Spiritualism was at an all-time high in the 19th century. So much so that seances became a fad and a fixture of social life to boot. It's in this environment that the Ouija board, or planchette, came about.
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Jane's Addiction paved the way for the "alternative rock" genre we know today, beginning in 1985 with humble roots that the likes of The Pixies, Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins would later embrace. Despite a string of successful singles, the band had tensions running high between members.
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As The List noticed during the vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence October 7, the latter spent several minutes not noticing the housefly that set up shop atop his white hair, while the rest of the global audience looked on and wondered how in the world he didn't notice.
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Our modern impression of the 1980s wouldn't be very familiar to the people who actually lived through the decade. Here are some things people get wrong about the 1980s.
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Lyon Sr., like his presidential father, also had a second wife, and was in his 70s when Lyon Jr. (1925) and Harrison (1928) were born, said CBS. Lyon Jr. died on September 26, 2020 at 95.
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"I think the wheelchair and the computer voice would fit the part," Hawking said. The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time completely and unabashedly owned his technological "accessories" during his life, recognizing how critical they were in getting people to listen to his lectures.
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Excalibur, King Arthur's fabled sword, has two different origin stories: 1) It was given to him by the Lady of Lake, and chucked back into the lake by Arthur's knight Bedivere after Arthur was mortally wounded, or 2) It was pulled out of a stone by boy Arthur, signaling his divine right to be king.
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Vice President Mike Pence and Joe Biden's running mate Kamala Harris head to the debate stage tonight in a contest that The Guardian said has been made more important due to presidential candidates' ages -- President Trump is 74 and Joe Biden is 77 -- as well as Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis.
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The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, while not the "Big One," was a complete catastrophe, nonetheless. In a mere 15 seconds, per Britannica, the 6.9 magnitude quake caused $6 billion in property damage, injured 3,800 people, killed 67, and reshaped the face of San Francisco forever.
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When the Pilgrims first set sail on the Mayflower in August 1620 to the New World, they expected a month-long trip. However, what it was really like sailing on the Mayflower was far different. Pilgrims on the Mayflower ran out of fresh food, water, and had to occupy themselves with games.
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An LA Times article called out Disney for not paying its fair share to the city. Anaheim owns the parking garage that Disneyland uses for its visitors, and the city only charges the mega-corporation $1 per year to lease it. Meanwhile, Disneyland pulls in multi-million-dollar revenue every year.
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There's a lot to be said about the United States of America's third president, Thomas Jefferson. But presidents aren't superhuman. Jefferson had one fear, in particular, was quite strange given the man's very public career path. This was Thomas Jefferson's strange fear during his presidency.
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Politico describes an October surprise as either "happenstance or deliberately orchestrated ... bombshells that scramble political calculus just as the stakes are at their highest." And it appears as though October 2020, like the rest of this bewildering year, won't be lacking in such events.
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In a time when we are beginning to challenge the figures of the past whom we have chosen to lionize either by erecting statues or giving their names to streets, it seems that Walter Reed, whose name adorns the Presidential hospital at Bethesda, is an utterly apt and timely choice.
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Long a mystery, numbers stations are radio stations that play coded messages and anyone with a shortwave radio can listen in. The bizarre mystery behind the numbers stations is that nobody knows who transmits them. Numbers stations broadcast numbers or codes for intelligence officers and spies.
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The trend of "upscaling" historic film –- which includes the process of colorization, improving the resolution to 4k, and standardizing the frame rate at 60 frames-per-second -– has become a huge hit on YouTube. Why do historians dislike it?
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As head of the FIDE, the International Chess Foundation, Arkady Dvorkovich stated in a New York Times article, "No matter what the game is, when there are benefits from winning, you have cheating."
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There's a lot of material to work with to piece together what happened in the days leading up to gunmen opening fire on Marley's home, but even so, the story is complex, and the final truth unclear.
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Tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the deadliest infections a human can get. Here's the messed up history.
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career was waning as Jordan's was just beginning to take flight, and their teams played very rarely. The legendary Laker has his own unique reasons for not wanting to be like Mike, and they have nothing to do with b-ball.
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Kamala Harris already knew the Biden family well before the 2020 presidential race. During her time as California Attorney General from 2011-2017, she worked closely with the Bidens' son Beau, who served as the Attorney General of Delaware from 2007 until his tragic death from brain cancer in 2015.
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Kamala Harris's friendship with Biden's late son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and their mutual grief over the loss, helped mend the rocky relationship. The Guardian reports that to Harris, Beau was an "incredible friend and colleague." Both served as state attorneys general.
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Harrison made a key update to the historical White House: Namely, he ordered electric power to be installed. Harrison himself, however, wanted nothing to do with electricity or electric lights. Or at least, he wanted nothing to do with the lights' switches.
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Don King was a man of singular initiative. In 2012, then 81-year-old King spoke with CNN about his plans for uniting North and South Korea via "a boxing and music event in North Korea," saying, "This came about by me thinking about Korea and feeling that Korea, that it should be one Korea."
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When the remaining sections of the earth were uncovered, Riggs was right. The dig revealed a perfect circle, right in the middle of downtown Miami. The circle is made up of a ring of 24 smaller basins, cut into the limestone bedrock, that combine to form a full circle that is 38 feet in diameter.
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During the debacle that was the first 2020 U.S. presidential debate, President Trump refused to condemn white supremacy in America, instead appearing to endorse far-right group the Proud Boys. But, who are the Proud Boys? This is the truth about the Proud Boys.
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The circles were first spotted by aircraft in 1920 by a British commander named Lionel Rees, relates The Washington Post. Rees wrote about the three circles he saw for the journal Antiquity but, despite how mysterious the rings were, they inspired little research until a photography project.
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