This year, we resolve to write more blog posts about New Year’s resolutions. And look at that, we did it! • Ancient Babylonians started the idea of New Year’s resolutions about 4,000 years ago, although the new year in that society started in the middle of March and lined up with crop-planting season. As part […]
You know him for his boxing prowess and remarkable way with words, but how much do you really know about Muhammad Ali? Read on to find out more about “The Greatest.” By age 18, Clay had won two Amateur Athletic Union national titles, two Golden Gloves national titles, and had amassed a record of 100 […]
Can’t get enough of those true crime podcasts? Then you’re going to love Portable Press’s Strange Crime. But until it arrives, delve into these stories about the most notorious, mysterious — and unsolved — criminal acts in American history.
Here are the stories of some women who broke down barriers and literally changed the world. Hannah Slater received a patent in 1793 for a new type of cotton thread that made textile manufacture simpler and faster. That enabled her husband to develop a textile business, but Slater goes down in history as the first […]
George Lucas’s Star Wars saga spans nine main movies, spinoffs like Rogue One and Solo, and The Mandalorian. That’s a lot of Star Wars, and it doesn’t even count all these other Star Wars projects that almost got made…but didn’t. Before handing off directorial duties on the third produced Star Wars movie, Return of the […]
It’s almost Father’s Day. A time to celebrate and remember all the fathers that have made our lives special. There is no better way than to dive into the punniest joke book ever—DAD JOKES! Three lucky, random winners will be chosen. Giveaway ends June 9, 2019, midnight PST. Open to 18+, US and Canada.
Can you “train” your brain to figure out what landmark event happened exactly 150 years ago? A huge moment in American history Recently, around 20,000 people descended on Promontory Summit, a remote bluff about 70 miles northwest of Salt Lake City. The reason: To commemorate a huge moment in American history. It’s the setting of […]
You never know what you might fight out there, underneath the wood pile, next to the herb garden, or below the kids’ old swing-set. BRING OUT YOUR DEAD In 2010, a New Orleans man named Vincent Marcello got to work on digging the big hole necessary to install a swimming pool in his backyard. While […]
Here’s a taste of what life is like on the bottom of the world. Least populated Of the seven continents, Antarctica is the least populated, but the fifth largest. It’s bigger than Australia and all of Europe. Not one landmass Antarctica isn’t one singular landmass. In addition to its mainland, it also encompasses the South […]
96 percent of the internet consists of cute cat pictures and funny cat videos. Okay, that’s not true, and neither are these long-held myths about cats. Myth: Cats love milk. Truth: It’s one of things we most associate with cats — they love to lap up a saucer of milk in much the same way […]
Catch a whiff of these recent stories all about natural gas. (They’re about farts is what we’re saying.) The Air Up Here On a February 2018 flight from Dubai to Amsterdam on Transavia Airlines (a discount Dutcher carrier), an elderly man just couldn’t stop farting…nor would he (or could he) hold it in. He was […]
Uncle John can barely fathom the agony doing all the work to make a book, get it out to thousands of bookstores…and then having to gather them all back up again. It occasionally happens to publishers, however—forced to recall a book because of a really bad mistake that nobody noticed. Kindle’s 1984 and Animal Farm In […]
Sure, it stings to write a big check to the IRS every April, but that money goes to pay for schools, roads, bridges…and this stuff, too. An exhaustive history of smoking in Russia In 2015, the U.S. National Institutes of Health paid more than $48,000 to an individual to research and write an exhaustive history […]
If you’re looking for a job…you might want to avoid these fields. They pretty much don’t exist anymore. Milkman Why did the milkman go away? Because of more affordable, and subsequently commonplace, refrigeration. Now that most homes have a fridge, they can buy a gallon or two of milk and keep it fresh or a […]
Fact: Astronauts are the coolest. Proof: They’re trained pilots…and they’ve been to space. Amazing! Sadly, we’ve lost one of the first astronauts (he was one of the “Mercury 7”) and a true American hero in John Glenn. Astronaut Glenn Glenn is best known as the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, and fifth person […]
Since 1986 there have been 11 helicopter-assisted jailbreaks from French prisons. Three of them involved the same man. Background Pascal Payet, a.k.a. “Kalashnikov Pat,” is one of France’s most notorious criminals. In 1997 he was arrested for armed robbery and murder after an attack on an armored truck, during which he shot a guard 14 […]
Uncle John would like to remind you, once and for all, he is not playing with his “dolls.” They are action figures. Goodbye, Dolly In 1964 designers at Hasbro Toys came up with a line of military dolls. Executives loved it, but the marketing department felt that boys would never buy anything called a “doll,” […]
This strange tradition began over a hundred years ago and it eventually became a big problem in Paris. Here’s why the City of Light finally cracked down on its thousands of “love locks.”
