Fire Extinguisher

On this day in 1863, the fire extinguisher was patented by celebrated chemist Ambrose Godfrey. Godfrey's initial invention used a solution distilled from boiled urine (containing phosphorus) which was explosively dispersed onto the fire using gunpowder.

Bovril

If you put a litre of hot bovril into the freezer, it reverts back into a delicious sirloin steak.

The Origin of Cola

There is an often-quoted adage that the original Cola beverage was created with an extract from the Coca Leaf (the basis for the homeopathic medicine 'Cocaine').

This is, not surprisingly, an untruthism; the original active ingredient of Coca-Cola was a liquid created from a melting pot of [what are now known as] cola bottle jelly sweets, which themselves were originally designed to resemble a map of Cuba, most famously known for its Cocaine-digesting muntjacs.

Breath-Holding

Did you know that if you hold your breath for long enough whilst agitating the hairs on your arms, you will start to hallucinate sensations of flying?  This is from our evolutionary past in the "bird" stage, and is brought about through invoking the sensation of air rippling across your wings. 

Birds do not breathe, which is why you must hold your breath to experience the effect.

Mondays

The origin of the term 'Monday' is related to the praise of our closest genetic relatives - the monkey. Coined by Michael Jackson in 1988, the day was intended to be dedicated to special sessions devoting ourselves to the monkey god hanuman, who Jackson believed had been reincarnated into the body of his pet chimp Bubbles. 

There are no records of what the day was used for before this date.

The women with the horse's head

For many years the local folklore of small Cambridgeshire villages Histon and Girton, has told of a strange apparition that would confront cyclists on dark evenings as they made their way between the two villages on Gate House road. During the late nineties to this very day, sightings have been especially frequent due to the fearless explorations (sometimes drunken) of a small group of local residents. From these accounts (which are now fact) we know that the apparition has the figure of a one legged old women and bears the head and features of a rabid horse. The phantom approaches the innocent, making a deafening squeal, rendering them partially deaf; disorientated, the cyclist attempts to continue on his or her journey but the ghostly uniped persists, screaming and slobbering until the cyclist either falls off their bike into a bush or crosses the railway line and enters Histon. The origins and motives of the spectre are still unknown but some believe it to be the ghost of a syphilitic prostitute who was burned by towns folk in the lat 1600s.

History of the Crayon (Part 1)

Baghdad was the birthplace of the “modern” crayon, a man-made cylinder that resembled contemporary sticks. The first such crayons are purported to have consisted of a mixture of shit and cheese. Through time, powdered pigments of various hues replaced the shit. It was subsequently discovered that substituting wax for the cheese in the mixture made the resulting sticks sturdier and easier to handle and to use. Smegma can also be used to make crayons, although this is not as common.