Category: history

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Learn About the Two People Who Made GPS a Reality

There have been many advancements in the past several decades that have changed and improved the way we live our lives every single day, and GPS definitely fits into that category.

Whether it’s helping us get where we’re going anywhere in the world or helping police find missing persons, to a hundred other uses in between (it’s helped me find my dog more than once), there’s no question our society is better for it.

There are two people responsible for turning the idea into a reality – one you’ve probably heard of and one you probably haven’t – and I think it’s about time they got a bit more recognition and credit, don’t you?

Image Credit: GPS.gov

GPS is short for Global Positioning System, and it means that from anywhere in the world, signals can be transmitted by a network of satellites to pinpoint your location within 3 feet. It’s right more than 95%of the time, with the most accurate of devices spotting your position within 12 inches.

The first person responsible for this scientific magic is none other than Albert Einstein, whose theories of special and general relativity play an important role in the process.

The second is a fairly obscure Black female scientists named Gladys West, whose work allows us to understand geodesy and the shape of the Earth well enough to put those physics into action.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Basically, you have to know three things in order to interpret signals received from the the 31 operational satellites:

  1. Motion: this includes the motion of both the satellites through space and the motion of the person they’re trying to pinpoint, the motion of the receiver on earth, all of which relate to the laws of Special Relativity.
  2. Curved Space: The gravitational blueshifting and gravitational time dilation of light as it moves between the curvature in space to the curvature on Earth’s surface, following the laws of General Relativity.
  3. Earth’s Gravity: It’s effects may vary by small but still substantial amounts due to mountains and valleys, the thickness of Earth’s crust, and the water present at a given location.

The rules of relativity, put forth by Einstein in the early 20th century, address all of these effects and help us mitigate them neatly.

Image Credit: NASA

Gladys West comes in with the next piece of the equation, which compensates for the fact that the Earth is not a uniform, perfect sphere with the exact same gravitational properties everywhere.

All told, the actual acceleration on Earth can be as little as 9.764 m/s² and as great as 9.834 m/s²: a difference of 0.7%.

Gladys, the second Black woman ever hired as a computer programmer at the Naval Proving Ground in Virginia, specialized in large-scale computer systems and data-processing systems for the analysis of information obtained from satellites.

Image Credit: US Air Force

From there, she put together altimeter models of Earth’s shape in the 1960s, and served as the project manager for Seasat, the first satellite to perform remote sensing of Earth’s oceans.

Through her work, she cut the processing time for these remote sensing applications in half.

Her most revolutionary work, though, was when she programmed the computer that calculated Earth’s geoid to the kind of sufficient precisions that enabled the existence of GPS. To accomplish this, she had to account for every variation in all the forces and effects that can distort the shape of the Earth.

She wrote a guide on radar altimeter satellites, which taught others how to increase the precision of satellite geodesy with her improved technology.

Gladys was inducted into the Air Force Hall of Fame for her efforts, and is universally recognized as one of the Hidden Figures whose work with vital computations allowed the U.S. Military and NASA to complete successful missions before the advent of computing that could take over the tasks.

Image Credit: US Navy

Her commanding officer, Captain Godfrey Weekes, had this to say about his famous employee:

“She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy, and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data. As Gladys West started her career as a mathematician at Dahlgren in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come.”

For West’s part, she still uses a paper map when she travels.

Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

The rest of us, though, say thank you – especially the generations who have never seen a paper map in their lives.

The post Learn About the Two People Who Made GPS a Reality appeared first on UberFacts.

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Meet the Woman Who Pushed for a Black Character to Join the “Peanuts” Gang

There’s almost no chance you don’t know who the Peanuts gang are. Even if you’re too young to realize that they were born as comics, and even though there isn’t an updated version on Nickelodeon, the holiday specials have pretty much ensured that Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest are forever lodged in American culture.

In 1968, though, the Peanuts gang were anything but nostalgic history. At the height of its popularity, Charles Schulz and the world he created were about to break barriers with the introduction of its first African American character, Franklin Armstrong.

It was April of 1968 when Los Angeles-area schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, who thought media had a role in shaping the views and attitudes of children, wrote a letter to Schulz:

Image Credit: Charles M. Schulz Museum

“Since the death of Martin Luther King, I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help change those conditions in our society which led to the assassination and which contribute to the vast seas of misunderstanding, fear, hate, and violence. …the introduction of Negro children into the group of Schulz characters could happen with a minimum of impact. The gentleness of the kids … even Lucy, is a perfect setting. The baseball games, kite-flying … yes, even the Psychiatric Service cum Lemonade Stand would accommodate the idea smoothly.”

