Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as just Nero, was not the best of Roman Emperors. In fact, on most lists of Roman Emperors, he would rank somewhere near the bottom. In no small part, this is due to how he reacted after the greatest fire ever to engulf Rome and what he built in its aftermath. Learn more about the Domus Aurea, or Nero’s Golden House, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the middle of World War II, a small island in Scotland’s Hebrides Islands was suffering through war shortages like most of the country. However, on February 5, 1941, a very fortunate disaster struck the island, and the island’s residents couldn’t have been happier. The reverberations from this lucky calamity are still being felt today. Learn more about the wreck of the SS Politician and its incredible cargo on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In 1901, Swiss archeologists Gustave Jequier discovered a large stone stele in what is today western Iran. That large stone was 2.25m or 7.5 feet tall and was covered with cuneiform writing. After it was translated, it was found to have been a list of 282 laws written down by the Babylonian King Hammurabi. The laws covered many of the same issues that people deal with in the modern world.

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For over 30 years, Monty Hall was the host of the game show Let’s Make A Deal. In the show, they played a very simple game where you would choose one of three doors. This simple game has led to one of the most controversial and public kerfuffles amongst mathematicians, which caused many distinguished mathematicians to have egg on their face. Learn more about the Monty Hall Problem on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On May 19, 1946, André René Roussimoff was born into the world in Coulommiers, France. At birth, he weighed 13 pounds or 6 kilograms...and from there, he only got bigger. He eventually topped out at 7 feet, four inches tall, weighed 520 pounds, and became a worldwide phenomenon as a professional wrestler and actor. He is one of the few humans to whom the adjective “legendary” can truly be ascribed. Today people still speak of his incredible feats in awe.

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In 1888, the city of London was terrorized by its most infamous serial killer. Anywhere between 5 and 11 murders were committed over a three-year period in the Whitechapel area of London, and the crimes have never been solved. In the decades since then, a cottage industry has developed of amateur sleuths who have tried to determine the identity of this killer, that the newspapers dubbed Jack the Ripper.

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One Sunday every year, the United States celebrates its biggest non-official holiday: Super Bowl Sunday. The championship game of the National Football League is almost always the biggest television audience of the year, and one of the most expensive tickets for any sporting event. However, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, it wasn’t even called the Super Bowl. Learn more about the Super Bowl and how it became so big on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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For over 100 years, radio has been one of the biggest mediums for communication, information, and entertainment. It was the first true broadcast medium. However, recent technical and demographic changes have made the future of radio, or at least some of the bands, doubtful. Learn more about AM and FM radio, its past, present, and future, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the 17th century, the Netherlands was struck by the world’s first investment bubble. They weren’t investing in stocks or bonds or real estate. They were investing in…..tulip bulbs. Tulip bulbs became a mania and even common people were spending money on tulips. The price of some tulip bulbs rose so high that at one point a single bulb was worth 10 times the annual salary of a laborer. Learn more about Tulipmania on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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How small can a country be and still be a country? In theory, there is no lower limit on the number of people to be a sovereign state. However, in reality, there are costs associated with being an independent country. The fewer the number of people, the higher the cost for everyone in the country. There is one country that has managed to remain an independent republic for over 50 years with a population of only about 10,000 people.

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In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin determined it was time for the Soviet Union to have another census. They hadn’t conducted one since 1926 and he wanted some actual numbers to show the world the success of the Soviet system. Needless to say, the numbers were not what Stalin had expected….and promised. Learn more about the 1937 Soviet Census, the census that exposed Stalin, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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A common misconception that many people have is that embassies are part of the territory of the country that owns the embassy. For example, the American embassy in Canada is part of the United States. This is not quite true. The theory covering how an embassy or a diplomat works deals with the concept of extraterritoriality. Learn more about extraterritoriality, the thing which makes international relations function, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Multiple births happen very infrequently. The odds decrease dramatically the more children are born at once. The odds of twins is 1 in 250 pregnancies. The odds of triplets are about 1 in 62,000. The odds of quadruplets are one in 15 million. And the odds of quintuplets, five children, is an astonishing 1 in 55 million. In fact, the first case of natural quintuplets surviving infancy occurred 86 years ago during the Great Depression.

