March 7, 2013 Alexander Graham Bell – a name that’s synonymous with the telephone. What you may not know is that Bell's mother was deaf and he as an adult he worked with his father in London on a system for teaching the deaf to speak. When the Bell family moved to Boston, Alexander went to work as a teacher at a school for the deaf and ended up marrying one of his students.
March 6, 2013 Your final will and testament sometimes says a lot about you and how you felt about some people in your life – especially family members. When businesswoman and hotel owner Leona Helmsley – known as the Queen of Mean died in 2007 she left $12-million to her dog. She completely cut off two of her grandchildren and they have no idea why.
March 5, 2013 Today is the day that the Boston Massacre took place in 1770. Some people think the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre are the same thing. They both were the result of the British taxing the colonies, but they’re completely separate events.
March 4, 2013 Now that Pope Benedict has resigned, the 115 cardinals under the age of 80 will meet to vote on a new Pope. Once they’re all in Rome, they can’t leave until the final decision is made and they can’t talk to anyone outside of the conclave. And that includes social media. A ruling by Pope John Paul II in 1996 called for the Sistine Chapel to be checked for any hidden cameras or microphones before balloting begins.
March 1, 2013 Would you carry around a second phone? Nokia is hoping just that. Why would you want to do that? The phone you have does everything you want it to do. Conversation, text, internet – it’s got everything except a lot of power. How often does your phone die on you?
February 28, 2013 Would you want to go to Mars? Financial tycoon Dennis Tito, who himself took a ride in space on the International Space Station, has unveiled a trip to Mars for husband and wife astronauts to launch within five years. They wouldn’t land on the planet, but come to within 100 miles of the surface of Mars then return. The whole trip would take 16 months in a space capsule half the size of an RV.
February 27, 2013 A hot air balloon tragedy in Egypt claimed the lives of 19 tourists when the sightseeing balloon they were aboard exploded and crashed to the ground. But there have been many fatalities over the years since the very first balloon flight in 1783.
February 26, 2013 Something I’ll never get arrested for – whistling too loud. I can’t whistle in the first place. I can make a couple of whistling sounds but they’re never very loud.
February 25, 2013 The 85th Annual Academy Awards were presented last night (February 24) in Hollywood, recognizing the best in filmmaking over the past year.
February 22, 2013 Today (February 22), we celebrate the birthday of George Washington, born in 1732. He was pretty sickly during his life – suffering from malaria, smallpox, pleurisy and dysentery, all before he was 30. He almost drowned twice when he fell into an icy river on his way back from an expedition to a French fort in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The story of how he cut down a cherry tree with his new axe never happened. It was made up by a biographer years after he died.
February 21, 2013 What do the words we use on Twitter say about us and where we live?
Researchers at the University of Vermont did a study of 10 million tweets and the words that were used, then mapped out where they originated to determine the happiest and saddest states.
February 20, 2013 For a lot of people it’s ancient history because they weren’t even born yet. But many still remember John Glenn’s historic ride in a space capsule called “Friendship 7” that was only 6-feet wide and 9 ½ feet tall. It sent the future Ohio Senator 100 miles into space making him the first American to orbit the earth.
