I sound like a broken record, but we think it’s really important to keep showering you with quality facts because you always need to keep learning!
You shouldn’t stop being curious about the world after high school, or after college, or after age 40. I know people who are in their 70s who love to read about new subjects because they know how rewarding it is to be a lifelong learner.
So in the spirit of always learning, here are 10 facts that we think you will find incredibly interesting.
Cheap prices, delicious food, tons of locations across the country for whenever a craving for a Doritos Locos taco strikes, just to name a few.
But now, the fast-food chain is giving us yet another reason to visit ASAP: A grilled cheese burrito.
As the name suggests, this isn’t your regular run-of-the-mill burrito. No. In fact, it’s a pretty unique recipe. You see, the tortilla exterior is coated in a layer of melted grilled cheese that has been toasted to perfection and pressed into a burrito shape.
Inside, there’s also nacho cheese sauce and shredded cheese, you know, just in case the outside cheese wasn’t enough.
Taco Bell even went so far as to say that this burrito “radiates con-queso confidence.”
The cheesy flavors meld together with the burrito’s other star ingredients, including seasoned beef, rice, sour cream, chipotle sauce and red strips. Yum!
“The Grilled Cheese Burrito makes a statement that cheese is meant for literally everywhere.
While the world always seemed fine with confining cheese to inside a tortilla, this burrito wouldn’t be contained.
A world with more cheese in it is a good thing. And a world with more cheese on it is a game-changer.”
The company says the burrito is a limited-time menu option at some locations priced at $2.99.
Photo Credit: Taco Bell
Already, foodies across America are taking to their local Taco Bell to test out this new menu addition. Thrillist sent one of its writers to try it out and, overall, he was pretty impressed. He said it smelled exactly like a grilled cheese sandwich, which is enough to make our mouths start drooling instantly.
What could be better than two of our favorite foods combined into one glorious burrito?! Nothing. That’s what.
Would you consider trying this burrito? What’s your go-to Taco Bell order?
Space is full of different shapes, sizes, and colors. There’s the vibrant blue of Earth’s oceans, the cheese-like exterior of the moon, the octopus-esque tentacles of galaxies — the list goes on and on.
Scientists also use the word “flocculent” to describe some galaxies, including one recently captured by the camera on the NASA?ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Translated into English, flocculent basically means fluffy.
Yes, that’s right, the world’s pre-eminent researchers and scientists just described a galaxy as fluffy! And just look at how adorable this fluffy little guy really is:
Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble & Nasa, J. Lee and the Phangs-Hst Team
This striking photograph shows a galaxy that goes by the name NGC 2275. It’s far, far away from us here on Earth, located 67 million light-years away. It’s situated within the Cancer constellation.
NASA noted its “delicate, feathery nature,” which you can see super clearly from this crisp image. Those spiral arms are made up of millions of young stars, contrasted with lanes of dark space dust. The stars are young and hot, which makes them appear blue.
The space agency says that the fluffiness also indicates relatively quiet star formation in the galaxy.
NASA says,
“There is virtually no star formation in the central part of the galaxy, which is dominated by an unusually large and relatively empty galactic bulge, where all the gas was converted into stars long ago.”
How cool is that? The Hubble telescope has really opened up our ability to analyze and understand space, including these interesting little details.
What’s your favorite element of space? Do you have a particular planet or feature that you’re particularly partial to for some reason?
It’s a great feeling when your boss seems to “get it” — he or she supports you wherever possible, applauds your ideas, stands up for you in meetings and just generally encourages you to keep doing your best.
Sometimes, it can feel like these bosses are few and far between, especially in the restaurant industry. But one waitress’s recent post on Reddit will totally renew your faith in restaurant bosses everywhere.
She posted her experiences with the best boss ever on the r/TalesFromYourServer sub-Reddit, which, as you might have guessed, is full of anecdotes and stories from life as a waiter or waitress (or bartender).
The story starts off pretty badly, but finishes with such a happy ending. It all started when the waitress was waiting tables at a pizza restaurant. An older couple came into eat:
Don’t be a big ol’ bag of dicks, as this commenter says. When you go to a restaurant, try to put yourself in the shoes of the people serving you (and maybe you’ve already been in their shoes before!). After all, the world could use a little more empathy in general, right?
