The Time the US Banned Pinball
The origins of pinball come from a French table game called Bagatelle with the first-ever pinball machine being patented in 1871. However this machine was not like the ones we think of today with the little flippers. There’s a number of ways you can make a pinball game more elaborate with targets that you hit and little ways to sync the ball and double balls and all that stuff to blow up your score. In this early version, it was more like what we think of today as maybe Pachinko where you’re shooting the ball, and then it just jumping around on the little pins. Hence, pinball I guess, and then it just falls into whatever hole sort of like ski ball or something, but it goes up to the top, and then it bounces down. That’s still very much a thing with Pachinko.
Read full storyThe US Banned Sliced Bread
People love food and wherever you go in the world, that’s one of the topics that you can easily talk to anyone about regardless of your cultural differences. Here in the United States, we’ve had a very old saying for a long time, which is the best thing since sliced bread.
Read full storyThe Teenager Who Disproved Thermodynamics: The Mpemba Effect
This is a bit of a riddle. It turns out that if you have a glass of hot water and you have a glass of cold water, and you put them in a freezer, one of them freezes faster than the other. The hot water actually freezes more quickly. This is called the Mpemba effect.
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