Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

Question: Who is the most dominant athlete of all time? It’s an interesting question and one which has started endless pub debates. Is that a basketball player like Michael Jordan, a baseball player like Babe Ruth, or a soccer player like Lionel Messi? Or maybe it’s an athlete in an individual sport like Tiger Woods, or Serena Williams. My answer to the question of who is the most dominant athlete of all time might surprise you.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Byzantine Empire was one of the greatest empires in world history, yet at no point was there ever an empire that went by that name.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year, people around the world celebrate Christmas on December 25. In many countries, it is the biggest single holiday of the year. Why is it celebrated on December 25? Is there any historical basis for this date and if not, then why do we celebrate it on this date? Learn more about why we celebrate Christmas when we do on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it is done, it can reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You’d think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the side of the road everyone drives on. I mean, there are only two options. Yet, there is no global standard for what side to drive on.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last several centuries, there have been many unsolved questions that scientists have put their minds to solving. Most of them were eventually resolved. However, there are some questions that are still outstanding and we aren’t really any closer to solving them than we were before. Learn more about dark matter and dark energy, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Apollo 11 mission to land humans on the moon was one of the most complex things ever undertaken by humanity. They had to prepare for any and every eventuality, including the failure of the mission. To cover that eventually, President Nixon’s speechwriter wrote a speech to cover that eventuality. Learn more about the speech which Richard Nixon never had to give, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ancient Egyptian civilization was one of the oldest civilizations that we know of on Earth. While there is much we know about them, knowledge of their system of writing, known as hieroglyphics had become lost by the middle ages. Where there were different theories as to what the writing meant, no one was really sure how to read hieroglyphics. All of this changed in 1799 when French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte discovered a stone that unlocked the secrets of the language.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the week of July 1, 1946, there were two explosions that shook the world. One was a physical explosion and the other was cultural. These two events, seemingly unrelated, are now linked forever due to the circumstances of that week. Learn more about what an atomic bomb test and a two-piece swimsuit have in common, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the day, sending letters was slow and potentially confusing. Nothing could travel faster than the speed of a horse or a ship, and addressing letters could be confusing if there were multiple people in a city. Over time, the postal system developed systematic methods to deliver the mail quickly and more efficiently. Learn more about ZIP codes and postal codes, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you happen to be in Valencia, Spain, on a Thursday, at noon, in front of the cathedral, you might be able to witness the oldest surviving democratic tradition on Earth. For over 1000 years the Valencia Water Tribunal has been adjudicating water disputes among the farmers of the region. Learn more about the Valencia Water Tribunal, the oldest continuous democratic body in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in 1849 in Poitiers, France, Balance Monnier was a beautiful young woman who was born into an aristocratic family. When she was 25 she suddenly disappeared. When people inquired as to her whereabouts, her family told them she had moved away. That was not what happened. Learn more about the terrible fate of Blanche Monnier on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hundreds of years ago gold and silver were rare and valuable, and today they are rare and valuable. Iron and tin were cheap and plentiful and today they are cheap and plentiful. However, there is one metal that was once the rarest and expensive metal in the world, and today it is one of the cheapest and most plentiful. Learn more about aluminum, how it was once rare and then became abundant, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever heard a science story on the news where they mention how old something is then ask yourself “how do they know that?” How is it possible to tell the age of something with any degree of certainty when there was no one around millions or billions of years ago? Well, there are answers to those questions. Learn more about radiometric dating, and how we can measure the age of objects and the Earth, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On February 10, 2013, in what began as a rather innocuous assembly, Pope Benedict the XVI stunned the world by announcing that he would be retiring. Not only were people stunned, but to paraphrase King George in the Musical Hamilton, most people weren’t even aware that was something a pope could do. Yet, it is something popes can do, and the precedent was set over 700 years earlier. Learn more about Pope Celestine V, the man who really didn’t want to become pope.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are lots of stories about lost technologies and techniques of the ancients which have been lost to us through history. In reality, most things were figured out independently by modern people, and we have better modern versions of almost everything the ancients had, including things like Damascus Steel. That is, except for one thing. Learn more about Roman Concrete, the stuff which has lasted over 2,000 years, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever looked at a map and said to yourself “Wow, Greenland is really big!”, only to then look at a globe and realize, that Greeland wasn’t actually that big? If so, then you have discovered the Mercator Projection. A map that was originally created in 1569 and is still with us today. Learn more about the Mercator Projection, its problems, and its benefits, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He has been called the most famous artist of the 20th century. His work single-handedly defined an artistic style. He was more