Schulz replied to the letter, telling Glickman what he would “like very much to be able to do this,” but confessed that he and other cartoonists were “afraid that it would look like we were patronizing our Negro friends.”

Image Credit: Charles M. Schulz Museum

He told her he didn’t know what the solution was, and Glickman took that as a challenge to help him figure it out. She offered to pose the question to some of her Negro friends and get back to him, to which Schulz replied that he would be “very anxious to hear what your friends think of my reasons for not including a Negro character in the strip.”

They corresponded back and forth for some weeks, and the letters culminated in a strip, to be published on July 31, 1968, that Schulz told Glickman he thought would please her.

Franklin Armstrong entered the Peanuts strip that day, the first Black and first minority character to appear in any major, mainstream comic strip.

Image Credit: Fair Use

Later in his career, Schulz spoke about the particular strips featuring Franklin that received pushback from his editors.

“There was one strip where Charlie Brown and Franklin had been playing on the beach, and Franklin said, ‘Well, it’s been nice being with you, come on over to my house some time,’” Schulz recalled. “[My editors] didn’t like that. Another editor protested once when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school desks with Peppermint Patty, and said, ‘We have enough trouble here in the South without you showing the kids together in school.’ But I never paid any attention to those things, and I remember telling [United Features president] Larry [Rutman] at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, ‘Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?’ So that’s the way that ended.”

When Harriet Glickman passed in 2020, the director of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, Karen Johnson, wrote about the woman she says is a hero.

“Heroes are hard to come by. I admire a lot of people, but not to the extent to call them a hero. But Harriet Glickman truly is MY hero.”

As far as Harriet, she was proud of Franklin, too, calling him her “third child.”

I love this story because it shows what can be accomplished when people take the time to listen to people who are different from them, to have an open and honest dialogue about a perceived impasse, and then work together to find a way to topple it effectively.

I’m not surprised at all that the Peanuts gang teaches us this one last lesson – it is, after all, what they do best.

The post Meet the Woman Who Pushed for a Black Character to Join the “Peanuts” Gang appeared first on UberFacts.

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Meet the Woman Who Pushed for a Black Character to Join the “Peanuts” Gang

There’s almost no chance you don’t know who the Peanuts gang are. Even if you’re too young to realize that they were born as comics, and even though there isn’t an updated version on Nickelodeon, the holiday specials have pretty much ensured that Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest are forever lodged in American culture.

In 1968, though, the Peanuts gang were anything but nostalgic history. At the height of its popularity, Charles Schulz and the world he created were about to break barriers with the introduction of its first African American character, Franklin Armstrong.

It was April of 1968 when Los Angeles-area schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, who thought media had a role in shaping the views and attitudes of children, wrote a letter to Schulz:

Image Credit: Charles M. Schulz Museum

“Since the death of Martin Luther King, I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help change those conditions in our society which led to the assassination and which contribute to the vast seas of misunderstanding, fear, hate, and violence. …the introduction of Negro children into the group of Schulz characters could happen with a minimum of impact. The gentleness of the kids … even Lucy, is a perfect setting. The baseball games, kite-flying … yes, even the Psychiatric Service cum Lemonade Stand would accommodate the idea smoothly.”

Schulz replied to the letter, telling Glickman what he would “like very much to be able to do this,” but confessed that he and other cartoonists were “afraid that it would look like we were patronizing our Negro friends.”

Image Credit: Charles M. Schulz Museum

He told her he didn’t know what the solution was, and Glickman took that as a challenge to help him figure it out. She offered to pose the question to some of her Negro friends and get back to him, to which Schulz replied that he would be “very anxious to hear what your friends think of my reasons for not including a Negro character in the strip.”

They corresponded back and forth for some weeks, and the letters culminated in a strip, to be published on July 31, 1968, that Schulz told Glickman he thought would please her.

Franklin Armstrong entered the Peanuts strip that day, the first Black and first minority character to appear in any major, mainstream comic strip.

Image Credit: Fair Use

Later in his career, Schulz spoke about the particular strips featuring Franklin that received pushback from his editors.

