graduate, and an assistant professor. They were expelled or had their association with the university severed. Two of the students were later readmitted. The affair went unreported until 2002.

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Wondabyne railway station is located on the Main Northern line in New South Wales, Australia. It serves the southern Central Coast area known as Wondabyne and opened on 1 May 1889. It is the only station in Australia that does not have road access.

Wondabyne has a quarry that is used intermittently and several houses which can only be accessed by boat from a jetty next to the station. As Wondabyne is a request stop, not all trains stop there.

Wondabyne Station is mainly used by bushwalkers on the Great North Walk and the homeowners who live on the other side of Mullet Creek which is a tributary of the Hawkesbury River.

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Crassulacean acid metabolism, also known as CAM photosynthesis, is a carbon fixation pathway that evolved in some plants as an adaptation to arid conditions[1] that allows a plant to photosynthesize during the day, but only exchange gases at night. In a plant using full CAM, the stomata in the leaves remain shut during the day to reduce evapotranspiration, but they open at night to collect carbon dioxide (CO
2) and allow it to diffuse into the mesophyll cells. The CO2 is stored as the four-carbon acid malic acid in vacuoles at night, and then in the daytime, the malate is transported to chloroplasts where it is converted back to CO2, which is then used during photosynthesis. The pre-collected CO2 is concentrated around the enzyme RuBisCO, increasing photosynthetic efficiency. This mechanism of acid metabolism was first discovered in plants of the family Crassulaceae.

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The golden eagles that live in the high Altai mountains, in far-western Mongolia, build their nests in the crags of the area’s rugged peaks—there aren’t many trees. Hunters belonging to traditional nomadic clans from the country’s Khazakh minority climb up to these crevices to capture the birds at around four years old, which is old enough to know how to hunt but young enough to be pliable to human company and training. The eagles are domesticated, fed by hand, and will live with the hunters’ families for years. When the Australian-born photographer Palani Mohan began travelling to the Altais to document the traditions of these eagle-hunters, known as burkitshi, many of the men he met talked about loving the eagles like their own children. In an introduction to a new collection of his photos, Mohan writes, “It is the bond between hunter and eagle that fascinated me.”

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Under UK law, VAT on cakes and biscuits is set at 0%. However, crucially, the law states that if a biscuit is partly or wholly covered in chocolate then it is to be taxed at the standard rate. HMRC clearly defines the difference as follows:

“The significance of the borderline between cakes and biscuits is that a cake is zero-rated even if it is covered in chocolate, whereas a biscuit is standard-rated if wholly or partly covered in chocolate or some product similar in taste and appearance.”

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The Epic Cycle (Greek: Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, Epikos Kyklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the so-called Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the poems of the Epic Cycle, but the term is more often used to specify the non-Homeric poems as distinct from the Homeric ones.

Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, the cyclic epics survive only in fragments and summaries from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

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Once upon a time, a clothesline was a standard feature of most back yards. But concern that publicly airing clean laundry attached with clothespins to a rope or wire was unsightly, or obstructed views, or even created a safety risk (strangulation is sometimes cited) led a number of condominium associations and rental property managers to ban clotheslines.

Now, amidst growing concern about wasteful energy use, clothesline proponents argue that the traditional method of drying laundry is not only cheaper but better for the environment. Lawmakers in some 19 states have agreed, enacting “right to dry” laws that prohibit clothesline bans, the Seattle Times reports.

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George Edward Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American southpaw pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). Over a career spanning 13 years, he played for the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National League, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns in the American League. Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.

Waddell’s career wound through a number of teams. He was notably unpredictable; early in his career, he once left in the middle of a game to go fishing. He also had a longstanding fascination with fire trucks and ran off the field to chase after them during games on multiple occasions. He would disappear for months at a time during the offseason, and it was not known where he went until it was discovered that he was wrestling alligators in a circus. He was easily distracted by opposing fans who held up puppies, which caused him to run over to play with them, and shiny objects, which seemed to put him in a trance.

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The town derives its name from the fact that two major highways, State Routes 85 and 86, originally intersected in a Y-intersection.[2] At the time of its naming, state law required all city names to have at least three letters, so the town’s founders named the town “Why” as opposed to simply calling it “Y.”

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Tiger’s whiskers are filled with sensitive nerve endings, which help them detect distances and changes in their surroundings. When tigers hunt, they go for the kill shot: the carotid artery located in the neck. After the tiger’s canines have pierced the artery, the whiskers move forward, encircling the prey’s neck, and determine if the prey’s pulse is gone.

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Numerous attempts to adapt the Doctor Dolittle series began as early as the 1920s. In the early 1960s, actress-turned-producer Helen Winston acquired the film rights in an attempt to produce a film adaptation to no success. In 1963, producer Arthur P. Jacobs subsequently acquired the rights and recruited Alan Jay Lerner to compose the songs and Rex Harrison to star in the project. After numerous delays, Lerner was later fired and replaced by Leslie Bricusse. The film encountered a more notoriously protracted production with numerous setbacks along the way such as complications from poorly chosen shooting locations, creative demands from Harrison, and the numerous technical difficulties inherent with the large number of animals required for the story. The film exceeded its original budget of $6 million by three times.