We all love coffee, right? Or at least a lot of us do.
If you’re a coffee drinker, then you’re probably also familiar with coffee filters. You know, the brown (or white) paper you that you use with your coffee maker.
It turns out that filters are quite versatile. In fact, you can do much more with coffee filters than you might think!
If you’re microwaving a dish that has the potential to explode, you can use your coffee filters to cover the food and keep it contained.
5. Filtering cork crumbs
We don’t all open our wine perfectly, and that’s okay. If you’ve got bits of cork floating around in the bottle, just toss a coffee filter on top of it as you pour your drink into your glass.
If you don’t have a brush on hand, you can use a coffee filter to spread butter or oil in a pan while you cook.
9. Holding small parts
Anyone who has ever put together a Lego set knows that once opened, those pieces go everywhere! You can keep your pieces divided up inside coffee filters as you build.
If you have extra-special dishes that you definitely don’t want to be damaged, you can keep them stacked with a coffee filter between each one.
11. Lining tins and containers
People who like to bake know that sometimes the most delicious treats leave a little residue behind. Storing your snacks in coffee filters inside tins and containers will help!
If you want to use your own herbs for tea, you can simply load them into a coffee filter, tie the filter with a string, and voila: you have your very own tea bag.
13. Snacking
If you don’t want to have dishes to clean up after snacking, pop your snacks into a coffee filter! They’re portable and you can recycle them when you’re finished.
If you like to cook with cast iron skillets, you know how important it is to prevent rusting. Storing your skillet with a coffee filter inside it will help.
17. Lining a sieve
Chefs are forever looking for easy ways to line their sieves while cooking — look no further than a coffee filter.
When kids are in high school, many of them think history class is the worst. One of the reasons for this, I’m sure, is that the worst teachers gravitate to that subject, but listen.
If teachers taught the parts of history that are actually interesting, I’m convinced it would magically turn into everyone’s favorite subject.
It’s been nearly 50 years since someone thought “hey, dynamite seems like a good way to get this dead whale off the beach,” and now a beautiful park on the Oregon coast has been dubbed “Exploding Whale Memorial Park.”
That whale may not have died well, but at least he’s being remembered, eh?
It was November of 1970 when an 8-ton sperm whale beached itself. It had already expired when it was found, and the case was turned over to the Oregon highway division. The Navy advised them to blow the whale up, aiming it toward the ocean, where plenty of smaller animals would be delighted at the already-cooked meal.
They set to figuring out how much dynamite might be required to accomplish such a grisly feat, and, well…in the end, I think they probably wished they’d consulted a few experts.
Like businessman Walt Umenhofer, perhaps, who was trained in using explosives during World War II. He happened to be driving near the scene at the time (in his brand-new car), and told the highway division he didn’t believe they’d gotten their calculations right. They’d stuck about 20 crates under the carcass, and he advised them to go with a lot fewer maybe 20 sticks) if they wanted to push it out to sea – or a heck of a lot more if they wanted to vaporize the entire thing.
Project manager George Thornton waved him off, telling reporters “well, I’m confident that it’ll work, the only thing is we’re not sure how much explosives it’ll take to disintegrate this thing.”
The answer was more than they had, because when the whale exploded, massive pieces of blubber flew everywhere – onto buildings, cars in parking lots, and people suddenly caught in an unexpected and gory blubberstorm.
One journalist, Paul Linnman, said at the time that “explosions in the movies usually look like a blast of fire and smoke. This one more resembled a mighty burst of tomato juice.
Image Credit: YouTube
Poor Walt Umenhofer, who I assume was too disgusted to muster an “I told you so,” watched his car get smothered in whale debris. It caved in the roof and he required a shovel to remove all of the parts.
“My insurance company’s never going to believe this,” he said afterward.
The project manager refused to admit any mistake, saying that an unknown hole under the whale was what caused gawkers to be sprayed in whale innards.
