Author: Gary Arndt

According to legend, in 1945 an engineer by the name of Perry Spencer was working in front of an active radar installation. As he was working, he noted that a candy bar that he had in his shirt pocket started to melt. His investigation into the phenomenon resulted in a new technology that has radically change how we cook and live. Learn more about microwaves, how they were invented, and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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World War II was unquestionably the greatest bloodletting in world history. Never before had so many people lost their lives in such a short period of time. Of all of the many tragedies during the war, one of the largest actually took place after the war. It was the largest single migrations of people in human history, it resulted in millions of deaths, and almost no one knows about it. Learn more about the Post-WWII German Expulsions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Sixty years ago at the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia, a small conference was held for astrophysicists. The meeting was organized by Cornell University professor and astronomer Frank Drake. The subject of the conference was the search for extraterrestrial life. In preparation for the conference, he jotted down his thoughts in the form of an equation. Learn more about the Drake Equation on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On April 15, 1920, two men who were delivering the payroll to the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts were killed in broad daylight. The payroll was taken by the killers, and they jumped into a getaway car. A few weeks later, two Italian immigrants with known ties to radical anarchist groups were arrested for the murder. It became one of the most controversial criminal cases in US history. Learn more about Sacco and Vanzetti, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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American history isn’t a single linear story. There are periodic changes to the political order where political parties and affiliations are reordered. According to political scientists, there have been six different political eras in American history. Each era was a reflection of issues that confronted the country at the time. Learn more about America’s six political eras and what caused them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The space race officially began on October 4, 1957, at 7:28 PM Moscow Time. That was when Sputnik was launched into orbit as the first artificial satellite, and from that moment, it was on. But when did the space race end? That is a much trickier question and there is no formal answer. However, I think an excellent case can be made for July 17, 1975. Learn more about the Apollo/Soyuz Test Program and the handshake that ended the space race on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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For thousands of years, food storage was one of humanity’s biggest problems. Even if you could grow or hunt sufficient calories when food was abundant, it was very difficult to store those calories for when food was scarce. One man made a huge advancement in our ability to store foods, which now allows us to enjoy fresh produce all year round. Learn more about Clarence Birdseye, and the invention of frozen foods, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Standards make everything easier. When everyone can agree on a standard way to do things, regardless of how it is done, it can reduce confusion and facilitate progress. You’d think if there was one thing that would be standardized everywhere, it would be the side of the road everyone drives on. I mean, there are only two options. Yet, there is no global standard for what side to drive on.

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In 2002 the BBC did a poll where they named the top 100 Britons in history. It had many people you have probably heard of, including Isaac Newton, Princess Diana, John Lenon, and Queen Victoria. The person who was ranked #2, however, is someone that many people outside of the UK might not have heard of. Yet, he really is one of the most important people when it came to the development of the modern world. Learn more about Isambard Kingdom Brunel on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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László Polgár was born just after World War II in Hungary. His field of study was the nature of human intelligence. After studying the lives of over 400 great intellectuals from throughout human history, he came to a startling conclusion: geniuses weren’t born, they were made. So he set about conducting an experiment on his own children. The results were astonishing. Learn more about Judit, Susan, and Sophia, the incredible Polgar sisters, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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