Over 1,200 live animals were used in the film including dogs, pigs, birds, and even giraffes, all of which required understudies. There are anecdotes of a goat who ate Fleischer’s script and a parrot that learned to yell “cut.” In one instance, ducks for the film were placed on a lake, but had apparently forgotten how to swim and began to sink, and crew members had to jump into the water to save them.

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Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world and six-time Olympic gold medalist, has never run a mile.

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The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system signed into law by President William Howard Taft and operated by the United States Post Office Department, predecessor of the United States Postal Service, from January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967.

According to a 2019 analysis, “the program was initially used by non-farming immigrant populations for short-term saving, then as a safe haven during the Great Depression, and finally as long-term investment for the wealthy during the 1940s… Postal Savings was only a partial substitute for traditional banks, as locations with banks often still heavily used postal savings.”

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Operation Solomon (Hebrew: מבצע שלמה‎, Mivtza Shlomo) was a covert Israeli military operation in May 24 to 25, 1991, to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. One of the aircraft, an El Al 747, carried at least 1,088 people, including two babies who were born on the flight, and holds the world record for the most passengers on an aircraft. Eight children were born during the airlift process.

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The difference between growing plants from seed and propagating plants from cuttings off a parent plant is genetic variation.

The seeds of many fruit produce trees that are different from the parent, because seeds themselves are produced by sexual reproduction – they receive genes from a male and female to form. As they are a cross from two sets of genes, many fruit trees are not “true to seed”, that is, their seeds will produce a different variety of tree from the parent. For the botany purists, yes, there are some exceptions, but this is generally the case.

Propagation methods that use material from the parent trees such as cuttings are a form of vegetative, or asexual reproduction, as genes only come from one parent to produce identical genetic clones.

Let’s have a look at a real life example to better understand this concept. Imagine we want to produce more apple trees, say Granny Smith apples from an existing tree. Apples are not ‘true to seed’, so the seeds from any particular variety apple will not grow to be the same variety as the apple tree they came from. In our case the Granny Smith apple seeds will produce a wide variety of different and unknown apple tree types.

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Are you disgusted, disgruntled and disheveled? Well, unfortunately you’re never going to be gusted, gruntled or sheveled. Disgusted, disgruntled and disheveled are what you might call “lonely negatives.” They’re negative words whose positive partners have vanished or never existed in the first place.

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The U.S. has 3.1% of the world’s children, but consumes 40% of the world’s toys.

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Gillette, inventor of the safety razor published a book in 1894 titled The Human Drift in which he envisioned a gigantic city that encompassed Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester and parts of Ontario, organized for the purpose of producing, manufacturing and distributing the necessities of life. In this, he describes in detail a city where most of the population of the United States (70 million at the time) would live in a massive complex of 250 foot tall octagon shaped apartment buildings. He figured 60 million people would live in the city and the remaining 10 million would either work to supply the raw materials or just hang out at the Jersey Shore. Electric power would be supplied by hydroelectric from Niagara Falls, fresh water would come from Lake Erie and all waste would be pumped into Lake Ontario and (best of all) it would all be free!

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Last week, YouGov US revealed what animals Americans thought they could beat in unarmed combat. You all liked it so much in the UK that we’ve now done a British comparison study.

In terms of what animals Britons think they can take on, the order is almost identical to that of Americans. Two thirds of Brits think they could beat up a rat (67%), making it the animal they feel most confident in defeating. This is followed by almost as many who think they can beat a house cat (66%).

The results also show that, across the board, Britons are less likely to think they can triumph in animal combat than our American cousins.

This difference is most marked when it comes to geese: Americans are substantially more likely to think they could have a goose (61%) than Britons (45%). Americans are also notably more confident in doing battle with medium-sized dogs (49% vs 38%) and eagles (30% vs 18%).

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The US military has pretended to be vampires and ghosts and used superstition to scare enemies away. During WWII, they dispersed scary horoscopes. During the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, they staged vampire attacks. And during the Vietnam war, they blasted ghost tapes with spooky music and eerie voices. Only the vampires worked.

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North America — and the USA in particular — has the world’s wildest weather extremes: No other part of the planet can boast its ferocious weather stew of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, blizzards, heat waves and cold snaps.

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Balkan sworn virgins (in Albanian: burrnesha) are women who take a vow of chastity and wear male clothing in order to live as men in patriarchal northern Albanian society, Kosovo and Montenegro. National Geographic’s Taboo (2002) estimated that there were fewer than 102 Albanian sworn virgins left.

It was the only way a woman could inherit her family’s wealth, which was particularly important in a society in which blood feuds (gjakmarrja) resulted in the deaths of many male Albanians, leaving many families without male heirs. (However, anthropologist Mildred Dickemann suggests this motive may be “over-pat”, pointing out that a non-child-bearing woman would have no heirs to inherit after her, and also that in some families not one but several daughters became sworn virgins, and in others the later birth of a brother did not end the sworn virgin’s masculine role.)

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All cultivated varieties of tomato are derived from a single species, Solanum lycopersicum. There are 16 wild relatives of S. lycopersicum which are native to South America and confined to a narrow coastal region in the northwestern corner of the continent from Ecuador to northern Chile, including the Galapagos Islands.

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