loved and criticized than any other artist in history. He created over 20,000 works, and legend says that he could pay for a meal with just his signature. Learn more about Pablo Picasso, Spains greatest artist, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1776, an obscure Bavarian professor of philosophy created a society for like-minded individuals who upheld the values of the Enlightenment. Fast forward over 200 years, and that organization is now the basis for conspiracy theories and fantastic stories of global dominance. Learn more about the Illuminati, the real Illuminati, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1912, a Polish rare book dealer purchased an extremely old codex that contained an unknown system of writing. Since then, the best and brightest minds in cryptography, linguistics, and artificial intelligence have not been able to decipher what is written in the book. That hasn’t stopped people from trying and periodically making claims that they have cracked the code. Learn more about the Voynich Manuscript on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 120 year history of the Nobel Prize, there have been four people who have been given the award twice. One of them is not Albert Einstein. Yet, when you look at his list of accomplishments and the fields of physics which he has touched, he arguably deserved more than one Nobel prize. Join me as I play fantasy physics and try to figure out how many Nobel Prizes Albert Einstien should have won on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1943, the Italian government surrendered to the Allied forces. The Germans, not wanting to cede such a larger part of Europe to the Allies, quickly occupied northern and central Italy. However, as the Germans occupied Rome there occurred an outbreak of what was known as Syndrome K. Caes of Syndrome K in one Rome hospital was so great, that even members of the dreaded German Gestapo feared to enter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever thought something and everyone else said you were crazy? Have you ever been called crazy and then have the thing you were called crazy for turn out to be absolutely true? This not only happened to one woman, but she was institutionalized, had a psychological condition named after her, and had a hand in bringing down a United States president. Learn more about Martha Mitchell on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Radiation or radioactivity is one of the scariest words in the English language. While radiation can indeed be very dangerous, most people don’t really understand how it works and it is often treated as magic death cooties which leads to unwarranted fear. Learn more about radiation, how it works, and where it’s found in nature, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the greatest battles in Roman history was one of its greatest losses. It was a defeat that shook the city to its core and could have very well ended the Roman Republic. ...but it didn’t. The reason why it didn’t is a story of determination and the difference between tactics and strategy. Learn more about the Battle of Cannae, one of the greatest battles in ancient history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you get when you take one part religious cult and one part Harlem Globetrotters and one part Troy Polamalu’s hair and put them all together? You wind up with the House of David Baseball Team. One of the most popular baseball barnstorming acts of the early 20th Century. Learn more about the House of David, both the religion and the team, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In June 1940, with the conquest of France, Nazi Germany and Italy had conquered almost all of Western Europe. The map of Europe was one solid color reflecting the domination of the Axis Powers. Except for one small hole in the donut: Switzerland. Switzerland’s neutrality didn’t guarantee anything. In fact, the Nazis desperately wanted to invade Switzerland. Learn more about Operation Tannenbaum, the planned German invasion of Switzerland, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clair Patterson was a geochemist who worked at CalTech from the 1940s through the 1990s. His work involved studying the age of rocks and the age of the Earth. His greatest discovery, however, was one that was totally by accident and ended up directly impacting the lives of every person on the planet. Learn more about the remarkable Clair Patterson and how he helped get the lead out on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although you probably never heard of him before, American George Eyser is one of the most decorated Olympians in history. At the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, he put on one of the greatest single-day performances of the modern Olympics. Yet, his real claim to fame is not what he accomplished, but how. Learn more about the incredible Geroge Eyser on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the fourth Thursday in November every year, American’s celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday that originated in the Americas but has subsequently spread to many countries around the world. It is a holiday that is actually secular, but with some religious overtones, and has a unique set of traditions that aren’t really shared with any other holiday. Learn more about the history and traditions of Thanksgiving on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For centuries the Holy Grail has been a metaphor for ultimate achievement. The quest for the Holy Grail is likewise considered a metaphor for an unobtainable goal. However, the Holy Grail might be more than a metaphor. It might really exist and you can go see it yourself. Learn more about the Holy Grail, what it is, and what it isn’t, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let’s say you have a brand new country. You want to take it out of a spin and make some new laws. What is the first thing you do? Maybe ratify a treaty? Perhaps something about the economy. Well, if you were the United States back in 1789, you didn’t do anything nearly that exciting. Learn more about the very first law in the United States on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Of all the world’s co-principalities, there is one which stands out due to its sheer size. This enormous co-principality dominates all other co-principalities in every measure: land area, population, and GDP. Every other co-principality could fit inside this co-principality with room to space. Learn more about the nation of Andorra, the world’s largest co-principality, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At some point in the future, a phone call will be placed by the private secretary of the Queen to the British Prime Minister. In this call, he will utter the phrase “London Bridge is down”, which will set off a preplanned series of events following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. As it has been over 65 years that the monarchy has changed hands in the United Kingdom, it will be something that most people in the commonwealth have never experienced.