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In 1957 the United States embarked on its most controversial series of nuclear tests. These tests took place on US soil in the state of Nevada. They detonated 29 devices and tested a wide number of things, including how blasts would damage builds, pigs, and soldiers. They detonated bombs on towers, from balloons, and even underground. And, according to legend, they might have even accidentally launched the first man-made object into space.

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150 years ago, an American inventor by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes developed a machine to allow people to easily put text onto paper by pressing mechanical keys. He called his invention the “type writer”. After years of tinkering and adjusting, he finally came up with an arrangement of the keys that worked. The letters on the left side of the top row were Q-W-E-R-T-Y. We have basically been using the same keyboard ever since.

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The National Football League is big business. It earns more money than any other professional sports league in the world. All of the NFL teams are own by billionaires or consortiums of multi-millionaires….except for one. One team, has no billionaire owner, is located in the smallest town in America to have a professional sports team, and yet has won more championships than any other team in the NFL. Learn more about Green Bay Packers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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According to the old adage, what goes up must come down. Unless you are talking about a satellite, which can go up and never come down. However, sometimes satellites do come down. When they are not expected to. Where they are not wanted. Such was the case in 1978 with a Soviet spy satellite that spread its debris, its nuclear debris, all over northern Canada. Learn more about Cosmos 954, the Soviet Satellite that came crashing to Earth, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The Earth takes a year to go around the sun, and a day to turn on its axis. It is tilted 23.5 degrees which is what causes the seasons. All of these facts which you learned in school are true, but they are not permanent. They change, very slowly, over time. One astrophysicist in the 1920s figured out that all of these cycles could interact with each other, affecting the long term climate of the Earth. Learn more about Milankovitch Cycles on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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After the end of World War II, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency investigated anything and everything which could give the US an advantage in the Cold War. They looked into anything and everything which might possibly give their side an edge, even if it might have seemed ridiculous on face. One such idea was mind control. Learn more about Project MK Ulta on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Every so often, the series Dr. Who would have a special episode where multiple versions of the time-traveling Doctor would appear on the same episode. I think they probably ripped the idea off from the Roman empire, where they had several years with multiple emperors. So, fresh off talking about the year of four emperors, we might as well go straight into the year it was even worse. Learn more about the year 193, the Year of the Five Emperors on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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As long as the Roman empire lasted, they never created a set method of choosing successors to emperors. This inability to have an idea of who would be next in line caused numbers problems during the history of the empire. The first major succession crisis occurred in the year 69. One emperor died, and there was no clear replacement. The result was chaos. Learn more about the Year of the Four Emperors on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In 1844, the Philological Society of London began investigating the creation of a new English dictionary. This initial foray would lead to a dictionary that would be unlike any other dictionary ever created. It would not just give the definition and spelling of a word, but a complete history of each word and where it came from. It would be one of the most ambitious literary projects in history. Learn more about the Oxford English Dictionary on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Normally, if a foreign country has you totally surrounded, that isn’t a good thing. However, in some parts of the world, it is a normal, everyday occurrence. Due to historical quirks in drawing maps, there are parts of some countries which are separate from the mainland and are totally surrounded by another country. Learn more about exclaves and enclaves on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Every four years on January 20th, the United States holds a ceremony for the inauguration of the President of the United States. There are traditions for the inauguration, some of which have been passed down since the very first. Why do we use January 20th as the date, and how did many of these traditions get started? Learn more about the history and traditions of the Presidential Inauguration on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In 1896, the United States was experiencing what we now call a recession. The Panic of 1896 had made life tough on everyone, and many of the companies in the highly competitive railroad business were looking for new ways to make money. One man, William George Crush, came up with a smashing idea. His idea was so popular that it drew enough people to create the second-largest city in Texas for a single day, and then subsequently got him fired.

