When making a sandwich, most folks will usually end up opting to use white bread. Sourdough, brioche, sliced Hawaiian bread (which is my personal favorite)…styles like those are the most popular by a large margin. And that’s mainly because those kinds of breads are genuinely the most delicious in taste, texture, and flavor. They’re fluffy,…
Your heart is your blood pumping epicenter, with every beat sending blood to all the vital parts of your body along a network of arteries, capillaries, and veins. And as your blood flows through those arterial passageways, it presses against the arterial walls with different degrees of strength. And the strength of that pressure at…
If you have a cell or landline phone, then you should have the ability to call for urgent help when there’s been an accident, crime, or injury by dialing 9-1-1. But sometimes, 911 calls happen by mistake. But what happens if/when you dial 911 in error? Are there consequences? A lot of 911 misdials are…
Getting stung by a jellyfish can ruin a nice day at the beach. But does the old wives’ tale about peeing on a jellyfish sting actually help? Or work at all? The sting of a jellyfish comes from specialized cells in the surface of its tentacles, known as cnidocytes. Each small, bulb-shaped cell holds a…
When doing something “willy-nilly”, you’re doing it haphazardly, with no planning or forethought, especially about the consequences of your actions. It’s a peculiar turn of phrase that’s been in our language since the early 1600s (1608, to be specific, according to the earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary). But how willy-nilly originated, though, goes…
It appears the golden age of the convertible is over…for now, at least, according to new car sales & registration data. But why are convertibles disappearing? Their decline’s actually been pretty constant since the 2000s convertible boom, when it seemed like everyone wanted to feel the fresh air in their crimped hair. But now, less…
With all due respect to Simon & Garfunkel, when you consider the sound of silence, you’ve probably thought “crickets”, the noisy insects that have somehow become synonymous with no sound at all. But how did crickets come to symbolize silence? Well, this sense of the word “crickets” is so recent that it has yet to…
With the heat wave currently hitting us, you’ve probably to someone (or several someones), “Fingers crossed it doesn’t get any hotter!” But why do we do that? Why do we cross our fingers for luck? Crossing fingers, whether to achieve your own good luck or in hopeful solidarity that things go well for someone else,…
When it comes to food safety, it pays to be careful. Properly handling & preparing meat, fish, and poultry to minimize the risk of foodborne illness is key. But one step some people might’ve picked up from relatives or some misguided online advice actually has the potential to increase your chances of getting sick: rinsing…
Like many old proverbs, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth” used to have a very literal meaning before the passage of time turned it into a figure of speech. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth means being thankful for a gift, even if you secretly wished for something else. The phrase…