A Brief History On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy conducted a surprise (or less politically correct, “sneak”) attack against the US military installations and ships at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The early morning attack undoubtedly caught many Americans in the bathroom, doing their “duty.” Those American heroes had to be desperate to finish their business with “John” and get to their military duties, undoubtedly having no time to contemplate the fantastic advances in bathroom technology that makes our lives so much more bearable. Today we look at a sampling of things you might take for granted but were actually…
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A Brief History On October 19, 1943, the antibiotic drug, Streptomycin, was isolated by researchers at the esteemed Rutgers University. Streptomycin, useful for treating many infections, was the first drug to successfully combat tuberculosis. Today we use this medical milestone to take a look at some of the truly great advances in medicine, quite relevant in 2020 while we await the development, approval, and disbursement of a viable vaccine for the Covid-19 pandemic devastating the world. (For that matter, identifying a treatment that defeats this terrible virus would be nice, too!) As always, feel free to nominate extremely important medical…
A Brief History On October 2, 1919, First Lady of the United States (U.S.), Edith Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson, unofficially ran the U.S. government following her husband’s (then President Woodrow Wilson’s) life-changing stroke. We detailed this story back in 2013, and we previously have discussed the concept of “October Surprise” in an article we ran on October 31, 2014. Today we use the concept of “October Surprise” and secret goings on to tell you about some surprising secret ingredients of products you may not have suspected contain such things. Digging Deeper Whale Oil was in our automatic…
A Brief History On August 21, 1986, a volcano in Cameroon hidden beneath Lake Nyos erupted and released a mass quantity of carbon dioxide gas, suffocating and killing nearly 1800 and 3500 of their farm animals. (When we say “mass quantity,” we mean 100,000 to 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, or maybe as much as well over a million tons!) Although unusual, this horrible disaster is not unique, as 2 other lakes in Africa have a similar situation where volcanic carbon dioxide exists in enormous quantities, potentially causing a similar disaster. Those other 2 lakes are Lake Kivu on the…
A Brief History On August 3, 1997, the Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand opened, taking the title as the tallest free standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. At 1076 feet tall, this telecommunications and observation tower is indeed tall compared to most buildings, even skyscrapers and most other towers, but it is positively puny compared to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates which at 2722 feet is BY FAR the tallest free standing structure in the world, the tallest building ever built by human beings. So far… Today we take a look at some the really tall…