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Humans and rats have lived in an uneasy relationship for millennia. Rats have spread diseases like the bubonic plague, destroyed grain harvests, and stolen our pizzas. In return, rats have given humans…...pretty much nothing. As such, humans have waged a relentless war against rats which for the most part has gone nowhere. However, there are some fronts where we have had amazing success. Learn more about humanity’s war on rats on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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If you visit a different country you might need to get some of the local currency. You might get Ringgit in Malaysia, Pesos in Mexico, Kip in Laos, or Tala in Samoa. However, there is one country where you have to be careful what currency you get because there are different notes produced in different parts of the country, and the different notes aren’t accepted everywhere in the country. Learn more about the various British Pounds on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Since the year 1790, New York City has been the largest city in the United States. Given the population density of the city, the vast majority of the people there rent apartments. Now imagine if everyone in New York who switched apartments had to do so on the exact same day every year. Well, this was the reality in New York for over a century. Learn more about moving day in New York City on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The printing press is considered to be one of, if not the greatest invention in history. The printing press allowed for an explosion in information and it ushered in the renaissance, the enlightenment, and the scientific and industrial revolutions. As such, Johannes Gutenberg is often considered one of the most important people in history. But did Gutenberg actually invent the printing press? Should he be given credit for this important invention?

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There is a number, a very special number, which is inside all of us. It is inside you, inside me, and inside every person on Earth. It dictates our social interactions. It has determined the size of communities, Christmas Card lists, and has implications for social media. Learn more about the Dunbar Number on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On November 24, 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper purchased a $20 ticket for a short 30-minute flight from Portland to Seattle. He had with him a briefcase filled with dynamite and wanted $200,000. After getting his money, the plane took off again, Dan Cooper took the money, jumped out of the plane and into history. Learn more about DB Cooper, and the world’s only unsolved skyjacking, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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There are many foods that are considered an acquired taste. Foods that might not be very palatable the first time you try it, or something that just doesn’t sit right with most people. It could be something as simple as blue cheese, or something like the Filipino delicacy, balut, which is a boiled, fertilized egg with the embryo still inside. Sweden has its own acquired taste delicacy which has spawned hundreds of reaction videos as people and caused it to be banned by airlines.

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Before Spain became Spain, it was part of the Roman province of Hispania. To understand the language, and geography of not just Spain but of the entire Iberian Peninsula, you have to understand Hispania. Learn more about one of the greatest provinces in the Roman empire, and how it created modern Spain on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Odds are, if you have ever seen a photo of the president of the United States over the last 60 years, there has been someone in the background or walking a few steps behind, who had in their hand a leather satchel. In that bag was everything the President would need to start armageddon. Learn more about the Nuclear Football, what it is, and why it is always around, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The musical Brigadoon is about a Scottish village which appears for one day every 100 years. The village can be thought of as a metaphor for things that are fleeting, or why we must take advantage of opportunities when they appear. Brigadoon doesn’t exist in our world, but we do have the next best thing. The Mc Rib. Learn more about the sandwich which only occasionally appears on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the year 1184 in the Dutchy of Thuringia, in what is today the country of Germany, a conflict raged between the Count of Thuringia and the Archbishop of Mainz. To resolve this dispute, the German King Henrich VI called the parties to the city of Erfurt to settle their outstanding issues. Things did not go as anyone planned. Learn more about the Erfurt Latrine Disaster on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the 1970s NASA embarked on a mission it had never attempted before. Due to a fortunate alignment of planets, they were going to attempt to send robotic probes on a flyby mission to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, before being sent to deep space, out of the solar system. Some of the mission planners figured if they were going to send a probe all that way, maybe they might as well add something extra to the payload.

