From 1948 to 1975, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps conducted classified human subject research at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland . The purpose was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical warfare agents on military personnel and to test protective clothing , pharmaceuticals , and vaccines . A small portion of these studies were directed at psychochemical warfare and grouped under the prosaic title of the "Medical Research Volunteer Program" (1956–1975). The MRVP was also driven by int...
Feb 21, 2024•35 min
Alphonse Gabriel Capone ( / k ə ˈ p oʊ n / ; [1] January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nicknames " Scarface " and " Snorky ", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33....
Feb 14, 2024•42 min
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet , becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk . During a transit , Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black dot moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually several hours (the transit of 2012 lasted 6 hours and 40 minutes). A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon . Although the diameter of Ve...
Feb 07, 2024•34 min
Isabella of France ( c. 1295 – 22 August 1358), sometimes described as the She-Wolf of France ( French : Louve de France ), was Queen of England as the wife of King Edward II , and de facto regent of England from 1327 until 1330. She was the youngest surviving child and only surviving daughter of Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre . Isabella was notable in her lifetime for her diplomatic skills, intelligence, and beauty. She overthrew her husband, becoming a " femme fatale " figure in pla...
Jan 31, 2024•33 min
Celestial Seasonings founders Mo Siegel, Peggy Clute, Wyck Hay, and Lucinda Ziesing started gathering herbs and flowers in the mountains around Boulder and selling them to local health food stores in 1969. [2] [3]...
Jan 24, 2024•43 min
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator ( Koinē Greek : Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ [note 5] lit. Cleopatra "father-loving goddess"; [note 6] 70/69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. [note 7] A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty , she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter , a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great . [note 8] After the death of Cleopatra , Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire , mark...
Jan 17, 2024•38 min
Gaius Julius Caesar ( / ˈ s iː z ər / , SEE-zər ; Latin: [ˈɡaːiʊs ˈjuːliʊs ˈkae̯sar] ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate , Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war , and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire ....
Jan 10, 2024•28 min
The Amish ( / ˈ ɑː m ɪ ʃ / ; Pennsylvania German : Amisch ; German: Amische ), formally the Old Order Amish , are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. [2] They are closely related to Mennonite churches, a separate Anabaptist denomination. [3] The Amish are known for simple living , plain dress , Christian pacifism , and slowness to adopt many conveniences of modern technology, with a view neither to interrupt family time, nor r...
Jan 03, 2024•31 min
Several stories including: In 1927, most of the industrial alcohol in the United States had been poisoned under the order of the government. [9] The government had created a blend that contended with the bootleggers’ chemists.
Dec 27, 2023•32 min
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald . Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island , near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway 's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan ....
Dec 20, 2023•46 min
The Terra Nova Expedition , officially the British Antarctic Expedition , was an expedition to Antarctica which took place between 1910 and 1913. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott , the expedition had various scientific and geographical objectives. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition from 1901 to 1904, and wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole ....
Dec 13, 2023•41 min
The Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider . [1] [2] It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories across more than 100 countries. [3] It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva ....
Dec 06, 2023•37 min
List is located here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_falls_survived_without_a_parachute
Nov 29, 2023•35 min
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American aerospace engineer, businessman, filmmaker, investor, philanthropist, and pilot. [2] He was best known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening...
Nov 22, 2023•42 min
The Museum of Failure [1] is a museum that features a collection of failed products and services. The touring exhibition provides visitors with a learning experience about the critical role of failure in innovation and encourages organizations to become better at learning from failure. Samuel West's 2016 visit to the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb , Croatia , inspired the concept of the museum. [2] Museum founder and curator Samuel West reportedly registered a domain name for the museu...
Nov 15, 2023•40 min
The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier is a nonfiction book by April White. Published by Hachette Book Group in 2022, The Divorce Colony examines the role of Sioux Falls, South Dakota as a destination for divorce seekers through personal stories. Excerpts were published in The Boston Globe , [1] Smithsonian Magazine , [2] and on Politico . [3]...
Nov 08, 2023•34 min
https://www.cracked.com/article_18894_6-real-historic-battles-decided-by-divine-intervention.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mons
Nov 01, 2023•37 min
Peter Daryl Evans (born 29 August 1973 [ citation needed ] ) is an Australian chef, and former television presenter, who was a judge of the competitive cooking show My Kitchen Rules . Evans has been heavily criticised for spreading misinformation about vaccinations , promoting conservative political rhetoric, sharing conspiracy theories with followers and pseudoscientific dieting ideas such as the paleolithic diet . He lives in Round Mountain, New South Wales ....
Oct 25, 2023•31 min
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....
Oct 18, 2023•38 min
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...
Oct 11, 2023•38 min
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...
Oct 04, 2023•41 min
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...
Sep 27, 2023•43 min
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 comm...
Sep 20, 2023•29 min
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 ...
Sep 13, 2023•36 min
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...
Sep 06, 2023•39 min
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani ( / ˌ dʒ uː l i ˈ ɑː n i / 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]...
Aug 30, 2023•48 min
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...
Aug 23, 2023•38 min
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...
Aug 16, 2023•31 min
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....
Aug 09, 2023•43 min
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...
Aug 02, 2023•42 min