“There was one strip where Charlie Brown and Franklin had been playing on the beach, and Franklin said, ‘Well, it’s been nice being with you, come on over to my house some time,’” Schulz recalled. “[My editors] didn’t like that. Another editor protested once when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school desks with Peppermint Patty, and said, ‘We have enough trouble here in the South without you showing the kids together in school.’ But I never paid any attention to those things, and I remember telling [United Features president] Larry [Rutman] at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, ‘Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?’ So that’s the way that ended.”

When Harriet Glickman passed in 2020, the director of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, Karen Johnson, wrote about the woman she says is a hero.

“Heroes are hard to come by. I admire a lot of people, but not to the extent to call them a hero. But Harriet Glickman truly is MY hero.”

As far as Harriet, she was proud of Franklin, too, calling him her “third child.”

I love this story because it shows what can be accomplished when people take the time to listen to people who are different from them, to have an open and honest dialogue about a perceived impasse, and then work together to find a way to topple it effectively.

I’m not surprised at all that the Peanuts gang teaches us this one last lesson – it is, after all, what they do best.

The post Meet the Woman Who Pushed for a Black Character to Join the “Peanuts” Gang appeared first on UberFacts.

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Nikola Tesla’s “Wireless Electricity” Is Now Reality in New Zealand

It’s kind of depressing when the things people dream up don’t come to be until after they’re gone, but I like to think that somehow they always knew it was a solid idea and it would eventually come to fruition.

That’s been the case with several of Nikola Tesla’s inventions, of course, and now an energy startup called Emrod is bringing wireless electricity to New Zealand.

It’s been nearly a hundred years since Tesla first demonstrated wireless electricity was possible, and now Emrod is doing it again, with only a clear line of sight as a prerequisite.

Their founder, Greg Kushnir, issued a statement that said New Zealand’s particular set of skills is what actually made it possible.

“We have an abundance of clean hydro, solar, and wind energy available around the world but there are costly challenges that come with delivering that energy using traditional methods, for example, offshore wind farms or the Cook Strait here in New Zealand requiring underwater cables which are expensive to install and maintain.”

Without the need for traditional copper wiring, Emrod plans to bring power over terrain that has proven difficult, and into homes and businesses that exist in places where physical infrastructure is lacking.

They believe this wireless option will also ease the demand on diesel generators, too, which will benefit the environment.

The company is still in the testing phases, working out the kinks while sending “a few watts” over a distance of just over a hundred feet.

“Energy is transmitted through electromagnetic waves over long distances using Emrod’s proprietary beam shaping, metamaterials and rectenna technology.”

Image Credit: Chetvorno

The “rectenna” is what turns magnetic waves into electricity. It’s a square element mounted on a pole acts as the pass-through point that keeps electricity moving, and a broader surface area that catches the entire wave.

To stop it from zapping things like birds and cars, the beam is surrounded by a low-power laser fence, and they’ve got a contingency plan for outages, too.

There was initially some concern over the loss of signal or signal strength without any conducting materials, but Emrod claims their relay technology “refocuses the beam,” which allows them to lose almost no power over the distance.

“The efficiency of all the components we’ve developed are pretty good, close to 100 percent. Most of the loss is on the transmitting side. We’re using solid state for the transmitting side, and that’s essentially the same electronic elements you can find in any radar system, or even your microwave at home. Those are at the moment limited to around 70-percent efficiency. But there’s a lot of development going into it, mainly driven by communications, 5G and so on.”

Emrod seems like quite a company, yeah?

Emrod says on its site, referring to the New Zealand government’s “innovation agency,”

“The prototype received some government funding and was designed and built in Auckland in cooperation with Callaghan Innovation.

It has received a Royal Society Award nomination, and New Zealand’s second largest electricity distribution company, Powerco, will be the first to test Emrod technology. “

They hope to increase both the distance and kilowatts over time, and believe there is no upper limits to what they can achieve once they work out all of the kinks.

Thank you, Nikola Tesla.

Just think about all you could have accomplished if you’d had the idea for a rectenna, too.

The post Nikola Tesla’s “Wireless Electricity” Is Now Reality in New Zealand appeared first on UberFacts.

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Nikola Tesla’s “Wireless Electricity” Is Now Reality in New Zealand

It’s kind of depressing when the things people dream up don’t come to be until after they’re gone, but I like to think that somehow they always knew it was a solid idea and it would eventually come to fruition.

That’s been the case with several of Nikola Tesla’s inventions, of course, and now an energy startup called Emrod is bringing wireless electricity to New Zealand.

