Voice Over The Moon pt2
Back when the BBC was first launched in 1922, the first General Manager of the corporation, Sir John Reith, insisted the BBC be as formal and quintessentially British as possible, and he created a number of rules towards this end. One thing he stressed in particular...
Voice Over the Moon, vol 1
If you logged onto the internet between say ‘95-2005, you’d inevitably hear two things, the shriek of a modem, like a robot orgy in a combine harvester, and a cheery man’s voice saying, “Welcome” and “You’ve got mail.” Elward Edwards recorded those phrases for $200...
Worst. Christmas Song. Ever.
In the early 80’s, drought caused a famine that crippled the nation of Ethiopia. It was a bad scene. Half of the mortality rate is said to be attributable to “human rights violations.” People around the world were moved, like Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof, who...
From Panto to Python
“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” Thus begins Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe, sequel to his culture touchstone The Hitchhiker’s Guide...
Summer Not-busters
Making a movie is a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive propositions. While some projects come together naturally, others seem to have tragedy, misfortune, and just plain bad luck heaped upon them. Horror films are fertile ground for apparent curses and it a...
Typo Negative
On July 22, 1962, at 9:21 AM, NASA launched the Mariner I space probe to great fanfare. Less than five minutes later, the mission was “forcefully aborted.” According to NASA, ““The booster had performed satisfactorily until an unscheduled yaw-lift maneuver was...
Be a Sport
Mutaz Barshim of Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy had been friends for a decade since meeting at the world junior championships in Canada. Their track & field careers had paralleled each other, including potentially devastating ankle injuries. At the 2021...
Pow Wow and Chow Chow
Journey with me now to southeastern Pennsylvania, the area around present-day York and Lancaster, for this topic voted on by supporters at patreon.com/yourbrainonfacts, where you can get swag and bonus content and you totally should. My name’s... BEAUTIFUL...
Everybody Complains about the Weather
In 2008, China began to assemble banks of artillery around Beijing, 6,781 artillery guns and 4,110 rocket launchers. Thousands of civilians, many of them peasant farmers without military experience, were enlisted to man the gun. The government was concerned about...
Project Pigeon and Acoustic Kitty
Of all the lives risked in WWII, were those of thousands of dogs, used for everything from guard duty to pulling sleds. And they almost had a particularly awful purpose on the ironically named Cat Island, if one Swiss expat had gotten his way. William A Prestre...
I Think That I Shall Never See
In 1999, Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, and strolled the beaches looking for shells and corals in the white sand, when she came upon a tree dropping green fruit that looked much like small crabapples. Strickland had a munch of...
Unsolved Poisonings
Between April 1928 and March 1929 three people from the same wealthy London family died in mysterious circumstances. The first to die was Edmund Duff, who complained of nausea and leg cramps after eating his dinner. Ten months later, his sister-in-law, Vera Sidney,...