Browsing: Lists

A Brief History On November 25, 2013, Claire Suddah asked, “Why Are Women So ‘Bitchy’ to Each Other?”  In her article on this subject, she discusses academic efforts to study the way women interact with each other, especially with regard to speaking.  In fact, studies show women speak about 20,000 words a day compared to a man’s 7,000.  According to a University of Maryland study, this is perhaps due to women having more of a “language protein” in their brains. (Note: Some studies show women to be only slightly more verbose than men.)  Anyway, how much is “too much?”  Well,…

A Brief History On November 24, 1863, Union forces under the command of future President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain as part of the campaign to relieve the siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee by Confederate General Braxton Bragg.  Grant is known as the most successful Union general of the Civil War, and as the man most responsible for winning that war.  This much is true, but many of the other things we think we “know” about Grant are not so true. Digging Deeper For starters, Grant was not a drunkard.  As a young officer, he had a…

A Brief History On November 16, 1938, the psychedelic drug Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) that has since become known as “acid” was first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofman (not to be confused with Abbie Hoffman, the social radical).  You probably did not have any idea when, where and by whom LSD was invented, and to be honest, neither did the author. In fact, sometimes who exactly invented something is a matter of dispute.  Here 9 more such inventors whose names are generally not common knowledge to the masses are listed.   Digging Deeper 9. C.R. Alder Wright, Heroin, 1874. Englishman Wright…

A Brief History On October 31st, we celebrate Halloween around the world!  On honor of the holiday most popularly associated with almost all things creepy, we list some of the creepiest videos found on YouTube!  Yesterday, we listed videos concerning various urban legends.  Today, we feature various short films made by talented directors without any commentary by us so as not to spoil anything!  You can, however, read up on some of these in a related list over on TopTenz.  They are listed in the order they appeared on YouTube. Digging Deeper 1.  “agamemnon counterpart” by fividtelefuzzerator (uploaded on June…

A Brief History The first record of dressing up in costumes on Halloween in North America goes back to 1911 when a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported how the neighborhood children were “guising.”  It was not until the 1930s, however, that companies began mass-producing Halloween costumes for commercial sale.  Early costumes were scary in nature and were often of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mummies, witches, etc.  Later costumes moved on from the ghoulish characters and expanded to include non-scary figures ranging from superheroes to cowboys and Indians to fairy princesses to athletes to animals.  In recent years, it has become a popular trend for women to…