Showing results by author "Dan Lewis" in All Categories

That's a quote from a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority train rider named Alicia Porter from December 2013. As she and many others told the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, it was best to avoid the Atlanta subway's elevators unless one wanted to take a large whiff of – and this is gross – someone else's urine.

If you live in an area where Halloween is celebrated, there's a very good chance you'll have a bucket of junk in your house on October 31st. You also probably have someone in your house – kids, adults, perhaps even part of your own internal monologue – begging to eat some of that loot. But nutrition should come first, of course …right?

Here's a simple experiment you can try at home – and, probably will in the near future, whether you'd like to or not. Call a customer support hotline, try to talk to a real human and, well, you don't have to do much else. In many cases, you'll be put on hold, and you'll get to experience hold music. It's almost a given that this will happen, as hold music has become a very common feature of such phone systems. But it has a very uncommon history.

Okay, before we start this one, a warning: the fact and story are from hundreds of years ago, and the sources at the time were mostly oral, so there's a good chance this is more legend than truth.

Learn about the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Minister for Foreign Trade who never existed in the first place – or did he? – on this episode of Now I Know. In the summer of 2006, the Democratic Republic of the Congo held its first true election in more than a generation. Many different parties fielded candidates, including one called the Union of Congolese Nationalist Federalists. And while UNAFEC didn’t earn enough votes to take the Prime Minister’s seat, they did well enough to get at least one spot in the cabinet.

Proof that nothing is free (there's usually a catch): Learn about the Alabama sting operation disguised as a football ticket giveaway, on this episode of Now I Know. In the state of Alabama, one of the year’s more important events – the Iron Bowl, a college football game pitting in-state rivals Auburn University and the University of Alabama against each other – is traditionally held the day after Thanksgiving.

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.

Natural gas is odorless. And gas leaks are very dangerous. Is the solution a scratch-and-sniff sticker? Decide for yourself on this episode of Now I Know. Natural gas is odorless. As gas leaks are very dangerous – even the smallest spark can turn a peaceful, gas-filled room into a flaming inferno – gas companies give us a way to detect a leak. They add a colorless, flammable gas called mercaptan to the mix, which smells like rotten eggs or rotten cabbage.

It's common knowledge that rubbing alcohol makes cuts burn. But, why? Find out the answer to this burning question on this episode of Now I Know. Get a scrape or a cut and your first step – after the subtle facial expression you make from the pain – may be to grab some rubbing alcohol. Your goal is to clean off the wound before applying a bandage, as you want to shield the scrape from the elements, and prevent trapping bacteria or other stuff within the injured area.

In 1953 North and South Korea entered into an armistice, ending the Korean War and providing a shaky basis for something close to peace between the two nations.

Two all-beef patties. Special sauce. Lettuce. Cheese. Pickles. Onions. On a sesame seed bun. Those words were first penned by an advertising agency in the mid-1970s, and then set to music.

In June 2015, Ananov left Moscow in a small helicopter. He was trying to become the first person to fly solo around the world in a helicopter weighing less than one ton.

The word "dude" means "man" and, nowadays, is generically applicable to any person. (But you already knew that.) The term has been around since the late 1880s, but unlike most words, the etymology of the term was, until recently, mostly a mystery.

At 67°51' North latitude, the Swedish town of Jukkasjärvi is located within the Arctic Circle, which should give you an idea for how remote it is. Its Wikipedia entry uses more words to explain the origin of the town's name than it does the town's attractions, which is to say that there aren't very many of the latter. From April to November, probably the most interesting building in the town of about 500 people is an old wooden church dating back to the early 1600s.

On January 5, 2010, Irish authorities descended upon the home of an electrician who, just a couple of days earlier, had traveled from his native Slovakia back to his adopted home of Ireland. Acting on a tip from the Slovak authorities, the Irish police believed that the man – whose name was never released to the press – had recently smuggled explosives into Ireland. Specifically, the man was believed to have transported an explosive called RDX in his luggage during his January 2nd flight.

With a list price of $18.95, the Casio F91-W digital watch is cheap – and selling for $10.72 on Amazon as of this writing. It's well-regarded, with well over 1,000 reviews on Amazon, nearly 90 percent of which are for four or five stars.

Beginning in the 1630s and lasting for more than two centuries, Japan's foreign policy was one of strict isolationism – to a violent degree. According to Wikipedia, the policy, called "sakoku," held that "no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death."

It began in 1997. Grocery stores in Bucks County, Pennsylvania – about 45 miles from Philadelphia – were all reporting the same things to their distributors: loaf after loaf of Friehofer's brand bread, destroyed.

The internet has made newspapers' "Help Wanted" ads a thing of the past. But in 2001, before this form of advertising was sent into obsolescence, an entrepreneurial (and seemingly desperate) job seeker named Brian O'Dea used the medium to reverse things.

Learn more about the French newspaper that publishes 'all the news that's fit to wait for a while,' on this episode of Now I Know. Some of the articles featured in the February 29, 2012 edition of the French-language newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur centered on the alleged dangers of chewing gum, changes in drink sizes, and a bunch of other items that don’t seem all that critical to everyday life. The newspaper is further distinguished by ads – there aren’t any – and by its website – it doesn’t have one.