Weekly Wrap Volume 11

This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here.

zeldaThe Origin of the Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda is aptly named, as the series has truly become a legend within the gaming industry. Every new generation of gamers have been given the opportunity to fall in love with it through their current Nintendo console. Or if they’re purists, going back to the original NES game. However, the fundamentals have pretty much always remained – a boy in green whose quest is to stop an evil wizard and save the princess. You don’t mess with perfection. The question is- where did the inspiration for the Legend of Zelda come from? What… (more)

lincoln-beardThe Little Girl Responsible for Lincoln’s Beard

In 1860, the clean shaven Abraham Lincoln was running for President of the United States. That’s when he received the following letter from an 11 year old girl by the name of Grace Bedell from New York, dated October 15, 1860: “Dear Sir My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11…” (more)

bill-morganThe Man Who Died, Came Back to Life and Won the Lotto Twice- the Second Time When Reenacting the First Win for the Media

In 1999, 37 year old Bill Morgan was a truck driver living in a travel trailer in Australia. That’s when disaster struck- while working, he got in a pretty bad accident that he nonetheless survived. However, medication he was given during his recovery resulted in him having an extreme allergic reaction that ultimately caused his heart to stop. After being clinically dead for fourteen minutes, they were able to get his heart going again.  Sometimes with that span… (more)

circus-maximusWhile the Roman Colosseum is More Famous Today, Its Predecessor, the Circus Maximus, Could Hold About 3 to 6 Times More People

The Colosseum is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rome and incredibly popular with tourists. Movies would have you think that chariot races, gladiator shows, and battle simulations always took place there, but that isn’t true. The Colosseum was finished relatively recently, all things considered. Before its completion, a more popular venue for such things was the Circus Maximus. The Circus Maximus was arguably the largest structure in ancient Rome, with the capacity to seat 250,000 people according to Pliny (roughly a quarter of Rome’s population at the time; some historians… (more)

anatoli-bugorski2What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator

Exhibit A: Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, a Russian scientist who has the distinction of being the only person to ever stick his head in a running particle accelerator.  Shockingly, he also managed to survive the ordeal and, all things considered, came out without too much damage. Bugorski was a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, working with the Soviet particle accelerator: The Synchrotron U-70. On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was checking a… (more)

Bonus Quick Facts:

  • Hachikō was a dog who would greet his master Hidesaburō Ueno at the Shibuya Station every day for about a year when his master would come home from work at the University of Tokyo. Unfortunately, one day Ueno died while at work and didn’t come home. For the next nine years, until his own death, the dog would show up when his master’s train would arrive and wait for a time before leaving when it was apparent his master wasn’t coming home that day. Hachikō finally died of cancer and was found on the street on March 8, 1935. Hachikō’s body was then stuffed and mounted and can be seen at the National Science Museum of Japan in Tokyo.
  • If you search “askew” in Google, the content of the browser will tilt slightly.
  • In the original The Little Mermaid story, the Little Mermaid endures excruciating pain “like walking on sharp swords” as a price for getting legs. Also, the Prince falls in love with someone else and marries them instead. The Little Mermaid is given the chance to become a mermaid again, if she kills the prince and drips is blood on her feet, but she chooses not to and throws her body into the sea where it disintegrates and she turns into a “daughter of the air” spirit.
  • In Gisborne Airport in New Zealand, one of Palmerston North-Gisborne Line’s active railroad tracks runs right across the runway.
  • In order to detect when someone’s copying their maps, mapmakers typically will add various small errors in their map, such as fake roads, and the like.
  • Jason Earles who played the teenage Jackson Stewart in Hanna Montana, was 29 years old when he took the role. He was 33 in Hannah Montana The Movie.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.’s name was originally Michael, not Martin. His father was also Michael King, hence why Martin Luther King Jr. was originally named Michael King Jr. However, after a trip to Germany in 1931, Michael King Sr. changed his own name in homage to historic German theologian Martin Luther. Michael King Jr. was two years old at the time and King Sr. made the decision to change his son’s name to Martin Luther as well.
  • Stanfordrejects.com redirects to Berkeley.edu…
  • Since February of 2012, Rialto, California has required all police officers to wear a camera to monitor all interactions with the public. After this practice was instituted, the number of complaints to the department dropped by 88%. Further, the number of instances of the police using “force” on people dropped 60%. As the chief of police there said, “When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better…”
  • Sapiosexual is the scientific name for a person who is sexually attracted to people’s intelligence The first part of the word comes from the Latin “sapiens”, meaning “wise”.

Other Interesting Stuff:

james-barryThe First British Surgeon to Perform a Successful C-Section Was a Woman Disguised as a Man

It is believed that “James Barry” started out in life as Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was born around 1789 in Ireland. Not much is known about her childhood, except that when it came time for her elder brother, John Bulkley, to start a career and get married, the family was plunged into poverty. John’s wedding alone cost £1500, not to mention the huge expense of apprenticing him to an attorney. Margaret’s father ended up in prison, and without any help from the ungrateful brother, her mother packed up Margaret and her sister and moved to London in hopes of finding work. We also know that Margaret… (more)

albert-einsteinAlbert Einstein Did Not Fail at Mathematics in School

In fact, he actually excelled at mathematics throughout his schooling and even considered becoming a mathematician for a time.  This rumor actually started while he was still alive and even showed up in a particular issue of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Einstein was shown the article in Ripley’s, which had the title “Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics.” Beyond the fact that this failure never happened, the other incorrect bit in that article was that Einstein was not a mathematician. Einstein reportedly found the article humorous and remarked: ““I never failed in mathematics… Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.” (15 was the age in Germany that most qualified students would start to learn calculus.)… (more)

tonsils-340x249What Do Tonsils Do?

What most people refer to as “tonsils” are known as Palatine tonsils. These are the two large protruding tissues that reside on the sides of the back of your throat. These are actually part of a grouping of lymphoid tissues (tissue that perform different functions for your immune system) known as Waldeyer’s tonsillar ring. Waldeyer’s ring creates a rough circular edge at the opening of our digestive system. Encompassing both the nasopharynx (the space where your nose meets the back of your throat) and the… (more)

red-hair-340x484What Causes Red Hair

Today I found out what causes people to have red hair.  It turns out, it is not because they are the spawn of Satan or otherwise evil at heart (Well, supposedly.  Everyone knows a group of red-heads known as “The Fire of Rankin”, lead by the Septi Caput Capitis counsel, secretly rules the world in Edinburgh, Scotland;  coincidentally this is where most of the “Red Head’s Aren’t Evil” research comes from.  Wake Up Sheeple!!!). 😉 In any event,  red heads get their distinctive hair color and inability to survive when sunlight hits their skin from being bitten by a vampire, but not having their blood all sucked dry… Or if you want to believe the Septi Caput Capitis funded Edinburgh researchers, it’s because of a little thing called the “Melancortin 1 Receptor” or MC1R for short.  Everyone has Melancortin 1 Receptors, but in red heads… (more)

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