An unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement , especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a base unit. Many of the unusual units of measurements listed here are colloquial measurements, units devised to compare a measurement to common and familiar objects....
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s with shows such as The Real World , then achieved prominence in the early 2000s with the success of the series Survivor , Idols , and Big Brother , all of which became global franchises. [1] Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confes...
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur ; March 23, 190? [Note 1] – May 10, 1977) was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway . Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford launched a publicity campaign and built an image as a nationally known flapper by the end of the 1920s. By the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM...
Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American [2] and Canadian folklore . [3] His tall tales revolve around his superhuman labors, [4] [5] and he is customarily accompanied by Babe the Blue Ox , his pet and working animal. The character originated in the oral tradition of North American loggers, [2] [4] [5] and was later popularized by freelance writer William B. Laughead (1882–1958) in a 1916 promotional pamphlet for the Red River Lumber Company. [6] He has been the subject of var...
Brigadier General Francis Marion (c. 1732 – February 27, 1795), also known as the "Swamp Fox", was an American military officer, planter, and politician who served during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War . During the American Revolution , Marion supported the Patriot cause and enlisted in the Continental Army , fighting against British forces in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War from 1780 to 1781. Though he never commanded a field army or served as a comma...
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin [a] ( Russian : Евге́ний Ви́кторович Приго́жин, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ˈvʲiktərəvʲɪtɕ prʲɪˈɡoʐɨn] ; 1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch . [4] He led the Wagner Group private military company and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a rebellion in June 2023. [5] Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the K...
HMS Wager was a square-rigged sixth-rate Royal Navy ship of 28 guns. She was built as an East Indiaman in about 1734 and made two voyages to India for the East India Company before the Royal Navy purchased her in 1739. She formed part of a squadron under Commodore George Anson and was wrecked on the south coast of Chile on 14 May 1741. The wreck of Wager became famous for the subsequent adventures of the survivors who found themselves marooned on a desolate island in the middle of a Patagonian w...
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani ( /ˌdʒuːliˈɑːni/ JOO-lee-AH-nee , Italian: [dʒuˈljaːni] ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 1983 and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1983 to 1989. [1] [2]...
Sir William Wallace ( Scottish Gaelic : Uilleam Uallas , pronounced [ˈɯʎam ˈuəl̪ˠəs̪] ; Norman French : William le Waleys ; [2] c. 1270 [3] – 23 August 1305) was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence . [4] Along with Andrew Moray , Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297. He was appointed Guardian of Scotland and served until his defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in July 1298. In August 1305, W...
The 1939–1940 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens , New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time , exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people attended its exhibits in two seasons. [2] It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day", and it allo...
Nicholas Alahverdian (born July 11, 1987), [4] [5] also known as Nicholas Rossi and Arthur Knight , among other aliases, [3] is an American sex offender who faked his own death in 2020. 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....
Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and the founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement . Publishing the Book of Mormon at the age of 24, Smith had attracted tens of thousands of followers by the time of his death fourteen years later. The religion he founded continues to the present day, with millions of global adherents and several churches claiming Smith as their founder, the largest being The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Sa...
Virginia Hall Goillot DSC , Croix de Guerre , MBE (April 6, 1906 – July 8, 1982), code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom 's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II . The objective of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage , sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers , especially Nazi Germany . SOE and OSS agents in France allied themselves wit...
Titan , previously called Cyclops 2 , was a submersible that imploded on 18 June 2023 while transporting tourists to visit the wreckage of Titanic . The submersible was created and operated by OceanGate . It was the first privately-owned submersible with a claimed maximum depth of 4,000 m (13,000 ft), [2] and the first completed crewed submersible with a hull constructed of titanium and carbon fiber composite materials. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to s...
