UsefulBS - Straight Facts
Straight facts. Answers to questions you never knew you had.
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Why can eating a hot pepper actually make you feel cold?
TLDR: The capsaicin in hot peppers tricks your brain into thinking you're overheating. Your body then starts its cooling mechanisms, like sweating. As the sweat evaporates, it cools your skin and can actually make you feel cold.
Did the word sabotage actually come from workers throwing wooden shoes into factory machines?
TLDR: The story of workers throwing wooden shoes, called sabots, into machinery is a popular myth. The word sabotage actually comes from the French verb meaning to work clumsily or inefficiently, not from the act of destroying machines with shoes.
Why was a shocking shade of pink once considered the perfect camouflage for warships?
TLDR: During WWII, a pinkish-grey color called Mountbatten Pink was used on warships because it blended with the sky at dawn and dusk. This made the ship's silhouette harder for enemy submarines to spot against the horizon during those specific low-light conditions.
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Why did the CIA once try to turn household cats into living listening devices?
During the Cold War, the CIA spent millions on a project called Acoustic Kitty to turn cats into spy devices by surgically implanting microphones. The project was a massive failure because cats are untrainable, and the first one was immediately hit by a car.
Why did a US town once legally require all cats to wear three bells?
TLDR: A California town passed a short-lived law forcing cats to wear three bells to protect the local bird population by giving them an audible warning and preventing the cats from hunting stealthily.
Why do actors in old movies have that weird, fake-sounding accent?
TLDR: It was a deliberately taught, artificial accent called the Mid-Atlantic accent, a mix of American and upper-class British English. Actors used it to sound sophisticated and be clearly understood on primitive audio equipment before more realistic acting became popular.
How did a bounty on snakes cause a city's snake problem to get much worse?
TLDR: A city offered a bounty for dead snakes, so people started breeding snakes to collect the money. When the government ended the program, the breeders released their now-worthless snakes, making the snake population much larger than it was originally.