Actually, it’s almost inevitable that lightning will strike the same place twice. As soon as a lightning bolt hits the ground, a new one is not deterred in any way, shape, or form from hitting the same spot again. A good example is lightning hitting tall buildings. Take a look at this video from the tallest building in Chicago, now known as the Willis Tower.
That night the Willis Tower was hit by 10 bolts of lightning. According to storm chaser Dan Robinson, tall buildings are most likely to be hit by multiple lightning strikes.
And what about human beings? Can they be hit more than once? The story of park ranger Roy Sullivan proves that yes, this phenomenon can occur. I remember seeing poor Mr. Sullivan in the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid for his unfortunate encounters with lightning.
Sullivan was a park ranger in Virginia who was struck by lightning an incredible 7 TIMES between 1942 and 1977, more than any other human being on record. So be careful out there during thunderstorms. You may think you’re safe, but you never know…
It’s still surprising and shocking that beloved chef, writer, and TV host Anthony Bourdain is gone. Tributes poured in from celebrities, but often the stories from regular, everyday people are the ones to really highlight how special a person was.
Shared on Twitter, comes a story from a man who only met Bourdain once, and it will make you appreciate the traveling chef even more.
The next time you’re at your local movie theater, keep an eye out for the movie posters lining the halls. Notice anything peculiar? That’s right, a lot of posters use the same typeface to advertise films.
The familiar font is called Trajan, and it was designed by a woman named Carol Twombly in 1989. Twombly worked for Adobe, and the font became extremely popular because many designers used Adobe software to create movie posters. This signaled a change in the movie poster industry. The first film to use the font in its advertisements was At Play In the Fields of the Lord.
Other designers caught on to Trajan and soon the font was seen everywhere in film advertising. These days, Trajan is used more for direct-to-video and B and genre movies.
“Shotgun!” How many times have you yelled that on the way to a car with your friends and family?
This is another phrase that dates to the Old West. When stagecoaches crossed miles and miles of open land, danger lurked around every corner. The man who sat next to the stagecoach driver was known as the express messenger. That person was always armed with, you guessed it, a shotgun to protect the coach and its valuables/people.
Another one you hear all the time. Hey, I even use it myself from time to time. The term originally started in British English around 1820 as “stamping ground” with an “a”. It referred to places where animals slept at night where vegetation was trampled down.
In the 1850s the term became “stomping ground” in America. Both terms are still used, FYI.
We all do this, some of us more than others. Just chit chat and talk about nothing in particular with a friend. The term originates in the American West, with its massive, wide open spaces. What better way to pass time than to shoot at, well…nothing. Passing the time by shooting into the air and making small talk eventually came to mean the same thing.
This phrase has two possible origin stories. The first is that way back in the 16th century, English speakers used the word “neck” to describe all kinds of narrow or constricted things. Examples include the narrow neck of a bottle or an inlet of water. So the term possibly originates there.
Author Bill Bryson believes the phrase comes from the Algonquin word “niack”, which means a corner or a point. If this is the origin of “my neck of the woods,” it truly makes the phrase an Americanism.
When a person (hopefully not you) divulges sensitive information or tells a secret, they spill the beans. There are two possible theories for the explanation of this term.
The first states that Ancient Greek societies used different colored beans to cast votes on new members and that all the beans were spilled out to be counted after voting was complete.
The second (and the one that is generally more accepted) comes from a book that describes a vote that took place in Maine all the way back in 1650. Beans and corn were used to vote “yes” or “no”. Beans symbolized a “yes” vote.
What do you think about the origin of these terms? What are some others that you’d like to learn about?
Researchers have observed a small group of white-faced capuchin monkeys off the coast of Panama using stone tools to break nuts and shellfish. That’s right: a group of capuchin monkeys have entered the Stone Age.
These are the fourth group of primates to use stone tools after humans. It was reported all the way back in 2004 that monkeys on the island were using stone tools. In 2017, researchers placed cameras on Jicarón Island to try to capture the act on camera, which they eventually did.
Researchers saw the group of male monkeys using tools to break coconuts, snails, and crabs. For some reason, the same behavior has not spread to other groups of monkeys or other islands off Panama’s coast. The researchers think that the monkeys’ behavior may be by chance and isn’t necessarily the expected trajectory. The other three primate groups that have already entered the Stone Age are a group of capuchins in South America, macaques in Thailand, and chimpanzees in West Africa.
Watch the video below to see the monkeys in action.
Recently, researchers at Harvard University released a study that makes a pretty surprising revelation: our concept of “threat” and the color blue, it turns out, is all relative and is not based on hard-and-fast rules. This is how the experiment worked: the researchers showed subjects a series of dots that ranged in color from very blue to very purple. For the first 200 times, the participants saw an equal number of blue and purple dots from the color spectrum. After that, the number of blue dots gradually decreased.
By the end, the subjects’ interpretation of the colors was different: dots they thought were purple in the first experiments they now saw as blue. This happened even after researchers told the subjects that the number of blue dots would decrease and they would be paid in cash for correct answers.
