Alcatraz provided hot showers for its inmates to discourage them from escaping in the cold bay.

While it might sound like a hot shower as an escape deterrent is something prisoners would be totally fine with, today it’s just a common occurrence. The heyday of Alcatraz was a different story though. When Alcatraz became a prison in 1934, it was due to prohibition. 

It was the ideal spot at first due to the fact that it was cut off from civilization by the freezing waters and strong currents. If you’ve ever seen Alcatraz, you’d know it’s pretty small. In truth, it only housed 300 people at a time (one of which was Al Capone). Back then, no prisons in the US gave hot showers. Alcatraz was the first. 

Why? It was reasoned that if prisoners were used to hot water, they wouldn’t be able to withstand the cold bay waters during an escape attempt. Did it work? Apparently. Of the 36 who escaped, 23 were easily recaptured, 6 were shot to death, and 2 drowned from the cold waters. 

The other five are presumed to have drowned too. Alcatraz closed back in 1963 due to bad deterioration from the bay air- the same cold wind and fog that had made it so miserable for prisoners. 

(Source)

Pirates once held Julius Caesar for ransom. After that, he tracked down and crucified every single one.

When travelling across the Aegean Sea, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates. As ransom, the pirates demanded twenty talents. Caesar laughed at them because they didn’t know who he was, and suggested they ask for fifty talents instead. He was held for 38 days during which time he wrote poems and speeches which he read aloud. 

Those who didn’t appreciate what he was saying he called “illiterate Barbarians.” Laughingly, Caesar threatened to kill them all. After his random came, he was set free. Immediately, he manned numerous vessels, sought after the pirates, and caught them almost immediately. They were all imprisoned and crucified. So if there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that nobody messes with Julius Caesar. Except Brutus, Cassius, and 58 other people. 

(Source)

A famous concert pianist had his piano destroyed by airport security because the glue smelled like a bomb.

His name is Krystian Zimerman, and he is a famous Polish concert pianist. Though he is typically a very silent person, in 2009 he announced he would no longer perform in the US in protest against Washington’s military policies. Why? Well a number of reasons. The main one was the destruction of his piano following 9/11. 

When travelling to the US, his piano was confiscated by customs officials at JFK airport because they thought the glue smelled funny. Shortly after, it was destroyed. For many years after that he traveled only with the mechanical insides of his piano and installed them in a different piano for performances. That way he didn’t have to bring the whole piano and risk it being destroyed.

He started travelling with a whole piano again after a while, but in 2006 it was confiscated for five days, ruining his performance schedule. Adding on to the statement, Zimerman said “Get your hands off my country” in reference to the US plans to install a missile defense shield on Polish soil. 

(Source)

Which household items is NASA responsible for?

Read on!

BODY
It was 1958 when President Eisenhower created NASA. Since that day, we have put men (and an American flag) on the moon and machines on Mars. And of course, since that day NASA have filed more than 6,300 patents with the US government for the various technological advances developed by them. Among these are...

Invisible Braces, probably best known under the Invisalign brand. While you might think these are recent inventions, they first cropped up in 1987. Scratch resistant lenses, a breath of fresh air to many of you readers who wear glasses, also exist with thanks to NASA. Ear thermometers too have been brought to us by NASA.

Have you ever been annoyed by those Tempurpedic bed commercials? Well NASA is the one to blame for the technology that those beds are made on. What about those Dr. Scholl’s commercials with the corny rhymes of “gellin?” Turns out those shoe inserts are from NASA too.

Some more frequently and widely used ones include long distance phone calls, smoke detectors, and cordless devices. Probably the biggest of all is the water filter, which might be what you drink your water from daily.

(Source)
Image: http://funny-pictures-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/funny-pictures/NASA-isnt-that-bad.jpg

Source:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/ten-nasa-inventions1.htm

When people hear a recorded phrase looped numerous times, they begin to hear it as a song.

If you’ve wasted enough time on YouTube, you know this all too well. It was first discovered by Diana Deutsch in 1995, when she was fine tuning a commentary. She noticed the phrase “sometimes behave so strangely,” which was on a loop, started to sound like it was being sung instead of spoken. 

It was later investigated further in 2008 and 2011. Three groups of subjects listened to a sentence and then ten presentations of a few words out of that sentence. The listeners judged whether they heard the phrase as speech or like a song. In all cases, the listeners thought it sounded a bit like a song. 

The interesting thing is that for this phenomenon to occur, the phrase has to be repeated exactly the same over and over- if there’s any variation, the brain just perceives it as words. This was further proven when listeners reproduced what they were hearing: they all repeated the words in a way that sounded more like a song. This could go a long way to explaining many of those videos out there on Youtube. 

(Source)