It’s been nearly a hundred years since Tesla first demonstrated wireless electricity was possible, and now Emrod is doing it again, with only a clear line of sight as a prerequisite.

Their founder, Greg Kushnir, issued a statement that said New Zealand’s particular set of skills is what actually made it possible.

“We have an abundance of clean hydro, solar, and wind energy available around the world but there are costly challenges that come with delivering that energy using traditional methods, for example, offshore wind farms or the Cook Strait here in New Zealand requiring underwater cables which are expensive to install and maintain.”

Without the need for traditional copper wiring, Emrod plans to bring power over terrain that has proven difficult, and into homes and businesses that exist in places where physical infrastructure is lacking.

They believe this wireless option will also ease the demand on diesel generators, too, which will benefit the environment.

The company is still in the testing phases, working out the kinks while sending “a few watts” over a distance of just over a hundred feet.

“Energy is transmitted through electromagnetic waves over long distances using Emrod’s proprietary beam shaping, metamaterials and rectenna technology.”

Image Credit: Chetvorno

The “rectenna” is what turns magnetic waves into electricity. It’s a square element mounted on a pole acts as the pass-through point that keeps electricity moving, and a broader surface area that catches the entire wave.

To stop it from zapping things like birds and cars, the beam is surrounded by a low-power laser fence, and they’ve got a contingency plan for outages, too.

There was initially some concern over the loss of signal or signal strength without any conducting materials, but Emrod claims their relay technology “refocuses the beam,” which allows them to lose almost no power over the distance.

“The efficiency of all the components we’ve developed are pretty good, close to 100 percent. Most of the loss is on the transmitting side. We’re using solid state for the transmitting side, and that’s essentially the same electronic elements you can find in any radar system, or even your microwave at home. Those are at the moment limited to around 70-percent efficiency. But there’s a lot of development going into it, mainly driven by communications, 5G and so on.”

Emrod seems like quite a company, yeah?

Emrod says on its site, referring to the New Zealand government’s “innovation agency,”

“The prototype received some government funding and was designed and built in Auckland in cooperation with Callaghan Innovation.

It has received a Royal Society Award nomination, and New Zealand’s second largest electricity distribution company, Powerco, will be the first to test Emrod technology. “

They hope to increase both the distance and kilowatts over time, and believe there is no upper limits to what they can achieve once they work out all of the kinks.

Thank you, Nikola Tesla.

Just think about all you could have accomplished if you’d had the idea for a rectenna, too.

The post Nikola Tesla’s “Wireless Electricity” Is Now Reality in New Zealand appeared first on UberFacts.

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The Real Size of Megalodon Is Staggering

When you hear a word like “megalodon” to describe an animal, you’re probably picturing something – in this case, a shark – that’s really, really big.

Just how big megalodon likely was, though, really only comes into a clear focus when we compare it to things we’re relatively sure of the size of in our minds – and even then, it was so big that the concept can be hard to wrap our minds around.

This new study, published in Scientific Reports, tries to put the size of the megalodon into perspective, concluding that it was around 52 feet long, with fins the size of an adult human being.

Image Credit: iStock

Otodus megalodon lived from 23 million to 3 million years ago, had serrated teeth that means it ate meat, and was so big there’s no way it wasn’t a voracious predator. Fossil evidence has shows us the size and makeup of their teeth, but with little other skeletal evidence to go on, guessing their entire size and shape has been more of a guessing game.

This study came to its estimates with researchers from Swansea University and the University of Bristol using mathematical models to compare its body size to five shark species still living, all of which shared physiological characteristics.

“Megalodon is not a direct ancestor of the Great White but is equally related to other macropredatory sharks such as the Makos, Salmon shark, and Porbeagle shark, as well as the Great White. We pooled detailed measurements of all five to make predictions about Megalodon.”

Image Credit: Oliver E. Demuth

They tracked how these other, related species of sharks grew as the aged to get an idea about how megalodon might have grown in a similar pattern before settling into its adult form. That’s how they got to the adult length of around 16 meters (the 52 feet).

That makes them more than twice the size of modern great white sharks, with a dorsal fin around 5.3 feet in height (an average person’s height).

Their heads were around 15 feet in length and had a bite force of 10 tons, compared to a great white’s bite force of around 2 tons.

Image Credit: Oliver E. Demuth

Scientists are hoping these facts can also help us understand why it went extinct, and therefore helping prevent a similar decline in modern marine species.

