It’s Friday, so that means it’s time for your weekly fake-out. Here’s how it works: Two of the three following stories are true. And one of them we made up. Can you guess which one is the fake? Pick your answer at the end of the article and see if you’re right.
Sinterklaas is one of the world’s most controversial holidays
but you’ve probably never heard of it.
One of the ways that Santa Claus is able to travel all around the world on Christmas Eve is by cutting corners. For instance, he doesn’t widely visit homes in Europe’s “low countries.” Instead, a much skinnier gift-giver covers those regions. His name is Sinterklaas (or just “Sint”). He delivers presents on December 5, on a holiday also called Sinterklaas, to all the good boys and girls…who live in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Instead of a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer, Sint rides a white horse to make his toy deliveries. And instead of spending the offseason at the North Pole, Sint is said to live in Spain. And instead of arriving on a float at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to herald the beginning of the Christmas season, Sint departs Spain on a steamship and shows up at various celebrations in the middle of November. And no milk and cookies for Sint, please—Belgian and Dutch kids leave Sint’s horse a carrot in their shoes.
With the international reveal of the sixth generation Mustang on its 50th anniversary, we revisit this iconic car’s history. The original Ford Mustang, a sporty car for “everyman” introduced in 1964, is now a symbol of the entire decade. Here’s a bit of its history.
The Mustang was the most successful new car ever introduced by the American auto industry. But in terms of the ’60s, it was more than a car. Its popularity was an expression of the simple truth of the decade—that everyone wanted to look, feel, and act young.
You watch them every year…but do you know everything there is to know
about these classic holiday films?
Elf. Buddy the Elf says that elves “try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.” While portraying Buddy, Ferrell ate so much sugar—particularly in the scenes where Buddy eats huge plates of spaghetti covered in chocolate syrup and candy chunks—that he routinely suffered migraines throughout the filming of the movie.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about the Singing Nun, who had an unlikely #1 hit in the U.S. in 1963 with “Dominique,” a song sung in French. Here are some more non-English tunes that topped the American pop chart.
• A rock version of the folk song “La Bamba” is Ritchie Valens’ best-known and signature song, but upon its release in 1959, it was only a minor hit. As the B-side of the #2-hit ballad “Donna,” “La Bamba” hit #23. But when a movie about Ritchie Valens life and untimely death (he died in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper) called La Bamba was released in 1987, a cover version by the band Los Lobos hit #1. It’s the first and only time a song sung entirely in Spanish has topped the charts.
Stuff you didn’t know about the world’s most famous basketball team.
• In late 1926, Abe Saperstein took over as coach of a touring African-American team in Chicago called the Savoy Big Five (they played their games at the Savoy Ballroom). Saperstein renamed them the Harlem Globetrotters because all the players were African-American (Harlem being a predominantly African-American neighborhood).
• The original lineup for the team’s first game in January 1927: “Toots” Wright, “Fat” Long, “Kid” Oliver, “Runt” Pullins, and Andy Washington.
• The team played hundreds of games a year and got so good that they played in a national championship in 1939 against another independent team, the New York Renaissance. The Globetrotters lost, but that same year they discovered that the crowd liked it when they did ball tricks and comic routines. Saperstein told them to do as much of that as possible…provided they’d already established a comfortable lead.
• Over the years, a few famous athletes have played for the Globetrotters. Wilt Chamberlain played for one year, between college and joining the NBA. Future Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson played in the 1950s, before his baseball career. And NBA great Magic Johnson played in a single game.
The holidays are right around the corner and we have a very special gift for everyone this year: A BRAND NEW STORE! We think it’s a big upgrade on looks and a lot easier to use. Best of all, we can now offer Canadian shipping and most of our e-books! Now you can do all […]
Tastes in TV change, so TV changes with them. Here are some shows that were once part of the broadcasting landscape…that have since gone off the air.
VARIETY SHOWS
These glitzy, glamorous, song and dance spectaculars were dominant TV format in the 1960s and ‘70s. Featuring big production numbers, colorful costumes, comic sketches, and banter between the hosts, extravaganzas Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie, and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour dominated ratings. By 1980 they were simply passé, as the garish ‘70s gave way to the sleek ‘80s. In 1987, ABC attempted to revive the variety show with what seemed like a sure thing. The network signed singer/actress Dolly Parton to a two-year, $44 million contract to star in Dolly. It flopped, and the network bought out Parton’s contract and cancelled the show in less than a year.
Quieter living through chemistry.
There’s nothing worse than trying to concentrate on a very important project (like, say, a blog post) while struggling to tune out loud neighbors. If you live or work in an area with heavy traffic or other types of noise pollution, you’ve likely found yourself wishing you could grab a remote control and turn down the volume on the world outside your window.
It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for your weekly fake-out. Here’s how it works: Two of the three following stories are true. One of them we made up. Can you guess which one is the fake? Pick your answer at the end of the article and see if you’re right.
