There’s a saying that bad gas travels fast in a small town. But basically that just means that when you start gossiping about someone it’s going to get around. If you’re a celebrity, and you’re basically living on the world stage, then that bad gas gets right out of control. Rumors start to fly and…
Author: Ian Fortey
They say there’s no accounting for taste, and sometimes the divide between the critic and the common person is quite extensive. There is a kind of elitism associated with any kind of criticism whether it’s for art or food or film. People who make a living criticizing other things are often derided when they have…
In modern times we commonly refer to the reign of Queen Victoria as the Victorian Era in England. That era stretched from the year 1837 until 1901. In the grand scheme of human history, it wasn’t so long ago. In the grand scheme of culinary history, it might as well have happened a million years…
Mankind has long been fascinated by achieving new heights. It’s literally a cliche statement that we’ll make. We look to the stars, we seek to rise above, we jump hurdles. But it’s worth noting there are plenty of things to find when we look down deep down. There are some remarkably deep places on Earth…
NASA is always looking to the stars as are many amateur astronomers around the world. While our own solar system only has eight planets (sorry Pluto, we still love you), it’s estimated that there are billions and billions of them throughout the universe. And that includes over 4,000 exoplanets that we have confirmed so far. Some…
Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great, didn’t get his nickname for no reason. He conquered the known world by an age when most people are just getting out of entry-level positions at work. Even thousands of years after his death Alexander is still fascinating to us. And it’s no wonder, when…
Armies have existed for about as long as civilization has. When a group of people get together, they realize they need to protect themselves from other groups. Soldiers are the ones trained to fight and protect and, generally speaking, follow the chain of command. Every once in a while it doesn’t quite work that way,…
There are 570 recognized native tribes currently living in the United States, with more in Canada and Mexico. The first people to populate North America likely did so around 17,000 years ago. That’s a long time to develop not just a history but a mythology about the world around you and how it works. The…
Myth and legend are full of wondrous places that capture the imagination and have inspired generations of adventurers to explore the world in search of their treasures. Often they come up empty-handed, but every once in a while there seems to be a sliver of truth to the tales of these mythical places. Let’s take…
There’s something mythical about inventors throughout history. People who were able to see the need for something that had never existed before and make it come to life. It’s a kind of genius that many aspire to but few ever achieve. And while the world would look like little more than a group of scared…
A lot of career politicians seem to have fairly boring backstories, at least as far as most of us can recall off the tops of our heads. Problem is, if someone’s been in politics for the last 40 years it seems like there’s not much else you can know about them. But not every world…
Despite what Disney and Marvel would have us believe with the MCU, there’s no magic formula for making box office gold. Everyone who makes a movie fully expects it to succeed and do well, but sometimes that’s not in the cards. While there are some movies that are critically maligned and do poorly overall, when…
Every organism in the world has a common name and a scientific name. You have a cat, and it is also known as felis catus. Outside you might see a raven, while a scientist could classify it as corvus corax. While these names are fairly mundane and very scientific sounding, that’s not always the case.…
Marketing is definitely not a science. They can teach it in school, people can claim to be experts in it, but sometimes even the most successful businesses and brands drop the ball in absolutely stunning ways. A good campaign is a rare thing, and it inspires consumers to go out and consume your products. Most…
The Norsemen that we call Vikings in the modern parlance ranged across much of Scandinavia from the 8th to 11th centuries. Modern people are fascinated by what the lives of these Vikings must have been like, which you can tell from the number of movies and TV shows we keep making about them. Problem is,…
The history of Bigfoot in North America is a mishmash of regional legends, some Native American and some not, that speak of a hairy, ape-like man of the woods with, as the name suggests, large feet. Rumors, witness accounts, and anecdotes have been passed around since at least the 1800s. In 1958 the Humboldt Times…
Every once in a while when you’re driving down the street you’ll see one of those houses that has an old, rusted out car parked out front that looks like nature is slowly reclaiming it. Most major cities have at least one scrap yard somewhere too that’s just wall to wall old cars. And even…
Most of us in the Western World aren’t as familiar with the history of other nations as we are with our own. For instance, the history of Japan is likely totally unknown to most people beyond their involvement in the Second World War to anyone who hasn’t gone out of their way to learn about…
If all you know about dinosaurs comes from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re all hellbent on eating Hollywood’s most delightful actors and occasionally looking sympathetic as we come to realize that man is the true monster. But dinosaurs roamed the earth for about 175 million years and you know…
Russia is more than just dancing bears, vodka, and oligarchs. It has those things in spades but at 6.6 million square miles with a population of 144 million you know there has to be a few more things going on. It’s a very misunderstood country with admittedly a lot of awful things going on, but…
World militaries have a strange function in society these days, having to be both present and visible yet secretive and under the radar in many regards. We all know the military exists, but what they do is often so under wraps they’ll deny doing it even when people can see them doing it. Case in…
A superstition is essentially anything you believe with no actual good reason to believe it. It is the opposite of science and logic and, in fact, science and logic will tear it apart. So you ignore the science and logic because maybe one day you wore blue socks and got a raise at work, so…
When’s the last time you heard of any good human experimentation? It’s probably been a while. Human experimentation is often grim, grisly and downright terrifying. Sometimes it’s physically harrowing while other times it’s psychologically scarring. Some of the worst examples have proven that mankind has a boundless creativity when it comes to subjecting our own…
The Wright Brothers didn’t exactly create an immutable set of design instructions for the world when they took that first flight in 1903 and really, it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. That they had proven flying machines could work was all that was necessary for the spirit of innovation to take hold in others.…