Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

In the year 52 BC, the Roman General Julius Caesar fought the last major battle in the conquest of Gaul. The implications of the battle have reverberated throughout history and can still be felt in the world today. But the real story isn’t the implications of the battle, but how it was won. It was one of the most audacious gambles in military history, and it worked. Learn more about the Battle of...

In 1911, a Dutch physicist named Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was experimenting with ultra low-temperature metals. He was measuring the electrical resistance of mercury to find out what would happen What he found was shocking and totally upended everything we know about physics and electricity. Learn more about superconductivity, how it works, and its applications, on this episode of Everything Everywhe...

History is full of battles and conflicts. Most of them are forgotten over time as they don’t really impact history. Whether one king or another wins a battle usually doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. However, there are moments that truly change world history. When civilizations clash and the outcome can affect the world for centuries. Such a moment occurred on May 29, 1453. Learn more ab...

On November 11th, 1918, the first world war came to an end. Or to be more precise, the fighting stopped. For the next eight months, a final peace treaty was hammered out, and hanging over the negotiations was the very real threat that fighting could break out again. In the end, the treaty ended the world’s greatest war and might have been the starting point for an even worse one. Learn more about...

Have you ever met someone who couldn’t pronounce the name nearby town, or they just spoke different enough that you could tell that they were from somewhere else? If so, you have probably learned about shibboleths without even knowing it. These differences in speech have been used to identify people for centuries. Learn more about shibboleths, what they are and how they have been used throughout h...

Africa is big. Really big. And for thousands of years, people have dreamed of a way to cut through the narrowest part of the Siani Peninsula to connect the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. In the 19th century, that dream was actualized. Since then, the canal has had its own history and has played a major role in the global economy. Learn more about the Suez Canal, its shockingly ancient history,...

During World War II, allied soldiers would often spend their time listening to the radio. They could, at least for a little while, be transported back home by listening to popular music with the soothing sounds of a female radio host with a flawless American accent. Along with the music, the troops would also get a healthy dose of enemy propaganda. Learn more about Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally on thi...

2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno posed a question. If you want wanted to travel from one place to another, you first have to go half the distance, then you have to go half the distance again, and then again. You can do this infinitely and never reach your goal. This was one of the first paradoxes known to history. Since then, there have been many many others, which often leave people sc...

62 miles north of Los Angeles in the city of Palmdale, California, lies one of the most secretive aircraft design and production centers in the world: Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Program. From this location, some of the most famous and important military aircraft in the 20th and 21st centuries were created….and they are still working on new aircraft today. Learn more about your ad choic...

In 1605, members of the Catholic resistance in England hatched a plot that would have completely changed the political landscape of the country. They wanted to blow up the entire parliament and the king on November 5, which they thought would return a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters got caught, and their demise has been celebrated for the last 400 years. Learn more about Guy Fawkes, t...

In 1860, the United States was as divided as it ever had been. The issue of slavery had been growing more and more contentious over the decades and by 1860, things were nearing a breaking point. The presidential election of 1860 literally would determine the future of the country, or if there would continue to even be a country. Learn more about the presidential election of 1860, the most importan...

In 2008, researchers searching for fossils in the Denisova cave in Siberia came across something interesting. It appeared to be the bone from an ancient hominid species. Subsequent DNA analysis on this bone has revolutionized everything we know about the origin of humanity. Had this bone been discovered a few decades beforehand, we might never have known about it. Learn more about the Denisovans a...

In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a 24-year-old woman in Ukraine volunteered to join the Red Army. She was initially pressured to become a nurse like most women who volunteered, however, that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to be on the front lines. Within a year, she was to become one of the most lethal soldiers in all of the second world war. Learn more about Lyudm...

At the start of the American Revolution, a young American major general was one of the brightest stars of the war. He was responsible for several major campaigns and he had a great future ahead of him in his new country. By the end of the war, he was a British General fighting against the United States and his name would forever be spoken by Americans as a synonym for traitor. Learn more about Ben...

Vampires have been been a part of folklore for centuries. Perhaps no mythical vampire is more famous than Count Dracula. While Count Dracula might be fictional, believe it or not, he was based and named on a real person who lived in 15th century Romania. While he might not have been a vampire, he was still plenty deadly. Learn more about Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula, on this episod...

On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with pumpkins, how does this have anything to do with monsters and bats? Learn more about the history of Halloween and how so many unrelated thi...

Casinos are fascinating places. They can make tons of money, but they don’t really have a product. While it is often called entertainment, unlike other forms of entertainment, no one is entertaining you. In fact, the entire business is really nothing more than applied mathematics. With the proper application of mathematics and a liberal dose of high-tech security and proper management, a casino ca...

One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per gram basis as gold, yet when you get right down to it, no one really needs it. Learn more about ambergris, the treasure of the sea, on this...

I’ve had many episodes where I talked about a country being a “republic”. In fact, we often use the word but many people have a mistaken idea about what exactly a republic is. So what exactly is a republic, and how does it differ from a monarchy or other forms of government? What many people think a republic is isn’t necessarily wrong, but it also isn’t exactly right. Learn more about monarchies a...

Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre. It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space, it has over 615,000 items in its collection, and in a non-pandemic year, gets over 10 million annual visitors. Yet, it wasn’t always a museum, and the way it acquired its collection wasn’t always above board. Learn more about the Louvre, the world’s greatest museum,...

Weddings are full of traditions. Almost every aspect of a traditional western wedding involves customs that may date back hundreds or thousands of years. However, most people have no idea where these customs or traditions come from. They simply do them because that’s what you do when you have a wedding. Learn more about wedding traditions and learn where they came from, on this episode of Everythi...

Have you ever filled out a form online where you had to select a country and you noticed that one of the country options was the “United States Minor Outlying Islands”? If you have you might have wondered, what are these island? Who lives there? And why are these islands considered minor? Learn more about the United States Minor Outlying Islands and how they ended up on almost every drop down list...

The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fischer defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship. The other took place on a basketball court in Munich in the gold medal game of the Olympics. It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game are stil...

1902, the French governor of Indochina faced a huge problem in the city of Hanoi. They were suffering from a massive infestation of rats and the rats could carry diseases, including the plague. The governor implemented a plan to get rid of the rats. Thousands of people were recruited in the effort. However, the program had a serious flaw. Not only didn’t it solve the problem, but it made things wo...

Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco. Monaco has several distinctions among the countries in the world, not just for its size, but for its population and its history. Learn more about Monaco, the smallest and wealthiest principality in the world, on this episode of Everything Every...