FACT: Sometimes rain is made from meat.
So, while we may never know what really went down at the Crouch farm in 1876, we can say with quite some certainty that rain is sometimes made of meat. Or spiders. Or golf balls. Listen to this week’s episode ofFACT: Professional sword swallowers played a key role in the development of modern gastroenterologyEndoscopies—a procedure where a doctor passes a flexible tube down your throat and into your stomach and small intestine—are pretty common for folks with chronic gut issues these days.
Kussmaul knew that traversing the esophagus would be a fairly difficult task, so he sought help from those with experience in this regard: professional sword swallowers., he hired a renowned sword swallower and studied the technique he used to guide an extremely sharp and dangerous object easily down his throat. Kussmaul took particular note of the swallower’s ability to relax the muscle that allows food into the esophagus, and to straighten the esophagus to allow the sword to enter.
The endoscope has come a long way since that time. The modern implements are flexible instead of rigid, and uses fiber optics and powerful lenses to visualize our insides—making them not just more effective as diagnostic tools, but more palatable for non-sword-swallowers.FACT: Kodak’s hungry cows led them to discover secret nuclear bomb testingDuring the 20th century, film manufacturer Kodak employed more than 150,000 people at a time. Many of those employees were scientists.
Gelatin, of course, comes from cow bones. When the cows used to make the gelatin had a change in diet, it was enough to affect the makeup of the gelatin, which had a negative effect on the plates. Kodak lore says that was the beginning of the company’s research department, which started in 1912.