Author: Ian Fortey

When you look at the entirety of our culinary history there are thousands, if not millions, of dishes that have been developed all around the world across time. There’s no way that anyone could ever sample them all, and there’s no way that anyone would ever like them all, either. And maybe that’s part of…

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Military history shows us that, no matter where you’re from, strict discipline, training and dedication along with some innovation and cleverness can do amazing things. But along with that comes a long list of rituals, beliefs and superstitions that sometimes make sense and sometimes are absolutely baffling to outsiders and sometimes even insiders. Take, for…

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People online love exposing secret rooms. Every so often, a new tale goes viral, featuring someone discovering a hidden room with all manner of creepy implications. But usually these stories are just of homeowners or apartment renters finding the mysterious locations and, while vaguely creepy, are not all that unusual anymore. What you may find more unusual is the…

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In science fiction people have managed to travel through time in starships, DeLoreans, hot tubs and duffel bags among many other things. It’s just that easy. In real life, science can’t even decide if time travel is even theoretically possible, although a lot of prominent names lean towards it being impossible. But hey, what are…

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Water, water, everywhere, about which we rarely think. For a substance that is integral to life as we know it, most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about our water until something happens to it, as was the case in Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and numerous First Nations reserves in…

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A cognitive bias is essentially just a mistake in how you process information. It causes you to misinterpret or misunderstand information and the end result is that you come to a wrong decision or conclusion without realizing you made any kind of mistake. It can be difficult to realize they exist, especially since some of…

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April Fool’s Day has been observed in one form or another for hundreds of years. Some of the tricks and jokes played on the day are simple and harmless, while others can be oddly elaborate and mean spirited. In modern times, you can count on newspapers, businesses and websites to run fake stories every April…

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The human mind loves a good mystery. It’s almost impossible to be presented with a puzzle and not want to try to solve it; that’s just the way our minds work. And while some mysteries are very simple, and some are nearly impossible, others are just completely unexpected and unbelievable. Sometimes the solution is even…

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If you ever watch life hack videos on YouTube, you know that people are constantly finding cool new ways to do things. Sometimes that means taking an already existing tool or item and adapting it to a new purpose that makes it even better. This adaptability has a long history. Sometimes people invent a thing…

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Plastic surgery has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years. Of course, 16th century plastic surgery was by no means as refined as it is today, but it did set a precedent and start a trend of trying to fix, at first, disfigurements and then, in time, just things people felt were…

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America has often been described as a litigious country and there’s no shortage of examples of lawsuits we perceive as frivolous or silly. The thing nearly all lawsuits have in common, whether they have merit or not, is that there is a plaintiff and a defendant and they are two separate entities. That said, every…

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Most of us are aware of the work of Oskar Schindler thanks to the film Schindler’s List. Less well known are the “Righteous Among the Nations.” These are non-Jewish people recognized by Israel as having put their own lives on the line during the Holocaust to rescue Jewish people from the Nazis. Like Schindler, they…

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There’s an old saying that goes “use it or lose it” which essentially means if you have a thing, you better make use of it before it’s gone. We don’t have a lot of sayings about overuse, however, and it turns out we should. There are plenty of things in life you can overuse that…

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