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Before the widespread invention of the internal combustion engine oil refineries considered gasoline to be a completely useless and highly dangerous byproduct of producing kerosene for lamps.
Before the widespread invention of the internal combustion engine oil refineries considered gasoline to be a completely useless and highly dangerous byproduct…
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Pixar followed Boo's toddler voice actor instead of making her read.
Pixar followed Boo's toddler voice actor instead of making her read. Mary Gibbs was too young for a conventional scripted recording session, so the Monsters,…
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Smash Mouth's Shrek connection began with more than All Star.
Smash Mouth's Shrek connection began with more than All Star. Singer Steve Harwell recalled that the filmmakers initially approached the band about I'm a…
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John Krasinski secretly filmed the opening credits footage for The Office while visiting Scranton with friends shortly after getting cast as Jim Halpert.
John Krasinski secretly filmed the opening credits footage for The Office while visiting Scranton with friends shortly after getting cast as Jim Halpert.…
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Southwest settled a slogan dispute with an arm-wrestling spectacle in 1992.
Southwest settled a slogan dispute with an arm-wrestling spectacle in 1992. Herb Kelleher faced Stevens Aviation's Kurt Herwald over their competing uses of…
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A seahorse has a digestive tract, but no stomach.
A seahorse has a digestive tract, but no stomach. Instead of holding a meal in a stomach, it passes food through a comparatively simple gut. Seahorses feed…
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Michael Jackson bought a business that owned a large piece of the Beatles.
Michael Jackson bought a business that owned a large piece of the Beatles. His $47.5 million ATV purchase in 1985 included publishing rights to many…
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Americans and German soldiers defended the same castle against the SS.
Americans and German soldiers defended the same castle against the SS. At Castle Itter in Austria in May 1945, American troops, German soldiers and French…
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Travelers sometimes exploit a loophole called hidden city ticketing, where they book a cheaper flight with a layover in their actual destination and simply walk out of the airport halfway through the trip.
Travelers sometimes exploit a loophole called hidden city ticketing, where they book a cheaper flight with a layover in their actual destination and simply…
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Barbie used up a supplier’s stock of fluorescent pink.
Barbie used up a supplier’s stock of fluorescent pink. The film’s production consumed Rosco’s available supply of its fluorescent-pink paint during an already…
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Photoshop began with a program for displaying grayscale images.
Photoshop began with a program for displaying grayscale images. Thomas Knoll wrote the early software in 1987, and his brother John helped develop its…
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Rod Serling sold a future he could not yet see.
Rod Serling sold a future he could not yet see. Serling sold his ownership stake in The Twilight Zone to CBS, choosing an immediate payment over continued…
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Behavioral experiments demonstrate that goldfish can remember specific colors, shapes, and feeding schedules for up to five months, completely debunking the three-second memory myth.
Behavioral experiments demonstrate that goldfish can remember specific colors, shapes, and feeding schedules for up to five months, completely debunking the…
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Doing someone a favor can change how you feel about them.
Doing someone a favor can change how you feel about them. In a classic 1969 experiment, participants who returned prize money as a personal favor to a…
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Catherine the Great described Peter III putting a rat on trial.
Catherine the Great described Peter III putting a rat on trial. In her account, Peter had a rat hanged after it damaged his toy soldiers. The miniature army…
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Placing a disproportionately high value on products you partially created yourself is a consumer bias brilliantly dubbed the IKEA effect.
Placing a disproportionately high value on products you partially created yourself is a consumer bias brilliantly dubbed the IKEA effect. When you assemble a…
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Twitter's first bird came from a stock-illustration purchase.
Twitter's first bird came from a stock-illustration purchase. Simon Oxley created the illustration before it became associated with the young service. A…
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John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was famously sued for copyright infringement in 1985 for allegedly plagiarizing his own musical composition, making him the target of…
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was famously sued for copyright infringement in 1985 for allegedly plagiarizing his own musical composition,…
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A scorpion's glow borrows energy from ultraviolet light.
A scorpion's glow borrows energy from ultraviolet light. Fluorescent substances in its outer covering absorb UV and emit some of that energy as visible…
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Icebreakers are specialized ships with massively reinforced hulls that do not simply push through frozen ocean sheets, but actually ride up onto the ice and crush it using their own immense weight.
Icebreakers are specialized ships with massively reinforced hulls that do not simply push through frozen ocean sheets, but actually ride up onto the ice and…
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Central Perk's ordinary coffee mugs became auction memorabilia.
Central Perk's ordinary coffee mugs became auction memorabilia. A set of six production mugs, each signed by a main Friends cast member, sold through Heritage…
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Neptune is a freezing, dark, and incredibly windy ice giant that astrologers have designated as the planet of dreams, illusions, psychic receptivity, and absolute delusional thinking.
Neptune is a freezing, dark, and incredibly windy ice giant that astrologers have designated as the planet of dreams, illusions, psychic receptivity, and…
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JARVIS turned the Avengers' human butler into software.
JARVIS turned the Avengers' human butler into software. In Marvel's comics, Edwin Jarvis served the Avengers as a person. The Iron Man films reused his name…
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China's 'flying cash' let merchants travel without hauling their coins.
China's 'flying cash' let merchants travel without hauling their coins. Under the Tang dynasty, remittance documents allowed money deposited in one place to…
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