#1020 Why are the Secret Service in charge of protecting the president of the USA?

Why are the Secret Service in charge of protecting the president of the USA? They were the only agency capable of doing it at the time. The Secret Service was tasked with protecting the president of the United States in 1901 after the assassination of President McKinley. McKinley had just been elected for his second […]

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#1019 How do rats find landmines?

How do rats find landmines? They can sniff them out and the rats are light enough that they don’t set the landmines off. It is estimated that there are 110 million landmines still buried around the world. These landmines are still active and they are buried in over 60 countries. Explosives do deteriorate with age,

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#1018 What is Zipf’s Law?

What is Zipf’s Law? It is a statistical distribution in a data set where the first item is twice as big as the second item, three times as big as the third item, four times as big as the fourth item, and so on. Zipf’s Law is called a law, but it is not really

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#1013 What is talcum powder?

What is talcum powder? It is a mineral found in clay. When we think of talcum powder, most of us think of the powder we put on a baby’s bottom after they have been changed to prevent nappy rash (diaper rash), or something we put on our nether regions after a tough game of squash.

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#1012 What is Lou Gehrig’s disease?

What is Lou Gehrig’s disease? It is a disease that causes progressive degeneration of the nerve cells in the spine and brain. The disease is called Lou Gehrig’s disease after a famous baseball player who died of it, but the disease’s actual name is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “Amyotrophic” comes from Greek. “A” means “no”.

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#1011 Does a tugboat tug?

Does a tugboat tug? They do pull, but they also push, too. In the very early days of sea travel, boats were not big enough to need something like a tugboat. They could usually be sailed right into the dock. If the wind wasn’t right, they usually had oars and oarsmen who could get the

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