Author: Gary Arndt

I’ve done several episodes on close and interesting US presidential elections throughout history. Mainly they were to put current events into perspective, so you can realize that the controversies of today are really not all that new. However, there was one election that might be considered the closest and most interesting in history, but the lessons for today are much less, simply because they changed the rules after the election, and there was never another one like it again.

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Many communities around the world hold local festivals. They might have some food stalls, a stage for musical acts, and some rides for the kids. Pretty standard stuff. But in Spain, they do things differently. Really different. Learn more about the unique Spanish festivals which aren’t like those anywhere else in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Every so often, adults may be asked to perform a civic duty by sitting on a jury. Usually, the commitment might be nothing more than a few hours or a few days. Occasionally, some juries might get a case that lasts years. Why do we have juries, and where did this notion come from? Do most countries have juries? What does “a jury of your peers” really mean? Learn more about the history of the jury system on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Sometimes you might sit down to watch a sporting match and it is over before you know it. However, there are some games that seem to take forever. A rare few games last an extraordinarily long time, as no one can seem to win. Learn more about the longest games in history, in almost every sport, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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On April 27th, 1865, just weeks after the end of the American Civil War, a steamboat carrying former Union prisoners of war sailed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg. At 2 am, the boilers on the steamship exploded, killing 1800 people in what is still the largest maritime disaster in US history. Learn more about the largest forgotten Sultana Steamboat Disaster on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Professional sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry with millions of fans who will live and die based on their favorite team’s performance. Occasionally, soccer hooligans and Raiders fans will take their exuberance a bit too far. Rioting after a team wins a championship happens more often than not. However, nothing in the world of modern sports can compare to the levels of devotion and street violence which chariot racing commanded in ancient Rome.

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Scientists have coined a term called the Butterfly Effect, where small changes in one thing can lead to enormous changes in systems later on. Nothing in history exemplifies this more than the series of unfortunate coincidences that occurred on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. The repercussions of those events can still be felt around the world today. Learn more about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Since the dawn of time, humans have looked up at the night sky to watch the stars. ...and then nothing happened for hundreds of thousands of years until a guy by the name of Galileo Galilei point a telescope at the stars and saw a bunch of stuff that everyone had missed. Since then, we’ve increased the size of our telescopes so we can see more and more, further and further away. Learn more about the ever-increasing size of astronomical telescopes on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Every year, more than three million visitors will line up and buy a ticket to visit the most popular attraction in all of Spain: The Sagrada Familia. It is a stunning modernist architectural achievement and the crowning design of local architect Antoni Gaudí. Even though it gets millions of visitors, the church has been under construction for almost 150 years and still isn’t finished. Learn more about the Sagrada Familia, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In 1913, a young man from the city of Madras in British India sent a letter to one of the world’s preeminent mathematicians, G.H. Hardy, in Cambridge Univerisity in England. The young man had no formal education in advanced mathematics, yet that letter would end up changing the landscape of mathematics for the rest of the 20th century. Learn more about the legendary Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the world’s most gifted natural mathematicians, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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