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m sure everyone has heard of such famous places as the Great Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal. Besides all being famous landmarks, they have something else in common. They are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and how does a site become one? Learn more about the UNESCO World Heritage Site program on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In October 1984, nine members of the Pintupi Tribe in Western Australia met some long lost relatives they hadn’t seen in years. The significance of this event is that those nine people, two women with four boys and three girls, were the last aboriginal people in Australia to have contact with the outside world. Up until 1984, they had lived their lives the same as their ancestors had for tens of thousands of years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’ve done several episodes on close and interesting US presidential elections throughout history. Mainly they were to put current events into perspective, so you can realize that the controversies of today are really not all that new. However, there was one election that might be considered the closest and most interesting in history, but the lessons for today are much less, simply because they changed the rules after the election, and there was never another one like it again.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every so often, adults may be asked to perform a civic duty by sitting on a jury. Usually, the commitment might be nothing more than a few hours or a few days. Occasionally, some juries might get a case that lasts years. Why do we have juries, and where did this notion come from? Do most countries have juries? What does “a jury of your peers” really mean? Learn more about the history of the jury system on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes you might sit down to watch a sporting match and it is over before you know it. However, there are some games that seem to take forever. A rare few games last an extraordinarily long time, as no one can seem to win. Learn more about the longest games in history, in almost every sport, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 27th, 1865, just weeks after the end of the American Civil War, a steamboat carrying former Union prisoners of war sailed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg. At 2 am, the boilers on the steamship exploded, killing 1800 people in what is still the largest maritime disaster in US history. Learn more about the largest forgotten Sultana Steamboat Disaster on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professional sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry with millions of fans who will live and die based on their favorite team’s performance. Occasionally, soccer hooligans and Raiders fans will take their exuberance a bit too far. Rioting after a team wins a championship happens more often than not. However, nothing in the world of modern sports can compare to the levels of devotion and street violence which chariot racing commanded in ancient Rome.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists have coined a term called the Butterfly Effect, where small changes in one thing can lead to enormous changes in systems later on. Nothing in history exemplifies this more than the series of unfortunate coincidences that occurred on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. The repercussions of those events can still be felt around the world today. Learn more about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the dawn of time, humans have looked up at the night sky to watch the stars. ...and then nothing happened for hundreds of thousands of years until a guy by the name of Galileo Galilei point a telescope at the stars and saw a bunch of stuff that everyone had missed. Since then, we’ve increased the size of our telescopes so we can see more and more, further and further away. Learn more about the ever-increasing size of astronomical telescopes on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year, more than three million visitors will line up and buy a ticket to visit the most popular attraction in all of Spain: The Sagrada Familia. It is a stunning modernist architectural achievement and the crowning design of local architect Antoni Gaudí. Even though it gets millions of visitors, the church has been under construction for almost 150 years and still isn’t finished. Learn more about the Sagrada Familia, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1913, a young man from the city of Madras in British India sent a letter to one of the world’s preeminent mathematicians, G.H. Hardy, in Cambridge Univerisity in England. The young man had no formal education in advanced mathematics, yet that letter would end up changing the landscape of mathematics for the rest of the 20th century. Learn more about the legendary Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the world’s most gifted natural mathematicians, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bread is one of the most important, most commonly consumed, and oldest food products in the world. It’s been called the Staff of Life. It even gets a prominent mention in the Lord’s Prayer. But how did this fundamental food, which ultimately comes from wild grass, get developed? And perhaps more importantly, why did this grass-based food become so important?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the course of history, humans have fought over land, honor, wealth, and religion. But perhaps the oddest, and dumbest war which almost ever broke out between two major world powers….was over a pig. A single pig. Learn more about the British-American conflict known as the Pig War, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Presidential elections in the United States are a very big deal. The entire process can take over a year with all the primaries, campaigning, debates, and finally the election itself. Once the election is over and the votes are counted, most people’s attention will turn elsewhere. However, there is a formal process for the election of the president which continues once the election is over. Learn more about what happens after election day on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices