November 2nd, This Day in History

On November 2 1959 Charles Van Doren confessed to cheating on a game show before a congressional committee that probably had much better things to be doing. Van Doren told the committee that he’d been given the answers to questions beforehand by the show’s producers. Later, he wrote for the Encyclopedia Britannica, although it came […]

This Day in History: 25 October

On this day in 1760, George III became king of all Britain. Although he was best known as the man who lost the American colonies, he also defeated Napoleon, so it evens out. He became blind and mad in 1810 so at least he never had to see how crazy he had become. George ruled […]

Things You Missed Because You are Younger than I am

Space Food Sticks: Just like the astronauts didn’t eat. What were they like? Ear wax taken from an Oompa Loompa… in stick form! Half the married people were trying to convince their spouses that open marriages were “natural” and “healthy” while the other half were looking for good divorce lawyers. The phrase, “Why yes, I’d […]

Reflections on Dead Viking Women

Archaeologists recently exhumed the bodies of two Viking women in Vestfold County, Norway. They had been buried with a sixty-five foot Viking longboat in the year 834 A.D. It is assumed that the older of the two was some sort of royalty; either that or she just happened to be sleeping on deck while the […]

Did Time-traveling Go-go Dancers From the Sixties Build the Washington Monument?

If you think about it, no one really knows who built the Washington Monument. Sure, there are “records” and “photographs” and “eye-witness accounts”, but very little solid data to indicate who managed to build what was the tallest man-made structure in the world at the time. Some doubt that we even had the technology to […]