Showing results by author "Dan Lewis" in All Categories

If you've been to a major theme park, such as Disneyland, then you are likely aware of what the industry calls "costume characters." Those life-size, huggable, familiar faces, such as Mickey, Minnie and Winnie the Pooh, are some of the park's main attractions.

The 2009 Disney/Pixar movie Up is an animated film and, therefore, was able to take liberties with the truth pretty easily. That's good, because the film's premise centers on the travels of Carl Fredricksen, a 78-year-old widower who ties tens of thousands of helium balloons to his house and, as the title suggests, goes up into the sky. The flight of Mr. Fredricksen is as fictional as it gets.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are, respectively, the largest city and the capital of the state of Minnesota. Together, they're often referred to as the "Twin Cities" because they border one another—the local baseball team (the Minnesota Twins) even adopted the moniker.

Werewolves aren't real. But if they were real, they'd be scary, considering they are man-beast hybrids with enormous strength, no judgment or compassion, and a vicious case of blood lust.

When tragedy strikes, and after the grieving process has begun and some time has passed, the survivors of victims often search for answers – an explanation as to what happened, why it happened and who, if anyone, is at fault.

For the latter part of the 20th century, Vincent Gigante was a household name in his Greenwich Village neighborhood. On any given day, beginning when he was in his mid-to-late-30s, Gigante would walk around the community talking to himself under his breath, incoherently, to either no one whomsoever or figments only he could see.

If you ask a musician about flying with their instruments, what you'll invariably hear is how bad of an idea it is to check one's instrument-carrying luggage. Lost baggage, a relative lack of climate control, a less-than-gentle inspection process, and the often haphazard way bags are handled when loaded and unloaded from the airplane are among the common concerns.

Richard Feynman was one of modern history's greatest scientists. A well-respected academic, Feynman won the Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1965 and later served as a member of the commission that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

The white rhinoceros is classified as "near threatened." As of 2016, there are about 20,000 such rhinos in the world.

Situated on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, better known as MIT, is the Green Building. Built in the early 1960s, the building is named after Cecil Howard Green, co-founder of Texas Instruments and a graduate of MIT – Green donated much of the money for the building's construction.

The Mexican state of Chiapas (officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas) is located in the nation's south, bordering Guatemala and the Pacific Ocean. Among the many indigenous people of the area are the Tzotzil, who are about 300,000 strong and live primarily in a municipality known as San Juan de Chamula (known simply as Chamula).

In the United States, public places often have two restrooms – one for men, one for women – and each restroom typically has a stall set aside for people with disabilities. That's not the case everywhere, though.

In 1918, the United Kingdom passed the Representation of the People Act, resulting in a major overhaul of the U.K.'s voting system.

In April 1939, DuPont Chemical introduced nylon stockings to the world at the World's Fair in New York City.

In 1973, author Sidney Sheldon published the book The Other Side of Midnight, centering on a love triangle between an American World War II pilot, the lover he takes while stationed in France, and the woman back home whom he abandons her for after the war is over.

In June 2015, Ananov left Moscow in a small helicopter. He was trying to become the first person to fly solo around the world in a helicopter weighing less than one ton.

There's been a hostage situation in the UK every year since the 1500s. Oh, and it involves the queen. Explore the Queen of England's 'flesh and blood' insurance policy, on this episode of Now I Know. Every May or June – depending on whether the United Kingdom is holding Parliamentary elections that year – both houses of Parliament assemble to be addressed by the reigning monarch. The event is rife with pomp and circumstance, as one would expect from a regal tradition dating back to the 1500s.

François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, was a French writer during the Enlightenment. Known for what would today be considered snark, he often made comments to which many would take offense. For example, in his 1764 treatise Dictionnaire Philosophique (which translates as Philosophical Dictionary), Voltaire quipped that "common sense is not so common." This smarter-than-thou attitude was a theme throughout his works, and, one would expect, his life as well.

It was June 23, 2011. A 59-year-old man named Richard James Verone was being held in North Carolina, unable to pay his $2,000 bond. He was awaiting his day in court – June 28th – for a crime he'd committed two weeks earlier. It was a smooth, calculated crime. On the morning of June 9th, Verone showered, ironed his shirt, and hopped into a cab to go to a nearby bank. He handed the teller a note with a simple demand: take some money out of the drawer and hand it over.

When George M. Stratton made himself a pair of “inverting glasses," his world turned upside down – and the scientific community gained some interesting new perspective. Learn more on this episode of Now I Know. George M. Stratton was born in 1865 in Oakland, California. By his early thirties, he was a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, but he took interest in psychology.