Influenza is a nasty illness. It isn’t just a bad cold. This viral infection kills up to half a million people in the world every year. And that’s in a good year. In a bad year, like 1968, the Hong...
Because baby houseflies don’t exist. A little backgrounder on the flies’ reproductive cycle can clear up this seeming conundrum. Within a week of mating, a doggie-style activity lasting from a few...
Doyle had become interested in spiritualism in the late 1800s and joined the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). In 1894 he was one of the members of a committee sent to investigate a...
Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, was ridiculed in 1913 for serving Welch’s grape juice instead of wine at a dinner honoring the British ambassador. This proved to be...
Back in the 1930s a flower merchant with a greenhouse full of carnations got worried when the weather forecast called for extremely cold temperatures. So he placed a kerosene burner in the...
At least in a manner of speaking. When Hernan Cortez came to America in 1518 he was intrigued by the beautifully coloured Aztec fabrics, particularly the stunning reds. He asked the natives about...
Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews, was a big hit for Disney studios in 1964. The film was a musicalized version of the children’s books about a magical English nanny written between 1934 and...
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