Basically, you can see why this incident would grab kid’s attention in schools – perhaps part of a math lesson, even, about how to calculate force needed per ton or something? I’m not a math person, but I guarantee this story would have caught my attention.
For now, though, I applaud the people of Oregon for realizing there was never really any other name for this beach.
Live in infamy, giant sperm whale. You’ve given us more than we’ve deserved.
We all feel a little slow on the uptake sometimes, or a little foggy, if you will. We need to force our brains to focus and remember what it’s like to solve a problem, to really work for it.
If you’re feeling like that’s exactly what you need today, these 6 brain teasers are here to help!
6. The reversing ball.
Q: What is the easiest way to throw a ball, and have it stop, and completely reverse direction after traveling a short distance?
If you’re a performer of any kind, then you know that one of the best things in the world is your audience. People are tough – they whisper, they shift, they crinkle their programs, they have to go to the bathroom…
Plants, though, are completely quiet and attentive for an entire performance, no matter how long it goes on.
A fact this string quartet surely appreciated after they put on a performance for an audience of 2300 house plants. They performed UceLi Quartet’s rendition of Giacomo Puccini’s Cristantemi (Chrysanthemum) at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.
Image Credit: YouTube
The pictures are as bizarre as they are beautiful.
The theater hasn’t held any performances since March, so artist Eugenio Ampudia was able to implement his idea for a Concert pel Bioce (Concert for the Biocene), inspired by how his thoughts about nature have been impacted by the pandemic.
The plants were afterward gifted to the frontline workers at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.
“I heard many more birds singing, and the plants in my garden and outside growing faster. A
nd, without a doubt, I thought that maybe I could now relate in a much more intimate way with people and nature.”
The performance can now be viewed online, and even though you might be tempted to laugh at the audience of greenery, the fact is that there’s evidence that plants enjoy music quite a lot.
Image Credit: YouTube
In 1962, botanist T.C. Singh believed his plants benefitted from a growth spurt after hearing classical music, and the idea has been explored by countless children in science fairs ever since.
The type of music does seem to matter, as subsequent papers have claimed rock music like Zeppelin and Hendrix actually causes plants to wilt, and there are whole Soundcloud videos dedicated to music for plants.
A 2014 study tried to establish how and why plants might benefit from certain types of music, positing that waves of varying intensities could impact cell growth – plants like lettuce, spinach, cotton, and rice grew between 5 and 20% more while in the presence of music.
Word is out on how the plants that enjoyed this performance reacted, but we all liked it, and I’m sure the hospital workers are happy to have their days brightened by fresh greenery.
There’s something otherworldly about seeing these plants in the seats where humans once sat (and will hopefully one day sit again).
Just about everyone loves LEGO…I mean, except for the parent who accidentally steps on one (or several) when they least expect it.
Many a child has spent their time happily building with the toy blocks, and the company knows it. Now, they’ve decided to release a brand new product that’s for adults LEGO Art.
The LEGO Art sets offer adults a new creative experience to help them relax and recharge as they transform a blank canvas (or in this case, small interlinking base plates) using LEGO tiles.
The art kits are designed to be easy to rearrange so that it’s easy to display a brand-new version of your kit in your home. After all, you’re definitely going to want to show off your hard work!
LEGO also says that each kit is super easy to hang up:
All four new sets come with a signature tile unique to the set that is worthy of any true work of art, and a new hanging element to make them easy to hang up and switch around.
The art sets are also a great way to relax and unwind during this extended time of turbulence around the world.
The customization options mean that you can decide how you want your LEGO art to look. For example, you have the option to recreate Andy Warhol’s famous painting of Marilyn Monroe exactly, or you can mix up the colors and put your own spin on it.
Beatles fans will love being able to recreate the Fab Four’s liner note portraits from the White Album — and you might even want to buy four separate kits so you can display all four Beatles on your wall when you’re finished!
Don’t forget to let us know which set you plan to buy in the comments!
In 2001, Kenny Waters, a man who was wrongly imprisoned 18 years for murder, was finally freed after his high-school dropout sister went to law school to prove his innocence. Tragically, Kenny Waters died in an accident 6 months after his release from prison. Conviction is a 2010 biographical legal drama film based on this […]