Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Sweden 🔗 Food and drink/Beverages

Gustav III of Sweden's coffee experiment was a twin study ordered by the king to study the health effects of coffee. Although the authenticity of the event has been questioned, the experiment, which was conducted in the second half of the 18th century, failed to prove that coffee was a dangerous beverage.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Children's literature 🔗 Chicago 🔗 Biography/Actors and Filmmakers

Alan Wolf Arkin (March 26, 1934 – June 29, 2023) was an American actor, director, and screenwriter best known for his performances on stage and screen. Throughout his career spanning eight decades, he received various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award.

Arkin began his career on the Broadway stage, starring in Enter Laughing in 1963 for which he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play, and the comedic play Luv (1964). For his work directing The Sunshine Boys, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 1973. He gained stardom acting in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Wait Until Dark (1967), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Popi (1969), Catch-22 (1970), The In-Laws (1979), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Grosse Point Blank (1997), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), Sunshine Cleaning (2007), Get Smart (2008), and Argo (2012). For his performance in Little Miss Sunshine, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

He was also known for his roles on television including his performances as Leon Felhendler in Escape from Sobibor (1987), and as Harry Rowen in The Pentagon Papers (2003) which he earned Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Series or Movie nominations. From 2015 to 2016 he voiced J.D. Salinger in the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman. From 2018 to 2019 he starred in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method, earning two consecutive Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series nominations.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Volcanoes 🔗 Geology 🔗 Weather 🔗 Weather/Non-tropical storms

A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid and water obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, particularly explosive volcanic eruption. Long-term cooling effects are primarily dependent upon injection of sulfur gases into the stratosphere where they undergo a series of reactions to create sulfuric acid which can nucleate and form aerosols. Volcanic stratospheric aerosols cool the surface by reflecting solar radiation and warm the stratosphere by absorbing terrestrial radiation. The variations in atmospheric warming and cooling result in changes in tropospheric and stratospheric circulation.

🔗 California 🔗 California/San Francisco Bay Area 🔗 Computing 🔗 Stanford University/SRI International 🔗 Stanford University

"The Mother of All Demos" is a name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, given at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society's Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, which was presented by Douglas Engelbart on December 9, 1968.

The live demonstration featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware and software system called the oN-Line System or, more commonly, NLS. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor (collaborative work). Engelbart's presentation was the first to publicly demonstrate all of these elements in a single system. The demonstration was highly influential and spawned similar projects at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s. The underlying technologies influenced both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows graphical user interface operating systems in the 1980s and 1990s.

🔗 United States 🔗 Aviation 🔗 Aviation/aircraft

Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc. (commonly referred to as BRS Aerospace, or simply BRS) is a manufacturer of aircraft ballistic parachutes.

The company was formed in 1980 by Boris Popov of Saint Paul, Minnesota, after he survived a 400-foot (120 m) fall in a partially collapsed hang glider in 1975. As a result, Popov invented a parachute system that could lower an entire light aircraft to the ground in the event of loss of control, failure of the aircraft structure, or other in-flight emergencies.

Popov was granted a U.S. patent on 26 August 1986 for the so-called Ballistic Recovery System (BRS) - patent US 4607814 A.

The company has two divisions: BRS Aviation and BRS Defense.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Horticulture and Gardening

Axel Erlandson (December 15, 1884 – April 28, 1964) was a Swedish American farmer who shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 advertised as "See the World's Strangest Trees Here," and named "The Tree Circus."

The trees appeared in the column of Robert Ripley's Believe It or Not! twelve times. Erlandson sold his attraction shortly before his death. The trees were moved to Gilroy Gardens in 1985.

🔗 Physics

In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect and the Casimir–Polder force are physical forces arising from a quantized field. They are named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir who predicted them in 1948.

The Casimir effect can be understood by the idea that the presence of conducting metals and dielectrics alters the vacuum expectation value of the energy of the second quantized electromagnetic field. Since the value of this energy depends on the shapes and positions of the conductors and dielectrics, the Casimir effect manifests itself as a force between such objects.

Any medium supporting oscillations has an analogue of the Casimir effect. For example, beads on a string as well as plates submerged in turbulent water or gas illustrate the Casimir force.

In modern theoretical physics, the Casimir effect plays an important role in the chiral bag model of the nucleon; in applied physics it is significant in some aspects of emerging microtechnologies and nanotechnologies.

🔗 Physics

The Kelvin water dropper, invented by Scottish scientist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in 1867, is a type of electrostatic generator. Kelvin referred to the device as his water-dropping condenser. The apparatus is variously called the Kelvin hydroelectric generator, the Kelvin electrostatic generator, or Lord Kelvin's thunderstorm. The device uses falling water to generate voltage differences by electrostatic induction occurring between interconnected, oppositely charged systems. This eventually leads to an electric arc discharging in the form of a spark. It is used in physics education to demonstrate the principles of electrostatics.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Animals

The M44 cyanide device (also called a cyanide gun or cyanide trap) is used for the killing of coyotes, feral dogs, and foxes. It is made from four parts: a capsule holder wrapped with cloth or other soft material, a small plastic capsule containing 0.88 grams of sodium cyanide, a spring-powered ejector, and a 5-7 inch stake. To install the trap, the stake is first driven down into the ground, and then the capsule is put in the holder, screwed onto the cocked ejector, and secured to the stake. The wrapped capsule holder is smeared with scented bait to attract coyotes and make them bite and pull on it. (The use of a bite-and-pull action makes the trap less likely to be set off by non-canine wildlife.) When the trap is triggered, the spring propels a dose of sodium cyanide into the animals's mouth, and the sodium cyanide combines with water in the mouth to produce poisonous cyanide gas. In addition to the cyanide, the capsule contains Day-Glo fluorescent particle marker (orange in capsules used by the Wildlife Services, and yellow in capsules prepared for other users).

🔗 Internet

Cicada 3301 is a nickname given to an organization that on three occasions has posted a set of puzzles to recruit codebreakers from the public. The first internet puzzle started on January 4, 2012 on 4chan and ran for approximately one month. A second round began one year later on January 4, 2013, and then a third round following the confirmation of a fresh clue posted on Twitter on January 4, 2014. The stated intent was to recruit "intelligent individuals" by presenting a series of puzzles which were to be solved. No new puzzles were published on January 4, 2015. However, a new clue was posted on Twitter on January 5, 2016. In April 2017 a verified PGP-signed message was found: Beware false paths. Always verify PGP signature from 7A35090F. That message explicitly denies the validity of any unsigned puzzle, as recently as April 2017.

The puzzles focused heavily on data security, cryptography, steganography, internet anonymity, and surveillance.

It has been called "the most elaborate and mysterious puzzle of the internet age" and is listed as one of the "top 5 eeriest, unsolved mysteries of the internet", and much speculation exists as to its function. Many have speculated that the puzzles are a recruitment tool for the NSA, CIA, MI6, a "Masonic conspiracy" or a cyber mercenary group. Others have claimed Cicada 3301 is an alternate reality game. No company or individual has taken credit for it or attempted to monetize it, however.