Now you know for sure that you wouldn’t have wanted to run into one of these buggers – and I’m going to go ahead and stay away from the great whites, too, even if they are sort of puny in comparison.

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People Discuss Things That Were Around 10 Years Ago That Don’t Exist Anymore

I remember when I got Nintendo.

My brother and I BEGGED my parents for it for a few months and boom! There it was under the tree on Christmas day.

And you know what? I never, ever upgraded. I never got another gaming system ever again in my whole life. Which was fine with me, because I loved (and still love) the original Nintendo.

But everyone else I knew seemed to forget about it and moved on to other systems in a hurry…

I guess some things just fall by the wayside…

What was around 10 years ago that doesn’t exist anymore?

Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say.

1. Remember when?

“Livejournal.

I mean, it still exists but when the Russians bought it everyone bailed.”

2. Cool animation.

“Flash animation on youtube before YouTube’s copyright went on steroids.

There were some really funny and good animations on there with music that you can’t use now in your videos. A lot of these flash animations started on newgrounds and moved to youtube to only die out.

So many good artists who made these got screwed over thanks to the bs copyright strikes.”

3. Not fun anymore.

“Fun pop music.

Nowadays it’s all sad gloomy stuff that just floats and doesn’t go anywhere with overproduced trap beats.”

4. What did you stumble upon?

“Man I would spend hours on StumbleUpon back in the day.

Found a ton of awesome sites and resources.”

5. All of these.

“Kongregate

Miniclip

Kizi Games

Borne Games

My favorite game personally was sly and fox, it captivated me as a kid.”

6. Too spread out now.

“Netflix streaming that had everything in one godd*mn place.

I can’t wait for all these streaming services to start making deals and bundling with each other, effectively just reinventing a moderately better version of cable.”

7. A good spot.

“RadioShack is the ONLY place I can ever think of when people come into my work looking for fuses that we don’t carry, or can’t get.

I honestly don’t know where to refer them to anymore. RadioShack was THE place to go for that stuff.”

8. What did I do?!?!

“Pressing internet button on your phone accidentally then spending 2 minutes frantically pressing the back button for fear of charging your parents what felt like hundreds of dollars to load google.”

9. That’s crazy.

“The median house price in Sydney is $1.68 million.

Australian house prices have compounded at 7% for 30 years, wages have increased 3%.

If your parents aren’t rich you can’t afford a house.”

10. The phone game.

“Blackberry smartphones. The real ones, not the fake ones they kind of have now.

The old school BlackBerry with brick breaker is hands down the best phone I ever had.

I miss it so much.”

11. What happened to them?

“Do you guys remember those snap bracelets that you would snap on your wrist?

I swear I haven’t seen one of those since like 2010/2011.”

12. I miss mine!

“Flip phones.

I had 2 over the years.

Loved those phones.”

13. This is sad.

“My three adult son’s sweet childhood days.

Oh, how I LOVED being a mom to little boys, having a purpose, how much fun we had, how much we laughed, always having a house full of kids, love, the wonderful chaos of three little boys, brothers, childhood, becoming a teenager, and young men. I adored them.

They are grown now, and not one of them speaks to me. Two I haven’t seen in over two years. I recently moved to a new home about a half hour away, not one helped during the move, and not one has come to visit, even though I bought it in a place I know they’d love to come.

I don’t expect anything different anymore. The Loneliness is Deadening. My grief profound. My heart numb. Never in a million years did I see this coming. I miss my children’s love. I miss it so much.”

What are some more things that were around 10 years ago that aren’t around anymore?

Talk to us in the comments and let us know!

Thanks in advance!

The post People Discuss Things That Were Around 10 Years Ago That Don’t Exist Anymore appeared first on UberFacts.

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Vintage Toys That Are Too Dangerous For Kids Today

Safety standards have changed over the years, and many of the things we gave to babies and children (or put them to sleep with or on) years ago would horrifying parents today.

It can be fun to think about handing certain beloved toys down to our children and grandchildren, but we all know we have a few that need to go straight into the trash (they’re too dangerous even for a garage sale).

These 17 people are naming the toys that might have gotten them killed, but luckily didn’t.

17. We were all totally unsupervised.

A chemistry set. My brother and I were totally unsupervised and never followed the instructions. We just mixed chemicals together at random to see what would happen. I remember one combination turned into this really smelly black foam-like substance.

