Mostrando resultados por autor "Dan Lewis" en Todas las categorías

By many estimates, the world's Jewish population hovers around 14 million. Most of those people – around 12 million – live in either the United States or Israel.

The "Furby," a toy that resembles a monstrous chinchilla-esque, owl-like creature, was originally released in 1998 by Tiger Electronics – and, if you were a kid back then (or a parent, for that matter), you can attest to how wildly popular it was. Retailing for about $35, but with a secondary market price easily tripling that, the Furby was a combination of next-generation technology and nightmare-inducing fur.

In the 1971 book The Lorax, the incomparable Dr. Seuss tells the story of an environmentally conscious monster (the Lorax) and his efforts to protect Truffula trees (a fictional species) from an industrialist named the Once-ler who is chopping them down.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch." That quote, the origins of which are unknown, has been a staple rule of economics for nearly a century.

The Supreme Court of the United States reconvenes after its summer recess on the first Monday in October. Over the following months, the Court hears many cases, some of which are seen as more important than others.

The French Alpine town of Albertville sits in the southeast of the country, near the border of Italy, and is home to only about 10,000 people. Like most French communities, the people of Albertville rely on cheese. But unlike most other French areas, cheese is more than just a snack or part of a meal for the residents of Albertville. It, quite literally, powers part of the area.

For various reasons, dating someone you work with can be a bad idea. Many companies have rules called "no fraternization" policies, which outline the dos and don'ts of office romance.

Did you know that the CIA once made use of a “spy cat”, or that, although delicious, eating the flesh of an armadillo can give you leprosy? And what about Terry, the small black Cairn Terrier from Kansas who was paid today’s equivalent of $2,000 a week for her work in The Wizard of Oz? Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know: Animals.

The term "caloric stimulation" sounds like a medical term, and that's probably because it is one. Unfortunately, the term has nothing to do with eating an absurd amount of apple pie, but on the plus side, it's evidence that our ears can detect differences in temperature, with our eyes serving as their thermometers.

On October 24, 2013, the California Department of Social Services shut down a small elder care facility in Castro Valley, a suburb of San Francisco. According to a report by ABC 7 News, the nursing home, called Valley Springs Manor, had been investigated for a laundry list of problems, from failing to perform appropriate employee background checks to not providing patients with proper medication, and the 20 or so residents of the home were to be relocated to new, compliant homes.

You may know Arnold Schwarzenegger by such films as Terminator, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2, Conan the Barbarian, Predator, True Lies, Conan the Destroyer, and Terminator 3. You probably also know him as the 38th governor of California, serving in that office from November 2003 until January 2011.

Bret "The Hitman" Hart was a wrestling icon in the late 1980s and well into the '90s. Born to a pro wrestler, Hart's DNA and training made him a natural performer in the "squared circle," to use the parlance of the industry.

In 1918, the United Kingdom passed the Representation of the People Act, resulting in a major overhaul of the U.K.'s voting system.

Morton Salt was founded in 1848, originally selling salt, but it morphed into a salt manufacturer in 1910. Its logo and slogan, developed shortly thereafter, are a little strange for a salt company, though. The slogan, "when it rains, it pours," seems like a bad thing – rain isn't the most pleasant of weather and a downpour is even worse. The logo doesn't help: it depicts a girl in yellow, holding an umbrella that is shielding her from the rain – but she's spilling the salt she is carrying under her left arm.

From the end of World War II until the fall of the Soviet Union nearly fifty years later, the happenings of those nations behind the Iron Curtain were hidden in the shroud of communism. Many of the goings-on came to light in subsequent years, with most being stories of abuses under communist dictators. But some of the revelations unveiled in the 1990s were secrets about the Nazis. For example, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, someone discovered a swastika made of trees.

For the latter part of the 20th century, Vincent Gigante was a household name in his Greenwich Village neighborhood. On any given day, beginning when he was in his mid-to-late-30s, Gigante would walk around the community talking to himself under his breath, incoherently, to either no one whomsoever or figments only he could see.

Matthew Broderick's best movie was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In the film, Broderick's character, a teen named Ferris Bueller, was able to skip school while avoiding the consequences of an absenteeism policy he ran afoul of many times over.

The goal was simple: listen to music – specifically, Western rock 'n' roll. The problem: Those striving to reach that goal weren't in the United States or anywhere else where rock was popular – they were in the Soviet Union, and it was the 1950s.

Checks are, basically, IOUs. The person writing the check promises to pay the check's recipient at some point in the very near future. The check writer isn't even part of the transaction at that point – the writer's bank is instructed, literally, to "pay" the amount specified "to the order of" the person to whom the check is made out. The bank plays a critical role in the transaction beyond the delivery of cash, too – it helps ensure that the check writer is good for the debt now owed.

When George M. Stratton made himself a pair of “inverting glasses," his world turned upside down – and the scientific community gained some interesting new perspective. Learn more on this episode of Now I Know. George M. Stratton was born in 1865 in Oakland, California. By his early thirties, he was a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, but he took interest in psychology.