James Arthur Hogue (born October 22, 1959) is an American impostor who most famously entered Princeton University by posing as a self-taught orphan . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Kennedy scored major victories when he won both the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He addressed his supporters shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles . [287] Leaving the ballroom, he went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut to a press room. [288] He did this despite being advised by his bodyguard—former FBI agent Bill Barry—to avoid the kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Kennedy turned to his ...
Carl Ethan Akeley (May 19, 1864 – November 17, 1926) was a pioneering American taxidermist , sculptor, biologist , conservationist , inventor, and nature photographer, noted for his contributions to American museums , most notably to the Milwaukee Public Museum , Field Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History . He is considered the father of modern taxidermy . [1] He was the founder of the AMNH Exhibitions Lab , the interdisciplinary department that fuses scientific r...
Unusual foods are foods that some people would consider unusual. Sorry... sometimes the title does all the heavy lifting. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details.
The 1947 Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City , Texas, at Galveston Bay . It was the deadliest industrial accident in United States history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions . A mid-morning fire started on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp (docked in the port) and detonated her cargo of about 2,300 tons (about 2,100 metric tons ) of ammonium nitrate . [1] This started a chain reaction of fires an...
Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1976 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history." [3] Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences without parole at ADX Florence , a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado . Our theme song ...
The Free Town Project was a project that sought to move to a very small town and advocate for legal changes there. Two towns were involved: Grafton, New Hampshire and Mentone, Texas . It was active in Grafton from 2004 to sometime in 2016. [58] Grafton's appeal as a favorable destination was due to its absence of zoning laws and a very low property tax rate. [59] Additionally, John Babiarz lived there already, and had an unsuccessful run for Governor of New Hampshire under the Libertarian Party ...
The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable ) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas , Arizona , and New Mexico . The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per ...
The Suez Canal ( Arabic : قَنَاةُ السُّوَيْسِ, Qanātu s-Suways ) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt , connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. In 1858, Ferdinand de Lesseps formed the Suez Canal Company for the express purpose of building the canal . Construction of the canal lasted from 1859 to 1869 and took place under the regional authority of the Ottoman Empire . The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869. It of...
Louis Jay Pearlman (June 19, 1954 – August 19, 2016) was an American record producer . He was the creator of successful 1990s boy bands such as Backstreet Boys and NSYNC . In 2006, he was accused of running one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in US history, leaving more than $300 million in debts. After being apprehended, he pled guilty to conspiracy , money laundering , and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. In 2008, Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to ...
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin [a] (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space , achieving a major milestone in the Space Race ; his capsule, Vostok 1 , completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union , his nation's highest honour. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support...
" The Death of Superman " is a crossover story event featured in DC Comics ' Superman -related publications. The crossover, which originated from editor Mike Carlin and writers Dan Jurgens , Roger Stern , Louise Simonson , Jerry Ordway , and Karl Kesel , began in December 1992 and lasted until October 1993. It was published in Superman , Action Comics , The Adventures of Superman , Superman: The Man of Steel , Justice League America , and Green Lantern . Since its initial publication, "The Death...
Vantablack is a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom and is one of the darkest substances known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light (at 663 nm if the light is perpendicular to the material). [4] [5]...
Caligula ( /kəˈlɪɡjʊlə/ ; 31 August 12 – 24 January 41 AD), formally known as Gaius ( Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), was the third Roman emperor , ruling from 37 to 41. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus 's granddaughter Agrippina the Elder , Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire , conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty ....
Tetris (Russian: Тетрис [ˈtɛtrʲɪs] ) is a tile-matching video game created by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies, most prominently during a dispute over the appropriation of the rights in the late 1980s. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo , the rights reverted to Pajitnov in 1996, who co-founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing....
The Great Famine ( Irish : an Gorta Mór [anˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ] ), also known as the Great Hunger , the Great Starvation , the Famine (mostly within Ireland) or the Irish Potato Famine (mostly outside Ireland), [1] [2] was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852. [3] With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant , the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as An Drochshaol , [4] loosely translated a...
In psychology , a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility , activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformation, and source misattribution have been suggested to be several mechanisms underlying a variety of types of false memory phenomena....
Joseph Frank Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), [1] known professionally as Buster Keaton , was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. [2] He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". [3] [4] Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interrupti...
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross , c. March 1822 [1] – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery , Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, [2] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad . During the American Civil War , she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army . In her later years, Tubman was an act...
Washington's Birthday is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the third Monday of February in honor of George Washington , the first president of the United States , who was born on February 22, 1732. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 moved this holiday to the third Monday, which can fall from February 15 to 21, inclusive. [1] Colloquially, the day is also now widely known as Presidents' Day (though the placement of the apostrophe, if any, varies) and is often an occasion to...
Cannabis ( /ˈkænəbɪs/ ) [2] is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae . The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: Cannabis sativa , Cannabis indica , and Cannabis ruderalis ; C. ruderalis may be included within C. sativa ; all three may be treated as subspecies of a single species, C. sativa ; [1] [3] [4] [5] or C. sativa may be accepted as a single undivided species. [6] The genus is widely accepted as being indigenous to and originating...
The Antwerp diamond heist , dubbed the "heist of the century", [1] was by far the largest diamond heist and one of the largest robberies in history. Thieves stole loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewelry valued at more than $100 million. [2] [3] It took place in Antwerp , Belgium, during the weekend of 15–16 February 2003. Though arrests were made and time was served, most of the diamonds stolen remain unrecovered. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d...
The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria in Australia in 1860–61. It consisted of 19 men led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills , with the objective of crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south, to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250 kilometres (approximately 2,000 miles). [1] At that time most of the inland of Australia had not been explored by non-Indigenous people and was largely unknown to the European settlers...
The Battle of the Golden Spurs ( Flemish : Guldensporenslag ; French : Bataille des éperons d'or ) was a military confrontation between the royal army of France and rebellious forces of the County of Flanders on 11 July 1302 during the Franco-Flemish War (1297–1305). It took place near the town of Kortrijk (Courtrai) in modern-day Belgium and resulted in an unexpected victory for the Flemish. It is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Courtrai . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna...
Alien abduction , sometimes also called abduction phenomenon , alien abduction syndrome or UFO abduction , is a personally held belief in which the alleged "abductee" describes "subjectively real experiences" of being secretly kidnapped by non-human entities ( aliens ) and subjected to physical and psychological experimentation. [1] Most scientists and mental health professionals explain these experiences by factors such as suggestibility (e.g. false memory syndrome ), sleep paralysis , deceptio...
This episode picks up on Wikipedia's list of unusual deaths, starting with the Medieval period. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details.
The Etruscan civilization ( /ɪˈtrʌskən/ ) of ancient Italy covered a territory , at its greatest extent, of roughly what is now Tuscany , western Umbria , and northern Lazio , [2] [3] as well as parts of what are now the Po Valley , Emilia-Romagna , south-eastern Lombardy , southern Veneto , and Campania . [4]...
Lapland New Forest was a Christmas -themed park near Ringwood , Hampshire , UK . [1] The park had been advertised as being a "winter wonderland" with a variety of exciting family events such as a Christmas market and a "magical tunnel of light", but the majority of the promised attractions either malfunctioned or were of a very low quality. The park closed after a week after complaints from customers and poor press attention, and the organisers were charged with misleading advertising , and sent...
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston . The event was heavily publicized by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams . [2] [3] [4] British troops had been stationed in the Province of Massachusetts Bay since 1768 in order to support crown-appointed officials and to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercanti...
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge ; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician [3] [4] [5] and scientific skeptic [6] [7] [8] who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. [9] He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to invest...
