検索キーワード： 著者 "Dan Lewis" すべてのカテゴリー

The German town of Bochum is the 16th largest in the country by population; as of 2015, Bochum was home to roughly 365,000 people. In the fall of 2014, though, at least one of those people was in a little bit of trouble.

"You can't win if you don't pay"—that's a slogan used by a number of different state-run lotteries in the United States. It's a truism of sorts—the statement is obviously correct (both in the context of lotteries and more generally) and says nothing really interesting, but it makes for good ad copy.

A candy bar – let's go with the criminally underrated Sky Bar as an example – will cost you about $1 nowadays, give or take. Accounting for inflation (and even though I'm about to talk about Canada, we're going to use all US dollars here, because accounting for inflation and for currency exchange rates at the same time is basically impossible for someone without an advanced math degree), that same candy bar should have cost about 10 cents back in 1947.

As haircuts go, few in the mid-1980s were more famous than Brian Bosworth's. A mix of mullets and mohawks and lines, it really didn't matter.

A large oak tree sits near the corner of South Finley Street and Dearing Street in Athens, Georgia. The tree juts out into Finley, causing a bottleneck.

Off the southwestern corner of the Korean Peninsula is Sorokdo, or Sorok Island. At first glance, it looks like a good vacation getaway – it is a tiny but accessible 1.75-square-mile (or 4.46-square-kilometer) spot of land with nice beaches and pine trees, and is home to about 1,000 people, give or take a few hundred.

The "Furby," a toy that resembles a monstrous chinchilla-esque, owl-like creature, was originally released in 1998 by Tiger Electronics – and, if you were a kid back then (or a parent, for that matter), you can attest to how wildly popular it was. Retailing for about $35, but with a secondary market price easily tripling that, the Furby was a combination of next-generation technology and nightmare-inducing fur.

Beginning in December 1968, whenever the United States sent a manned spacecraft into space, it did so from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the flight directed by the Kennedy Space Center located on nearby Merritt Island. Both the launch site and the Space Center are located an hour east of Orlando, on the Atlantic Ocean.

Imagine what Earth was like a thousand years ago—the year 1015. Almost everything would be foreign to modern eyes and ears—even the language would be incomprehensible.

The internet has made newspapers' "Help Wanted" ads a thing of the past. But in 2001, before this form of advertising was sent into obsolescence, an entrepreneurial (and seemingly desperate) job seeker named Brian O'Dea used the medium to reverse things.

On March 9, 2014, Neil Moore was in Wandsworth Prison, a maximum security prison in London, England, awaiting trial. Moore, whose modus operandi was fraud, had been charged with orchestrating a series of bank heists – pretending to be a bank official and, via a bit of social engineering, he had managed to convince (real) staffers at other financial institutions to wire him some cash.

EMI was a British music company that once had many different labels under it. But the company's history is more robust than simply putting music onto records, cassettes, CDs and iTunes.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch." That quote, the origins of which are unknown, has been a staple rule of economics for nearly a century.

Yves Rossy is a pilot. Like most other pilots, he flies things. But unlike any other pilot, the thing he flies is himself.

Welcome to San Francisco Sketchfest 2018! Here's your front row seat, your backstage pass, and your all-access badge to one of the biggest comedy festivals in the country!

For various reasons, dating someone you work with can be a bad idea. Many companies have rules called "no fraternization" policies, which outline the dos and don'ts of office romance.

Air travel can be fun – but it can be maddening, too. One of the more frustrating aspects is the boarding process, during which everyone tries to stow away their carry-on bags and get their bodies into their seats, seemingly all at the same time.

Did you know that Silly Putty is a by-product of World War II-era rubber rationing, or that the Anglo-Swedish War resulted in exactly zero direct deaths? And about the Richmond Golf Club, who posted an addendum to the official rules in case a round of golf was interrupted by a round of bombs dropped by the Nazi Luftwaffe? Now I Know: Military is the ultimate challenge for any know-it-all who thinks they have nothing left to learn about the military.

Did you know that San Diego’s Frozen Zoo is home to preserved DNA samples from over 8,000 endangered or threatened species, or that the tell-tale smell of freshly mowed grass is actually the plant’s version of a distress call? And what about Henrietta Lacks, the “immortal woman” whose cancer cells have been divided and multiplied for research purposes for over 60 years? Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know: Science.

Did you know that tug of war was once an Olympic Sport, or that President Teddy Roosevelt demanded that actions be taken to turn football into a more gentlemanly pastime? And what about Eddie Gaedel, the 3’7" pinch hitter for the St. Louis Browns who was nearly impossible to strike out? Even if you think you have a handle on all things trivia, you're guaranteed a big surprise with Now I Know: Sports. This special collection from the Now I Know archives will challenge your knowledge of the fascinating stories behind the world's greatest facts.