My dad and his brothers didn’t have a chemistry set. But their father did let them play with mercury in his workshop. They also taught themselves to make…zip guns, I think they were called? Basically, guns crafted from parts like car antennas.

16. I remember “playing” with mercury, too.

My dentist used to give me Vials of Mercury to bring to school for show and tell. My parents bought me a rock collection at a natural history museum that included a chunk of asbestos from which you could pull fibrous material.

We also had metal trucks with extremely sharp edges and lead based paint jobs.

15. They were learning, though!

My Dad was born in the 50s and chemistry sets in his day did not f*ck around. They had all kinds of chemicals in them that if mixed together could start fires or cause explosions – which may be fine in very small quantities but the chemistry sets explicitly did not give directions of how much or how little to use.

I think he said his chemistry set also came with a small amount of radioactive material (which I’m pretty sure was harmless unless you eat it).

His parents made him move to the garage when he started doing experiments so he didn’t blow up the house.

Anyway he went on to become a scientist so the chemistry sets did something right.

14. So many pyros.

Ohio Blue Tip matches. My grandma let us carry the box out her back door to burn shit. Strike anywhere! Boom- fire. Not sure how I survived.

13. An auspicious start.

As a kid in the 60s, my uncle looked up “gunpowder” in the family encyclopedia and headed off to the pharmacy with his pocket money. He could barely reach up to the counter, but they were happy to sell him a pound of each ingredient.

He now has a PhD in chemistry, and most of his peers have similar stories.

12. Oopsie.

I have a crayon melter that melts crayons and lets you pour it into molds so you could make your own crayons and rings

turns out production stopped because of a failure to stop the heater from being turned on if the lid was opened

11. Dried chickpeas for the win.

Not zip guns but as kids we would make these weapons out of a 10″ PVC tube and a balloon. You tie the balloon to one end, drop a pebble or small rock into the other end, pull back the pebble inside the balloon and let it go.

Those f*ckers would break skin and cause serious damage (broke a friend’s glasses once). You could also use dried beans as ammo.

10. Technically.

I had the (potentially) even more dangerous version, a mini metal melter to make jewelry, in the late ’90s-early ’00s. Technically, it had a safety latch and wouldn’t switch on unless the plastic lid was closed over the smelter (?)… or a curious pre-teen Penguin decides to jam a pen into it and disable the mechanism.

Lots of unsafe fun was had.

9. You can’t forget the smell.

I had an incredibly heavy metal square looking robot that spit smoke it produced from burning oil. It smelled noxious and was heavy enough it could have easily been a murder weapon.

8. Sounds safe.

I remember a toy we had called Creepy Crawlers, it was basically an Easy Bake Oven for boys, instead baking food you put plastic into metal molds that were shaped like various insects.

After it was in the oven for a while you would take it out and have a new plastic or rubber “Creepy Crawler”

7. None of this spongey stuff.

Not a toy, but playgrounds were plunked down onto asphalt and concrete.

6. We really did have so much fun.

I had one that let me melt down metal and pour it into molds. Playing unsupervised with molten metal was lots of fun!

I remember making the motorcycle, skull, and wizard. Had a skull ring along with a magician and motorcycle necklace.

Even tried melting down other random stuff but it usually wasn’t hot enough.

5. The burning skin…

In the late 90s my elementary school had a metal slide about 15ft tall. The ladder to climb up, and the “railing” around the 1ft wide platform at the top were made of skinny metal tubing that got slick af when it was wet. The sides of the slide were about 6 inches tall, super easy to just go over the edge. Several kids fell or were pushed off over the years when I was there. One boy had to be hospitalized not once, not twice, but three times after jumping off it.

Around 2001 the school tore it down and replaced it with an extremely lame plastic slide about 8ft tall, with sides about 1ft tall.

Oh, and I have a children’s science textbook from the 1930s that describes all sorts of experiments with electricity kids can do with the power outlets in their home. What could go wrong?

4. He’ll never be the same.

I had a large red plastic toy box that looked like a treasure chest in my bedroom closet growing up. When I was around 7, late at night the toy box would start taking to me from the closet, calling my name, Michael, in a low, creaky voice. For weeks, I was terrified to fall asleep because I knew I’d wake up to the voice again, yet every morning when the sun filled my room I’d open the lid to the box and it would just be toys, like it should be.

Finally, I was able to convince my mom that I wasn’t making it up, and got her to sleep in my room that night with me, and shortly thereafter she woke me up with “Michael wake up, I hear it”.