Marion Gordon " Pat " Robertson (March 22, 1930 – June 8, 2023) was an American media mogul , religious broadcaster , political commentator, presidential candidate, and Southern Baptist minister. Robertson advocated a conservative Christian ideology and was known for his involvement in Republican Party politics. He was associated with the Charismatic movement within Protestant evangelicalism . He served as head of Regent University and of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Our theme song ...
Olga ( Old East Slavic : Вольга, romanized: Volĭga ; [a] Old Norse : Helga ; Lith : Alge ; Christian name: Elena ; c. 890–925 – 969) was a regent of Kievan Rus' for her son Sviatoslav from 945 until 960. Following her baptism, Olga took the name Elenа ( Old East Slavic : Ѡлена, romanized: Olena ). [2] She is known for her subjugation of the Drevlians , a tribe that had killed her husband Igor of Kiev . Even though it was her grandson Vladimir who converted the entire nation to Christianity, beca...
Trigger Warning: This week's episode contains references to animal cruelty as well as a bunch of other stuff that's really gross. This week, Heath talks about scientists gone wild. 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....
A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars . Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers : they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . A more recent development is the Mars hel...
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity . The nearest star to Earth is the Sun . Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night , but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms , and many of the brightest stars have proper names . Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and prov...
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed the Maverick Marine, was a senior United States Marine Corps officer. During his 34-year career, he fought in the Philippine–American War , the Boxer Rebellion , the Mexican Revolution , and World War I . At the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received sixteen medals, including five for heroism; he is the only Marine to be awarded the Br...
This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources. 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....
William Stephen Belichick ( /ˈbɛlɪtʃɪk, ˈbɛlɪtʃɛk/ ; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach and general manager [a] of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Widely regarded as one of the greatest head coaches of all time, [2] [3] [4] he holds numerous coaching records, including the record of most Super Bowl wins (six) as a head coach, all with the Patriots, along with two more during his time as the defensive coordinator o...
Christian video games are a video game genre and a form of Christian media that focus on the narrative and themes of Christian morals and Christianity . And, though not a categorical requirement, they all suck. 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....
A delicacy is usually a rare and expensive food item that is considered highly desirable, sophisticated, or peculiarly distinctive within a given culture. Irrespective of local preferences, such a label is typically pervasive throughout a region. Often this is because of unusual flavors or characteristics or because it is rare or expensive compared to standard staple foods . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you ca...
MOUNT PLEASANT CEMETERY SITS ON the northern side of Seattle ’s Queen Anne Hill. Since its opening in 1879, the graveyard has been the resting place for the victims of some of Washington ’s most infamous tragedies. 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....
Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (1921 [1] – June 7, 1982) was an American impostor . He was the subject of a movie: The Great Impostor , in which he was played by Tony Curtis . Demara's impersonations included a naval surgeon , [2] a civil engineer , a sheriff's deputy , an assistant prison warden , a doctor of applied psychology , a hospital orderly, a lawyer , a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. One teaching job led to six months ...
ChatGPT [a] is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI and released in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 families of large language models (LLMs) and has been fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning ) using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques....
The Wright brothers , Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), [a] were American aviation pioneers generally credited [3] [4] [5] with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane . They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina , at what is now known as Kill Devi...
Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵, c. 1584 – 13 June 1645), [1] also known as Shinmen Takezō , Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name , Niten Dōraku , [2] was a Japanese swordsman , philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin , who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 61 duels (next is 33 by Itō Ittōsai ). Musashi, as he was often simply known, is considered a Kensei , a sword-saint of Japan. [3] He was the founder of the Niten Ichi-ryū ...
The Acali was a raft which was used in the Acali Expedition or Acali Experiment . [1] It has also been nicknamed the Sex Raft . [2] The raft had a complement of eleven people: five men and six women. It left Las Palmas , Spain on 12 May 1973 and took 101 days to drift across the Atlantic Ocean and reach Cozumel , Mexico , with a single stopover in Barbados. The experiment was conceived by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés (who had previously been a crew member of Thor Heyerdahl 's Ra exped...