More sports statistical anomalies, this time for football.
Tallest: Being taller than 7’0” is routine in the NBA. In the NFL, there’s only been one man. Seven-foot-tall defensive tackle Richard Sligh was drafted by the Oakland Raiders in 1967. He wasn’t put to much use, playing in just eight games and sitting on the bench during Super Bowl II.
Shortest: In the early days of the NFL—when it was essentially a regional, semiprofessional league, a 5’0”-tall guy named Jack Shapiro played in just one game in 1929, as a back, for the now defunct Staten Island Stapletons.
It’s almost Thanksgiving—have you bought your robot turkey yet?
• In 2003, wildlife conservation officers in Michigan faced a spate of illegal turkey poachers. They didn’t call the Detroit police, one-time employer of Robocop—they brought in Robo Turkey. Several models of the $1,000 animatronic bird were placed in fields and woodlots around the state’s northern counties to protect wild turkeys. Robo Turkey looks like the real thing…from a distance. Officers can operate the bird via remote control to make him move around and shake his tail feathers, in order to attract illegal hungers. Robo Turkey has caught hundreds of poachers in the past decade.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of “Doctor Who,” here are some stories about some people who claimed to have unlocked the secret of time travel…or maybe not.
• In 2000, a mysterious man named “John Titor” started posting messages on Internet paranormal discussion forums claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. He’d been sent back in time by the U.S. government, he said, to fix software bugs that were making computers in the future malfunction. Titor not only showed off pictures of his time machine (a modified 1967 Camaro), but detailed the scary world events between the years 2000 and 2036. For example, from 2004 to 2008, the second American Civil War was waged; that the 2004 Olympics were the last ones ever held; and that in 2015, Russia started World War III by dropping nuclear bombs on China, the U.S., and most of Europe. Three billion people died and all major world governments crumbled. In March 2001, Titor claimed his IT duties were complete and he “returned” to 2036…which means he never posted on Internet forums again. Obviously, you can figure out that Titor’s details of the future history weren’t quite accurate, making this a hoax. But who was behind it? Nobody knows.
It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to try to fake you out. Two of three stories about stuff being stuffed where it shouldn’t be stuffed are real…and one we made up. Can you guess which one is the fake? Pick your answer at the end of the article and see if you’re right.
If there’s one thing everybody can agree on, it’s doughnuts. It seems like every culture on earth has perfected some kind of sweetened and fried dough. Here are just a few doughnuts from around the world.
Pastry: Beignet
Country: France
Details: French cooks can make even a doughnut—simple dough, cooked in oil—seem fancy. “Beignet” is a deep-fried pastry made out of a versatile dough base called choux. Consisting of little more than butter, flour, eggs, and water, the same dough is used to make other French desserts, including éclairs and profiteroles. A beignet is usually rectangular, served hot, and topped with a mound of powdered sugar.
Some things you probably didn’t know about the 35th president,
who was assassinated 50 years ago this month.
• It’s political lore that John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election on the strength of the first-ever televised presidential debates: Kennedy appeared calm and collected, and wore makeup to look good on TV, while his opponent, Richard Nixon, seemed nervous and sweaty. Kennedy may have won the image game, but the debates didn’t hand him the keys to the White House. Gallup polls throughout 1960 show a very close race…and so did the outcome. Kennedy beat Nixon handily in the Electoral College (303 to 219), but got just 112,000 more votes, out of 68 million total.
This funny-sounding idea might be the most important “holiday” in the world. Seriously.
Earlier this year, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, along with a coalition from Singapore, introduced a resolution to declare November 19th the first “World Toilet Day.” That sounds lighthearted or silly, but then maybe here in the U.S. we take for granted our widespread sanitation and consistent access to toilets. Worldwide, the lack of sanitation and toilets is a public health crisis. “Sanitation is central to human and environmental health,” Ban said. “It is essential for sustainable development, dignity, and opportunity.” In other words, it’s a basic human right that a lot of humans do not get to enjoy.
The PlayStation 4 just came out, so here’s some trivia about the first three: 5 facts about PlayStation.
• In the late ‘90s, Sony manufactured the audio processors for the Super Nintendo system. Seeing how much money Nintendo was making, the company decided to make its own system. At the same time, it was working with Phillips Electronics to improve CD-ROM technology. Sony figured out how to run data, graphics, and audio from a CD-ROM simultaneously and super-fast. Result: It could put highly advanced video games on discs, a gaming first. Disc games are also much cheaper to manufacture than cartridges, the traditional delivery method for video games.
• Video game industry analysts predicted the PlayStation to fail shortly upon its release in 2000. Why? Because at that point, only software manufacturers like Nintendo and Sega had successfully launched a video game console. Strictly electronics companies, like Sony, had a long history of releasing flop systems, such as RCA’s Studio II, Fairchild’s Channel F, and Magnavox’s Odyssey.
