Category: DailyShorts

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States. He is famous for being the second person to win the presidency without winning the popular vote, and he won in the electoral college by a single vote. The whole election was so shady, he earned the nickname Rutherfraud. Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot that people remember about the Hayes administration. However, in Paraguay, Rutherford B. Hayes is a really big deal.

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This episode is the story of a man, who if you don’t know his name, you probably should: Joe Medicine Crow. Joe Medicine Crow was a scholar, an author, a historian, a spokesperson, and a warrior. In fact, he was the last person to have earned the title of War Chief in the Crow Nation, and he earned that title in a way you probably wouldn’t imagine.

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Major League Baseball has a long history of bad marketing ideas. From 10 cent beer night to baseball bat night, to giving fans balls they can throw on to the field as they entered the stadium, baseball has a long list of horrible ideas to bring people into the stadium. However, the absolute worst idea, by far, occurred on July 12, 1979, when the Chicago White Sox decided to blow up a crate of disco records on an evening which would forever be known as Disco Demolition Night.

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Every so often, an idea comes along that is so simple, yet so profound that you smack yourself in the head for not having thought of it yourself. Even more rare is such an idea that can have global implications. An idea that can create empires, topple kingdoms, and establish economic orders which can last for centuries.

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The Mona Lisa is unquestionably the most famous painting in the world. Heck, it is probably the most famous work of art in the world. Yet the reason why it is so famous is due to an event which happened on the 21st of August 1911. It was wasn’t for the events of that day, the Mona Lisa would probably just be another painting hanging on the walls of the Louver.

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2,000 years ago the Han Empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe were the two greatest empires in the world. Between them, they covered an enormous amount of the Earth’s land and a large percentage of the world’s population. But were these two great empires even aware of each other? If so, was there any contact between them?

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You probably heard the expression that something is “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Well did you ever wonder what the greatest thing was before sliced bread? Or why we measure greatness in terms of sliced bread? Well, there's an answer to these questions.

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If you wanted to know how many countries there were in the world it should be a pretty easy thing to find out. Go to a map, count all the countries, and voila!  However, it isn't even remotely close to being that simple. Defining what is a country is extremely difficult and has been a point of contention in many wars and conflicts. 

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You probably couldn’t think of two things which are further apart than the character James Bond and the vegetable broccoli. Yet, in a not so roundabout way, there is a very direct connection between the two. In fact, if it wasn’t for broccoli, we might never have had any James Bond movies.

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The 3rd Olympic Games held in 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri was unquestionably the greatest train wreck of an Olympics ever held. In fact, the Olympics in ancient Greece were probably better organized and better attended than the 1904 Olympics. Nothing quite exemplifies the hot mess which was the St. Louis Olympics quite like the 1904 Olympics Marathon, which was such a disaster, it almost killed several competitors, and almost permanently removed the marathon as a competitive event.

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