The team also had similar results when they conducted experiments about whether a face was threatening or a research proposal was unethical. Even when the rate of threatening faces or unethical proposals decreased, the subjects picked them out at the same ratio, and viewed benign faces or proposals as being threatening and unethical.
So what does it all mean? The researchers think the results might explain why so many people are pessimistic about the state of world affairs. The authors of the study believe that as social problems decrease (poverty, illiteracy) and become less common, issues that previously seemed minor or insignificant start to seem more problematic.
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, one of the most famous couples of the Jazz Age, lived in Montgomery, Alabama in 1931-1932 and the top floor of their home is now available to rent on Airbnb.
Zelda worked on her only novel Save Me the Waltz in the house and her husband wrote part of his novel Tender is the Night there. The couple’s daughter also lived with them in the home before she went away to boarding school.
The home is now a museum and is part of the Southern Literary Trail. The first floor of the home is the museum dedicated to the life and work of the writers, and the second floor is where tourists can stay for $150 a night in a two-bedroom apartment. Sounds like fun!
YouTube is the new TV. In fact, they’ve even launched their own version of the standard cable TV subscription that lets you watch live TV via YouTube. And with billions of views across all its videos YouTubers are cashing in.
All this is to say that there’s no doubt that YouTube has become a major launchpad for tomorrow’s celebrities (Justin Bieber was famously discovered on YouTube). If you’re at the top of your game, there are major bucks to be made in the form of YouTube partnerships, endorsements, and exposure to new opportunities.
The list below features 15 of YouTube’s most popular independent stars (as opposed to mainstream music artists, etc.), as compiled by SocialBlade. These stars aren’t just reaching millions of people worldwide – some are also making millions of dollars in the process.
Brazilian vlogger and comedian Felipe Neto has the distinction of being the first Brazilian YouTube channel to hit 1 million subscribers. He also released a Netflix special in 2017.
Yuya is a beauty vlogger who posts all kinds of beauty tutorials on her main channel. Her popularity has earned her features in Vogue and on TV in her native Mexico.
NigaHiga (Ryan Higa) was one of the earliest breakout stars of YouTube, producing a variety of content from comedy sketches and music videos to musings on pop culture.
Vegeta777 (Samuel de Luque) is a popular Spanish gaming YouTuber who is best known for using video games to create elaborate narratives of his design, including dubbing his own voiceovers.
VanossGaming (Evan Fong) is a gaming YouTuber from Canada. His signature style features the masterful use of editing to compress hours of footage into a single engaging moment.
Comedy duo Smosh (comprised of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla) was another one of YouTube’s earlier stars. Recently, Padilla left Smosh to start a solo account.
Jacksepticeye (Seán William McLoughlin) is an Irish gamer and YouTuber who found fame after getting mentioned by PewDiePie (featured later in this list). I particularly like his videos due to his energetic narration and charming Irish accent.
Dude Perfect was started by a group of friends and former athletes who all knew each other from college at Texas A&M. Their videos often revolve around sports and trick shots, with a fun, casual style.
ElRubiusOMG (Rubén Doblas Gundersen) is a Spanish YouTube sensation. As with many of the other entries on this list, his main focus is video game reviews, walkthroughs, and commentaries.
HolaSoyGerman (Germán Garmendia) is arguably the biggest YouTube star in Latin America. The Chilean comedian and musician can boast having not one, but two YouTube channels in the top 20 list – the main one listed here and another, gaming-focused channel called JuegaGerman.
You know you’ve made it when South Park is spoofing you. PewDiePie (Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg) is a Swedish YouTuber whose boisterous video game commentary and playthroughs have earned him widespread fame and a sizeable fortune.
Let’s face it: dating is tough. Many people turn to online dating to meet new people, and while this turns out well in many cases, there are also plenty of cases that turn out… weird.
A fella named Xavier was gracious enough to take to Twitter and share this riveting story of his female friend’s recent “Netflix and Chill” adventure. Buckle up for this story…it’s time to let Xavier take over.
For a few weeks every four years, the World Cup seems to completely take over the world. Whether or not you keep up with it, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that Americans say ‘soccer’ and almost everyone else on the planet uses the term ‘football.’ So what gives? Well, it’s time for a history lesson.
What we in the U.S. call soccer has been played in England since the Middle Ages. It started out as a game for the common folks, but in the early 1800s young men at the country’s most privileged schools started partaking in the sport. The rules of ‘football’ were standardized by the Football Association in 1863.
Different sports began to splinter off from traditional English football, including rugby, and it became known widely as association football. The nickname for the sport was now assoccer, which, after a while, was shortened to soccer. Meanwhile, also in the late 1860s, American football was established at the college level, but in other parts of the world it was known as gridiron football or American football. Confused yet?
Over in England, they dropped the “association” that preceded “football” and just made it football. So there were now two completely different sports on opposite sides of the Atlantic called football. To deal with the confusion, people in the U.S. started calling English football by its old nickname, soccer. And those are the terms we still use today.
Today, the term soccer is used in the countries that have their own versions of football: America, Canada, and Australia. Now get back to watching the World Cup!
