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The History of Hysteria

31 Jul 2017

Today, when we say someone is hysterical, we mean that they are frenzied, frantic, or out of control. Until 1980, however, hysteria was a formally studied psychological disorder that could be found...

Why Don't Humans Have Whiskers?

11 Jul 2017

Humans might not have hair as thick as chimpanzees covering their body, but our arm, leg and eyebrow hair all serves as reminders of our primate ancestry. So why don鈥檛 Homo sapiens have whiskers...

Ideas to Reanimate the Dead Are Dead Wrong

20 Jun 2017

Reviving聽the dead using stem cells and electrical impulses sounds more like a plot for a Hollywood sci-fi movie than a process grounded in reality.聽And yet, that is exactly what a Philadelphia bio...

7 Up: Originally an Antidepressant

17 Jun 2017

When 7 Up was originally placed on the market (In 1929), it was named Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda-聽a much less catchy, though more descriptive name. The 鈥榣ithiated鈥 in the name came聽from...

Why is it called upper and lower case?

7 Jun 2017

When you spend hours proofreading and retyping essays, you get to wondering- why do聽we refer to large letters as upper case, and small as lower case? It鈥檚 actually a remnant聽of a past where...

Aromatherapy

31 May 2017

The term 鈥渁romatherapy鈥 was first coined in 1937 by Rene-Maurice Gattefosse, a French chemist, whose badly burned arm was supposedly miraculously cured by the use of lavender oil. Jean Valnet...

King Tut鈥檚 Sweet Tooth

31 May 2017

Among the treasures discovered during the famous 1922 archaeological excavation of King Tutankhamun鈥檚 tomb was a jar of honey. 聽Archaeologists tasted it (brave souls those archeologists), and to...

Copernicium

31 May 2017

We can now add the newest element to the periodic table. 聽It has been named Copernicium in honour of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Polish astronomer who first hypothesized that the Earth...

Aloe

31 May 2017

Alexander the Great was known to use aloe as a purgative after being taught about the plant鈥檚 effects by his tutor Aristotle. 聽Purgatives were highly valued at the time because it was believed that...

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