Showing results by narrator "Mark Schectman" in All Categories

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.

Nevada is a nice insurance policy for a presidential hopeful – in fact, that's why Nevada became a state in the first place. Explore the state's unbridled history on this episode of Now I Know. The United States is in the throes of its presidential campaigns season and, over the last week or so, candidates from both major parties have focused their sights on Nevada. Come November, that will again be true as Nevada can be a bellwether state – in each of the previous nine election cycles, Nevada voters supported the overall winner.

In China, millions of women regularly gather for morning square dancing – despite the government's attempt to stop them. Get the step-by-step story on this episode of Now I Know. Today millions of Chinese women aged 55 and older regularly gather for morning square dancing – even though the Chinese government tried to stop them. Square dancing in China, at least among middle-aged and older women, became a trend in the mid-1990s.

What do you do when fog disrupts a soccer match? If you're the UK in 1940, you broadcast an imaginary game instead. Get the full, fogged up story on this episode of Now I Know. In 1875, two of Edinburgh’s soccer teams – Heart of Midlothian F.C, and Hibernian F.C. – faced off for the first time. The two teams, nicknamed the “Hearts” and the “Hibs,” now meet on the pitch regularly, and the games have become a cultural touchstone.

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.

Did you know that stop signs weren't always red? Explore the stop sign's colorful past on this episode of Now I Know. Ask enough people to describe a stop sign and you will get some pretty common answers: it has the word STOP in white lettering (at least in the United States), it has eight sides, and – of course – it’s red. Everyone knows that.

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.

Is zero odd or even? Find out how India drove around the problem on this episode of Now I Know. Zero is an even number. Let’s get that out of the way. But if that gave you pause, you’re not alone – it can be a little hard to internalize. That’s why Wikipedia has a surprisingly long entry discussing the subject and why, according to a study from the 1990s (as explained by the BBC), “people are 10% slower at deciding whether zero is odd or even than other numbers.”

No Hope is for disaffected conservatives and moderates as well as liberals who are fed up with the political party system. Forty-three percent of Americans now identify as Independents. Many of them are right of center and used to be Republicans.

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.

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.

In 1984, a Michigan man named Donald Magett won the big one – the Michigan Lottery's $1,000 Cash for Life scratch off game. He was 41 or 42 years old at the time, and while the monthly prize (paid in $12,000 annual chunks) wasn't quite "quit your job" money, it certainly sounded like he was on his way to financial security. Alas, that was not the case. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Labor sued Magett.

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.

In 2013, Mamoru Samuragochi was nearing his 50th birthday and was at the peak of his fame. A talented composer, Samuragochi was near the top of the list if you needed an original score for a video game and was widely regarded as a leading talent in the realm of digital composition. He was also well known for composing a symphony about the Hiroshima bomb, which quickly became one of the more popular classical music pieces in Japan.

Sometime in the summer of 1933, a couple in Trinidad – it's unclear if they were ever married – went through a particularly nasty breakup. The woman, Caroline, believed her partner to be less-than-faithful; his reputation for philandering and carousing was more than she could handle, especially given that she had just given birth to twin boys six months prior. Caroline decided to return to Germany, where she – a practicing Roman Catholic – had grown up.

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 New York City's decades-long pinball ban – and resulting black market – on this episode of Now I Know. Fiorello LaGuardia was elected mayor of New York City in 1933, and, on January 1st of the following year, took office. One of his first acts as mayor was to crack down on mafia activity, especially mob-owned slot machines, seeing them as a direct line into the coffers of organized crime.

Today, the United States celebrates the fake holiday known as Groundhog Day. The tradition, which dates back to the 18th or 19th century, is pseudoscience, but probably the harmless variety. People gather around in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, waiting for a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil to emerge. (And yes, there are other Groundhog Day groundhogs, too, but Phil's the OG, assuming the "G" stands for "groundhog".)

In the fall of 1994, the United States was introduced to a new tool in the world of crime solving and prosecution – DNA evidence. The O.J. Simpson trial had captured the nation's – if not much of the world's – attention, and a large part of the trial's outcome hung on DNA. At the time, the use of DNA evidence was still emerging, and the science wasn't well understood – or trusted – by juries.