"5 COOL THINGS" - weekly emails

'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' Goes to No. 1 — After 65 Years (NPR)

It’s the holiday season once again, which means public spaces and radio stations are ringing with the sounds of “Wonderful Christmas Time”, “Feliz Navidad”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, and, of course, “All I Want for Christmas is You”. But even Mariah Carey’s 1994 airplay juggernaut has been eclipsed this year by an erstwhile favorite from 1958: “Jingle Bell Rock”. That’s right, “Jingle Bell Rock” is at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, in time for its 65th anniversary. To mark the occasion, singer Brenda Lee — who recorded the song when she was just 13 years old — has been participating in a media push to boost the song’s profile, even creating a new first-ever music video for the holiday favorite. Read more…

15 Foods That Weren't Designed For What We Use Them For (Tasting Table)

It must be hard to develop and market a new type of food product — people can be picky, prices can be difficult to manage, and you never know what the future might hold. Take Coca-Cola, once a medicinal tonic (that contained traces of cocaine), and today one of the world’s leading sources of sugary refreshment. Worcestershire sauce (glad I’m able to type that and not have to pronounce it) was an attempt at Indian flavor that didn’t catch on until fermented. And Graham crackers were meant to promote good health and moral character when first released. In this article, some foods and food ingredients that have changed markets and meanings since they were first introduced. Read more…

How the Zamboni Revolutionized Fun on the Ice (Smithsonian Magazine)

At every ice-bound sporting event, a highlight is seeing the big Zamboni machine come out like a big riding mower, resurfacing the playing surface. Before Zambonis, ice had to be resurfaced by hand, which took about an hour and a half to complete, and required five employees. As far back as 1949, Frank Zamboni, part of a family that supplied ice for various purposes, rigged a farm tractor prototype that resurfaced his 20,000-square-foot rink in just ten minutes. The machine worked much like the ones that are still used today, with an ice-shaving blade, a shaving collector, a water vacuum, water sprayers, and a squeegee. Today, more than 13,000 Zamboni machines have been manufactured at one of the company’s three manufacturing plants in California, Ontario, and Sweden. Read more…

Humanity Just Witnessed Its First Space Battle (Gizmodo)

The Israel-Hamas conflict has seen the first of a grim new development for humanity: the space battle. Israel’s Arrow 2, a missile defense system, destroyed a suborbital missile believed to be launched from Yemen above the Kármán line that runs 62 miles above sea level, generally considered to be the edge of space. It’s the first time that such destruction has taken place outside of tests conducted by the US, Russia, China, and India, which did not happen during combat. Far from being an exciting feature of a sci-fi future, real-world space battles are dangerous because they increase the amount of debris that could enter orbit around the planet. Here’s hoping a peaceful solution to the current situation is forthcoming. Read more…

The SAT Problem That Everybody Got Wrong (Scientific American)

The 1982 SAT contained a question that every single test-taker got incorrect — and the true answer was only revealed by a handful of students who wrote in to the testing company. Envision a dime, of radius 1, rolling around the perimeter of a half-dollar, with radius 3. How many full rotations will the dime make on its journey? The intuitive answer, using the 2πR formula for circumference, would give the answer as three, which is what the test writers expected. However, due to a phenomenon known as the “coin rotation paradox”, the dime will actually rotate four times. In fact, you can recreate this with any set of coins or discs you have nearby — the answer is always one more rotation than you’d expect. Read more…