Author: Gary Arndt

How small can a country be and still be a country? In theory, there is no lower limit on the number of people to be a sovereign state. However, in reality, there are costs associated with being an independent country. The fewer the number of people, the higher the cost for everyone in the country. There is one country that has managed to remain an independent republic for over 50 years with a population of only about 10,000 people.

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In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin determined it was time for the Soviet Union to have another census. They hadn’t conducted one since 1926 and he wanted some actual numbers to show the world the success of the Soviet system. Needless to say, the numbers were not what Stalin had expected….and promised. Learn more about the 1937 Soviet Census, the census that exposed Stalin, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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A common misconception that many people have is that embassies are part of the territory of the country that owns the embassy. For example, the American embassy in Canada is part of the United States. This is not quite true. The theory covering how an embassy or a diplomat works deals with the concept of extraterritoriality. Learn more about extraterritoriality, the thing which makes international relations function, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Multiple births happen very infrequently. The odds decrease dramatically the more children are born at once. The odds of twins is 1 in 250 pregnancies. The odds of triplets are about 1 in 62,000. The odds of quadruplets are one in 15 million. And the odds of quintuplets, five children, is an astonishing 1 in 55 million. In fact, the first case of natural quintuplets surviving infancy occurred 86 years ago during the Great Depression.

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In 1957 the United States embarked on its most controversial series of nuclear tests. These tests took place on US soil in the state of Nevada. They detonated 29 devices and tested a wide number of things, including how blasts would damage builds, pigs, and soldiers. They detonated bombs on towers, from balloons, and even underground. And, according to legend, they might have even accidentally launched the first man-made object into space.

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150 years ago, an American inventor by the name of Christopher Latham Sholes developed a machine to allow people to easily put text onto paper by pressing mechanical keys. He called his invention the “type writer”. After years of tinkering and adjusting, he finally came up with an arrangement of the keys that worked. The letters on the left side of the top row were Q-W-E-R-T-Y. We have basically been using the same keyboard ever since.

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The National Football League is big business. It earns more money than any other professional sports league in the world. All of the NFL teams are own by billionaires or consortiums of multi-millionaires….except for one. One team, has no billionaire owner, is located in the smallest town in America to have a professional sports team, and yet has won more championships than any other team in the NFL. Learn more about Green Bay Packers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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According to the old adage, what goes up must come down. Unless you are talking about a satellite, which can go up and never come down. However, sometimes satellites do come down. When they are not expected to. Where they are not wanted. Such was the case in 1978 with a Soviet spy satellite that spread its debris, its nuclear debris, all over northern Canada. Learn more about Cosmos 954, the Soviet Satellite that came crashing to Earth, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The Earth takes a year to go around the sun, and a day to turn on its axis. It is tilted 23.5 degrees which is what causes the seasons. All of these facts which you learned in school are true, but they are not permanent. They change, very slowly, over time. One astrophysicist in the 1920s figured out that all of these cycles could interact with each other, affecting the long term climate of the Earth. Learn more about Milankovitch Cycles on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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After the end of World War II, the newly created Central Intelligence Agency investigated anything and everything which could give the US an advantage in the Cold War. They looked into anything and everything which might possibly give their side an edge, even if it might have seemed ridiculous on face. One such idea was mind control. Learn more about Project MK Ulta on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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