The American Kennel Club recognizes 195 dog breeds. The French equivalent, the Federation Cynologique Internationale, recognizes 360. So it’s safe to say, no matter whose guidelines you follow, there are a lot of dogs in the world. And that’s just dogs. There are anywhere from 40 to 70 breeds of cats, depending on who you…
Author: Ian Fortey
There’s something to be said for having the skill, the drive and the tenacity to track something down even when it’s remarkably hard to do so. Once upon a time your ability to hunt and track may have been the difference between life and death. These days it’s less important for most of us, but…
On any given day you can wake up and do literally millions of things. You can ride a horse, climb a mountain, eat a turnip, the sky’s the limit. But do you ever stop to consider that there was a time that someone had to be the first? Everything that has ever been done or…
Some people say money is the root of all evil but few of us would deny that having money makes life easier. That said, getting money involves moving it from where it was to where you are. This happens millions of times per day all over the world with small, barely noteworthy amounts of cash.…
Every movie has to undergo an editing process to refine it down to something that tells a story. Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller famously shot 480 hours of footage that his wife edited down to a 2 hour film. Not every movie has to cut so much, of course, and some edits are…
It’s every entrepreneur’s hope that the business endeavors they undertake will be successful. No one likes being a failure and businesspeople especially like to succeed and make money off of their plans. While some entrepreneurs strike a chord with their customer base and get lucky, others seem to have the ability to make lightning strike…
An idiom is an expression that has the curious affectation of not making sense, strictly speaking. The meaning of an idiom can’t be derived from what the words in it say. In other words, the literal meaning is different from how it’s commonly used. For instance, if computer coding is easy for you, you might…
Given how important your brain is, we haven’t been studying it for all that long and still don’t know as much about it as maybe we should. That said, scientists are still working to unlock the mystery of how that meaty organ in your head controls every aspect of your being and we’re learning more…
Naming things is harder than you might think, at least for some people. The internet is rife with tales of dubious veracity claiming baby name consultants are being paid tens of thousands of dollars to help rich people name their children. And even if they aren’t real, there are a plethora of sites that exist…
Taste is a very subjective thing. Some people love pineapple on pizza, some hate it. Some folks are happy to eat a vegan diet, others are practically full-time carnivores. But what accounts for those foods that can change their taste over time. Is that you and your personal tastes changing over time, or is the…
The United States has had 45 different Presidents up to and including Joe Biden, who is the 46th President. How can he be 46 if there were 45? Because Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive runs and is considered both the 22nd and the 24th President. That was a first! But it was far…
The world is more at our fingertips today than ever before. You can head out in any big city and enjoy the cuisine from dozens of countries or, if you’re more adventurous, head to the internet and track down recipes and videos showing you how to make food from literally every corner of the globe.…
Stand up comedy would be nothing today without comedians making observations about the differences between men and women. And it’s likely people have been drawing various conclusions about the difference between men and women since men and women first existed. Nowadays we can rely on more than just casual observation and look at science and…
According to one survey from 2016, about 25% of respondents reported having a fear of insects. A lot of us are just creeped out by them. And among the world of insects, flies stand out as some of the most unpleasant. They’re around all the time, they can bite and spread disease, and some species…
Celebrities, whether they act, sing, play sports or even just enjoy the limelight as politicians, seem to get away with a lot more than the average person does. Or maybe that’s just our perception because the things celebrities do are under scrutiny so much. But there has long been a history of well known men…
By definition a coincidence is something that is remarkable involving two or more unrelated things that still happens at the same time or in a way that seems to relate the two. One of the key features of a coincidence is the fact that the things or events are, in fact, unrelated. But over time…
No one ever gets kidnapped for a good reason but some kidnappers in the world are just doing it to try to score a quick buck. Kidnapping for ransom is centuries old. The first kidnapping for ransom in American history dates back to 1874. Sometimes it works out and everyone gets safely and sometimes the…
Everything has a beginning and for a lot of things they’re pretty easy to figure out. You can look at the first film by a certain director or actor, the first book by a writer, the first appearance of your favorite fictional character. It’s usually very cut and dry. That said, every so often a…
Every summer in cities across the world construction projects begin that cause detours and traffic jams and seem to take weeks or even months. They can be noisy and frustrating and an eyesore until they’re done. And they’re also just barely a splash in the pan compared to some of these projects which took decades.…
A lot of people like to think money can’t buy happiness or money is the root of all evil and so on and so forth but we all also acknowledge that, in practical terms, most of us need it and wish we had more of it. Money makes living comfortably and safely easier. You can…
In an ideal world everyone gets along, no one hates anyone and we certainly never try to ruin anyone’s career or life or anything else, for that matter. But when has the world even been ideal? We can’t even keep sabotage out of the world of pop culture which is mostly just dedicated to keeping…
There’s a joke on the internet that if you perhaps Google various nefarious terms, the FBI probably has a file on you somewhere. This joke is born from a kernel of truth, insofar as the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a history of keeping files on people for all sorts of reasons, many of which…
Modern medicine is a term we use to describe what is generally considered the best and most advanced kind of health care we have available. This is in contrast to things like ancient Chinese medicine or old school quackery and ill-informed procedures like lobotomies and trepanning and such. But there are a number of treatments…
By the time you’re old enough to walk your parents will probably have put some serious effort into trying to get you to understand the difference between what’s safe to eat and what isn’t. We have symbols on packaging to let us know if some things are poisonous and then rules and regulations for other…