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This famous image of the Moon was shot on Christmas Eve 1968 from lunar orbit by Apollo 8 astronaut William A Anders in the Apollo 8 command module. He and his crewmates Frank Borman and James Lovell were the first … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
An Englishman named Charles Babbage created the first design for a general-purpose programmable digital computer, which he called an “analytical engine,” in 1834. He never finished building it (the full machine would have been huge), but at a party he … Continue reading
A week ago I posted a video from John Green about the current refugee crisis in Europe, much of which is the result of the ongoing civil war in Syria. Here John’s brother Hank (who possibly drinks nothing but espresso) … Continue reading
Maybe they know better and they’re just saying this stuff to get on YouTube? Link: https://youtu.be/kyhCOPh48ew In fairness, a lot of people probably did answer the questions correctly besides the vacationing Italian and were simply left out of the video, … Continue reading
At the end of November in 1917 new chalkboards were installed on top of old ones in a school in Oklahoma City, leaving untouched what had been written and drawn on them. More than 97 years later, a few days … Continue reading
According to the conventions of meteorology, today, June 1, is the official first day of summer, at least for those of us in north of the tropics. Similarly, autumn starts September 1, winter December 1, and spring March 1. Of … Continue reading
I’m normally a fan of Hank and John Green’s YouTube empire. Granted, their Mental Floss channel occasionally gets things wrong or at least wrong enough that one can reasonably complain about it, but rarely do they commit an error of … Continue reading
About a week ago I had a conversation with someone who thought that crime was on the rise in the U.S., not long before I coincidentally came across this video addressing that and other misconceptions. It’s worth a few minutes … Continue reading
From Berlin’s National Museum of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbemuseum), a desk and cabinet created by the furniture makers Abraham and David Roentgen and owned by King Frederick William II of Prussia (1744-1797). It’s full of hidden compartments and extras. I … Continue reading
Movies of the 1930s and 1940s often featured black actors in secondary comic-relief roles, frequently playing racial stereotypes. I recently suffered through an extreme example of that in Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935, reviewed here), which is a pretty bad … Continue reading