Astronomical Distances and the Age of the Universe
Every so often, astronomers will publish photos taken with an astronomical telescope and say that the object they captured is so many billions of light years away. But how could they know the distanc...
25 Sep 202212min
Philippe Petit and the World's Greatest Tightrope Walk (Encore)
On the morning of August 7, 1974, the people of New York City woke up to witness one of the most incredible sights that the city had ever seen. Between the two towers of the New York World Trade Cent...
24 Sep 202210min
The Hindenburg Disaster
In the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most cutting-edge and exciting forms of transportation was the zeppelin. Germany’s Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company created lighter-than-air airships that transported...
23 Sep 202215min
Shakespeare's English
English is a very strange language. It is a Germanic language where half of the words come from a Romance language. We have a host of words that make absolutely no sense in terms of spelling or pronun...
22 Sep 202211min
The Doolittle Raid
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American military was on the defensive. They had been hit hard, and it would be months before they could regroup and strike back. However, one American g...
21 Sep 202215min
The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey
Located between England and France are several islands which have a unique status in the international community. They aren’t part of any country, nor are they a territory of a country. They share t...
20 Sep 202213min
The History of Chocolate
Around 3,500 years ago, the people of Central America discovered something marvelous: the cacao bean could be used to create a fermented beverage that was unlike anything they had experienced. For ce...
19 Sep 202212min
How The United States Congress Came to Be
When the 13 American colonies decided to form a proper constitution, the single largest question which confronted them was how their legislature would be organized. This question was really the crux ...
18 Sep 202215min
