Making Children Cry for Fun and Profit

From Today I Found Out. If you’ve spent any time whatsoever on the internet you’re probably already quite familiar with how attached people are capable of getting to their favourite fictional characters. While this invariably manifests as arguments, because internet, it is by no means a new or novel phenomenon. For example, consider what happened…

WWII’s Greatest Hit

From Today I Found Out. War and music have always gone hand-in-hand. From the dawn of human civilization, armies have used music – from drumming to bagpipes to full marching bands – to raise morale, keep pace on the march, and get troops psyched up for battle. Meanwhile, common soldiers have long maintained a tradition…

What’s Ruining Superhero Movies

From Today I Found Out. “In mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors.” – Professor X In the realm of comic books, the rules of the respective universe you’re reading about tend to differ wildly from the rules of our own. Besides the obvious thing of the world of say Marvel…

The Incredible Black Arrow Rocket

From Today I Found Out. When it comes to technological achievement and national prestige, few feats can compare to launching a satellite into space. Since the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik I, on October 4, 1957, 11 other government bodies have developed indigenous orbital launch capability: the United States, France, Japan, China,…

Murphy’s Law in Action

From Today I Found Out. It has been called the “silent service.” Since their introduction in the early 20th century, service aboard submarines has been among the deadliest military occupations, with a full 70% of German U-boat crews during WWII never returning from patrol. But the hazards faced by submariners go well beyond enemy guns,…

The Classiest Plane Hijacking of All Time

From Today I Found Out. At 9:15 A.M. on November 10, 1961, a Lockheed Super Constellation of Portugal’s TAP airlines lifted off from Casablanca, Morocco. Aboard were nineteen passengers – mostly American tourists – bound for Lisbon. The skies that day were clear, and the flight looked to be smooth and uneventful. But just 45…

Capturing Souls-The Birth of Consumer Photography

From Today I Found Out. Today, it seems, everyone is a photographer. Nearly every cell phone and tablet contains a digital camera whose image quality rivals that of high-end professional cameras, while said professional cameras continue to get cheaper and more accessible with every passing year. The act of casually documenting our daily lives has…

Who Invented WD-40, Duct Tape, and Super Glue?

From Today I Found Out. There’s an old engineer’s adage that goes: “If it moves but shouldn’t, use duct tape. If it doesn’t move but should, use WD-40.” For nearly 60 years, WD-40, the iconic “toolkit in a can,” has been helping amateurs and professionals alike out of all sorts of sticky mechanical jams. In…

The Greatest Inventor You’ve Never Heard Of

From Today I Found Out. Walter Hunt is a man who is simultaneously considered to have possessed one of the finest inventive minds in all of American history while also being an individual almost no one has ever heard. This is despite the fact that it’s almost guaranteed that one of his inventions is currently…

The Nazi Kamikaze Squadron

From Today I Found Out. On the first of April, 1945, a combined American and British Empire fleet appeared off Okinawa, the southernmost of the Japanese Home Islands. Operation Iceberg, the final naval battle of the Second World War, was about to begin. As hundreds of aircraft roared overhead and enormous shells fired from battleships…

The 1990s were Weird

From Today I Found Out. Anybody reading remember the film Jingle All The Way, you know the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger body checks his way through a crowd of harried single mums, is an accessory to a bomb threat and physically assaults like 4 retail workers, all for the chance to get his hands on…