Long story short, we discovered it was my Talking K.I.T.T. with very low batteries, talking away in slow motion by itself.

I don’t know if those should be illegal, but I definitely feel like the experience damaged me.

3. Indeed.

I had that barbie that was pregnant. And the My Little Pony one. The 80’s were a different time….

2. Also the candy ones.

We had these weird fake cigarettes that actually allowed you to blow smoke that was quite realistic. We freaked out a lot of adults with them.

There were these “fake” cigarettes that were white sugar with one end that was (“glowing”?) red that were sold in a packet of ten; each was wrapped in a round cigarette paper. I think Fanny Farmer Candies sold them.

1. That seems safe.

I never owned one, but you could buy a radioactive science kit that came with real radioactive material and a geiger counter.

Sometimes the new safety standards make me want to roll my eyes, but it’s probably a good thing these toys went away, yeah?

What toy would you add to the list? Share it with us in the comments!

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Vintage Toys That Are Too Dangerous For Kids Today

Safety standards have changed over the years, and many of the things we gave to babies and children (or put them to sleep with or on) years ago would horrifying parents today.

It can be fun to think about handing certain beloved toys down to our children and grandchildren, but we all know we have a few that need to go straight into the trash (they’re too dangerous even for a garage sale).

These 17 people are naming the toys that might have gotten them killed, but luckily didn’t.

17. We were all totally unsupervised.

A chemistry set. My brother and I were totally unsupervised and never followed the instructions. We just mixed chemicals together at random to see what would happen. I remember one combination turned into this really smelly black foam-like substance.

My dad and his brothers didn’t have a chemistry set. But their father did let them play with mercury in his workshop. They also taught themselves to make…zip guns, I think they were called? Basically, guns crafted from parts like car antennas.

16. I remember “playing” with mercury, too.

My dentist used to give me Vials of Mercury to bring to school for show and tell. My parents bought me a rock collection at a natural history museum that included a chunk of asbestos from which you could pull fibrous material.

We also had metal trucks with extremely sharp edges and lead based paint jobs.

15. They were learning, though!

My Dad was born in the 50s and chemistry sets in his day did not f*ck around. They had all kinds of chemicals in them that if mixed together could start fires or cause explosions – which may be fine in very small quantities but the chemistry sets explicitly did not give directions of how much or how little to use.

I think he said his chemistry set also came with a small amount of radioactive material (which I’m pretty sure was harmless unless you eat it).

His parents made him move to the garage when he started doing experiments so he didn’t blow up the house.

Anyway he went on to become a scientist so the chemistry sets did something right.

14. So many pyros.

Ohio Blue Tip matches. My grandma let us carry the box out her back door to burn shit. Strike anywhere! Boom- fire. Not sure how I survived.

13. An auspicious start.

As a kid in the 60s, my uncle looked up “gunpowder” in the family encyclopedia and headed off to the pharmacy with his pocket money. He could barely reach up to the counter, but they were happy to sell him a pound of each ingredient.

He now has a PhD in chemistry, and most of his peers have similar stories.

12. Oopsie.

I have a crayon melter that melts crayons and lets you pour it into molds so you could make your own crayons and rings

turns out production stopped because of a failure to stop the heater from being turned on if the lid was opened

11. Dried chickpeas for the win.

Not zip guns but as kids we would make these weapons out of a 10″ PVC tube and a balloon. You tie the balloon to one end, drop a pebble or small rock into the other end, pull back the pebble inside the balloon and let it go.

Those f*ckers would break skin and cause serious damage (broke a friend’s glasses once). You could also use dried beans as ammo.

10. Technically.

I had the (potentially) even more dangerous version, a mini metal melter to make jewelry, in the late ’90s-early ’00s. Technically, it had a safety latch and wouldn’t switch on unless the plastic lid was closed over the smelter (?)… or a curious pre-teen Penguin decides to jam a pen into it and disable the mechanism.

Lots of unsafe fun was had.

9. You can’t forget the smell.

I had an incredibly heavy metal square looking robot that spit smoke it produced from burning oil. It smelled noxious and was heavy enough it could have easily been a murder weapon.

8. Sounds safe.

I remember a toy we had called Creepy Crawlers, it was basically an Easy Bake Oven for boys, instead baking food you put plastic into metal molds that were shaped like various insects.