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Wars often start with a bang but end with a whimper. Often an attack or an invasion will begin a war, but even one when one side surrenders, it can take days, weeks, or months for word of the capitulation to get out to everyone. While the European theater of World War II officially ended on May 8, 1945, the word didn’t reach everyone right away. Learn more about the last Germans to surrender on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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I’m sure all of you have heard the 12 Days of Christmas song. It is the holiday equivalent of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and no one ever sings it to completion because it’s so long. But it does raise the question, what are the 12 days of Christmas? Why are there 12? And why am I doing an episode on this in January well after Christmas is over? Learn the answers to these questions on the episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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If you think of Spain as the country on the Iberian Peninsula which is sandwiched between France and Portugal, you are not wrong, but you are also not totally right. There is also a significant part of the country which is located in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Morocco: The Canary Islands. Here you will find things that you aren’t going to find in mainland Spain or even the rest of Europe. Learn more about the Canary Islands on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On Christmas Day, 2020, Reginald Foster passed away at the age of 81 in a nursing home facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had been diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days before. This episode is not necessarily about his passing however, it is about his life, and in particular how he had one of the most unique jobs in the world. Learn more about Reginald Foster, the world’s foremost Latinist, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the waning days of the 19th century, a passenger steamer crossing the Pacific Ocean en route from Australia to Canada did a particular thing, at a particular place, at a particular time. If it wasn’t for a last-second decision of the captain of the ship, we wouldn’t be talking about the ship today and it would have been forgotten in history. Learn more about the SS Warrimoo, and how it and its spontaneous captain made history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks. While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1, as the starting point for our calendar years? Why not some other date? Learn more about how January 1st became the start of the new year on this Episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Located approximately 100km east of Rotterdam, the city of Nijmegen is a mid-sized Dutch city situated on the Waal river that few people outside of the Netherlands are familiar with. For the last several years, every single day regardless of the weather, the people of Nijmegen have honored events that took place in the city 76 years ago. Learn more about the city of Nijmegen and the daily Sunset March on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Many people think that politics and elections in the United States are the most controversial they have ever been. History, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the oddest and most controversial presidential election in American history was the election of 1824. It is an election that doesn’t get a lot of attention given who won and the lack of major issues at stake, but it is one that more people should be familiar with.

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If there is one song almost everyone knows it is Happy Birthday to You (yes, that is the actual title of the song, even though everyone just calls it Happy Birthday). Not only has the song been sung at countless children’s birthday parties, but it has also been mentioned in Supreme Court decisions and was the subject of one of the most important copyright cases in history. Learn more about the most famous song in the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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One of my dirty secrets is that I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Whenever I tell people this the first thing I inevitably hear is, “you know it’s fake right?” This idea that people think professional wrestling is real comes from the concept that wrestling insiders call kayfabe. Learn about the history of kayfabe and how this concept from professional wrestling can be used to navigate the modern world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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If you look at the list of officer ranks in the United States armed forces, there are 10 ranks listed which are held today They go from Second Lieutenant all the way up to the rank of General, which is the four-star variant of the rank. There is a rank above general, a five-star general, which hasn’t been awarded in 70 years. Most people are familiar with these generals as having served in WWII. However, there is still one more rank above that of a five-star general in the United States Military

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In the aftermath of the horrors of WWI, many people in Europe wanted to find a better future going forward. A future of peace and prosperity, where energy, food, and jobs would be available for everyone. One man from Germany named Herman Sörgel had a VERY ambitious idea. An idea that would literally change the map of the planet Earth, and was the biggest proposed engineering project ever put forward.

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This episode is the story of a man, who if you don’t know his name, you probably should: Joe Medicine Crow. Joe Medicine Crow was a scholar, an author, a historian, a spokesperson, and a warrior. In fact, he was the last person to have earned the title of War Chief in the Crow Nation, and he earned that title in a way you probably wouldn’t imagine. Hear his fascinating and inspirational story on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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