It’s a simple question: when is it okay to use a public charging port to power your cellphone or laptop? The answer is also simple, but more scarily frustrating: never! Imagine: you’re sitting at the airport, waiting for your departure…and your phone’s about to die. But wait…there’s an empty USB port at a charging station…
If anyone’s ever tried to give you a false answer to an earnest question, they may have followed up their response with “I’m just joshing ya!” But who is this Josh fellow, and why do folks invoke his name when trying to pull the wool over our eyes? The phrase “just joshing you” arose out…
Whenever someone’s sharing some juicy details with you about something of questionable veracity, but they want to try & be cagey about where they got their information, sometimes they’ll say they “heard it through the grapevine.” They might say, “I heard through the grapevine John & Sarah are getting divorced,” or, “I heard through the…
Pretty much everyone has heard of the expression “86”, which means to do away with something (like, “Yeah, 86 that order!”). But where did it come from & why? Well, there are a few schools of thought as to its origin, though none of them are actually official. Some possibilities… The restaurant business in the…
Whether you’re Irish or not, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Today’s the day when people around the world get decked out in green to flaunt their Irish pride & celebrate the legacy of St. Patrick. But take a look at the earliest depictions of the famous Christian missionary and you’ll notice something strange: He’s typically shown…
With the arrival of another St. Patrick’s Day, let’s investigate one of the all-time biggest bits of lore surrounding the Emerald Isle: why are there no snakes in Ireland? Legend says St. Patrick used the power of his faith to drive all of Ireland’s snakes into the sea…which would’ve been impressive image, if it had…
I’ve always been fascinated by the audio that comes from a plane’s cockpit. But have you ever wondered…“Why is it called a ‘cockpit’ in the first place?” In aviation terms, the cockpit is the control center from which the pilot directs the functions & flight path of an aircraft. Commercial planes have them, as do…
Anyone who’s ever been behind the wheel of a vehicle driving down a given thoroughfare has most likely noticed the skinny black tubes that seem to appear across the asphalt seemingly at random. What are those little black tubes? And why are they there? Those little black baby speed-bumps (actually rubber cords) are officially known…
Happy Groundhog Day! Punxsutawny, PA, saw another record-breaking crowd at their annual festivities this year, with more & more people attending each & every year since the release of the 1993 Bill Murray comedy, “Groundhog Day”. Some 30,000 people braved sub-freezing temperatures in Gobbler’s Knob to witness Phil come out of his burrow to ultimately…
Cheap costume jewelry can really make an ensemble pop…but it can also leave you red-faced by staining your skin green. And unless you were going for the Statue of Liberty look, then that’s not a good thing. Lady Liberty’s dye job occurred naturally, though, as she’s made of copper, and copper turns greenish when it…