After it was in the oven for a while you would take it out and have a new plastic or rubber “Creepy Crawler”

7. None of this spongey stuff.

Not a toy, but playgrounds were plunked down onto asphalt and concrete.

6. We really did have so much fun.

I had one that let me melt down metal and pour it into molds. Playing unsupervised with molten metal was lots of fun!

I remember making the motorcycle, skull, and wizard. Had a skull ring along with a magician and motorcycle necklace.

Even tried melting down other random stuff but it usually wasn’t hot enough.

5. The burning skin…

In the late 90s my elementary school had a metal slide about 15ft tall. The ladder to climb up, and the “railing” around the 1ft wide platform at the top were made of skinny metal tubing that got slick af when it was wet. The sides of the slide were about 6 inches tall, super easy to just go over the edge. Several kids fell or were pushed off over the years when I was there. One boy had to be hospitalized not once, not twice, but three times after jumping off it.

Around 2001 the school tore it down and replaced it with an extremely lame plastic slide about 8ft tall, with sides about 1ft tall.

Oh, and I have a children’s science textbook from the 1930s that describes all sorts of experiments with electricity kids can do with the power outlets in their home. What could go wrong?

4. He’ll never be the same.

I had a large red plastic toy box that looked like a treasure chest in my bedroom closet growing up. When I was around 7, late at night the toy box would start taking to me from the closet, calling my name, Michael, in a low, creaky voice. For weeks, I was terrified to fall asleep because I knew I’d wake up to the voice again, yet every morning when the sun filled my room I’d open the lid to the box and it would just be toys, like it should be.

Finally, I was able to convince my mom that I wasn’t making it up, and got her to sleep in my room that night with me, and shortly thereafter she woke me up with “Michael wake up, I hear it”.

Long story short, we discovered it was my Talking K.I.T.T. with very low batteries, talking away in slow motion by itself.

I don’t know if those should be illegal, but I definitely feel like the experience damaged me.

3. Indeed.

I had that barbie that was pregnant. And the My Little Pony one. The 80’s were a different time….

2. Also the candy ones.

We had these weird fake cigarettes that actually allowed you to blow smoke that was quite realistic. We freaked out a lot of adults with them.

There were these “fake” cigarettes that were white sugar with one end that was (“glowing”?) red that were sold in a packet of ten; each was wrapped in a round cigarette paper. I think Fanny Farmer Candies sold them.

1. That seems safe.

I never owned one, but you could buy a radioactive science kit that came with real radioactive material and a geiger counter.

Sometimes the new safety standards make me want to roll my eyes, but it’s probably a good thing these toys went away, yeah?

What toy would you add to the list? Share it with us in the comments!

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This is Why People Propose on One Knee

There are big questions about life and then there are some that are smaller, but if you ask me, they’re all good questions.

We’ve got to keep learning – at least one thing every day, that’s what my great-grandfather used to say.

If you’re curious why the traditional proposal includes the person proposing dropping to one knee, keep reading to find out – knowledge if power, people!

Image Credit: iStock

The general thinking is that the practice has old roots, but is perhaps the result of a combination of practices. People have been genuflecting, or “bending the knee” to show respect and/or reverence since ancient times – Herodotus even observed the practice in Persia in 430 BCE.

“In the case where one is a little inferior to the other, the kiss is given on the cheek.

Where the difference of rank is great, the inferior prostrates himself upon the ground.”

This greeting system was adopted by Alexander the Great after he conquered that empire a hundred years later, even though many Greeks and Macedonians disapproved of the new ritual because of a belief that sort of deference should be reserved for the gods and nobody else.

It remained popular in both religious and secular spheres in the future, though, with the Catholics dropping to a knee when facing the Eucharist and warriors being knighted kneeling before their commander to be dubbed with a sword.

Image Credit: Public Domain

It was during the knight’s heyday that kneeling began to take on a bit of a romantic bent, when knights pledged themselves to serve and honor their lovers like a or king (this is also the origin of the term “courtly love.”

There’s a good amount of artwork from the medieval period that depicts a man kneeling before the lady, and they all look a lot like a proposal (except for the armor).

Image Credit: iStock

Basically, the idea of “bending the knee” has pretty much always been a sign of devotion and humility, but the romantic association probably comes from medieval knights – not a bad way to go if you’re asking someone to marry you and pick up your socks forever, I’d say.

Have you proposed? Did you get down on one knee? Tell us why or why not in the comments!

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