The snow is falling fast in New England and could reach two feet in depth by tomorrow. Power outages are a near certainty. For those of you looking for a way to pass the time, why not try your hand at an old board game, namely Nine Men’s Morris? Nine Men’s Morris is a strategy…
Snow is starting to fall in northern New England as the region braces for an epic blizzard. Snowfall is expected to reach 2 to 3 feet when all is said and done. *Yawn* Unless things change dramatically, the Blizzard of 2013 will be nothing compared to the Great Blizzard of 1888. 125 years ago, 40…
Two centuries before Big Blue, there was the Turk, history’s first chess computer. From 1770 to 1854, this mechanical marvel played and defeated all sorts of challengers, including many top-ranked chess players as well as Benjamin Franklin. It wasn’t until 1857 that the Turk’s secret was revealed…it was a giant fake. Here’s more from Krešimir…
How well does Congress reflect the people it “serves” (“rules” might be a better word)? Not very well, it turns out. How else could lawyers make up 37% of the U.S. Congress, both now and in 1789? Not to pick on lawyers either…out of the 209 “businesspeople” in Congress, how many do you think are clerks, bakers,…
Nazi monks operating in the Amazon? Secret plans for an air attack on the Panama Canal? Sounds like great Nazi fiction…but it’s a true story (well, at least in part). In a declassified note to the Assistant Secretary of State, J. Edgar Hoover said, “As of possible interest to you, information has been received from…
Did people come to Ancient America thousands of years earlier than previously thought? The evidence is intriguing. It’s still too skimpy to convince the mainstream but at least it’s starting to get a fair hearing. Here’s more on the origin of Ancient America from Guy Gugliotta at Smithsonian Magazine: For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and…
New research suggests the Mississippian culture, aka the Mound Builders, built at least one of their giant earthen mounds in just 90 days and maybe even as quickly as 30 days. An astonishing feat from a collective point of view. But can you imagine being one of the poor workers who had to carry the dirt?…
It’s been one hundred years since the modern income tax was created, via the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Back then income tax rates ran from 1% for annual incomes over $3, 000 to 7% for annual incomes over $500,000 (that’s $11.6 million in today’s dollars!). Current tax rates run from 10% to 39.6%….