30 06, 2022

Billy Mills Pulled Off One Of The Greatest Upsets In Olympic History (Cool Weird Awesome 800)

By |2022-06-30T09:58:21-04:00June 30, 2022|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

Today in 1938, the birthday of Billy Mills, a Marine veteran, activist and runner who won an Olympic gold medal in what’s been called the biggest upset in the history of the Games.

3 03, 2022

Growing Bone Tissue With Sound Waves (Cool Weird Awesome 724)

By |2022-03-03T08:52:50-05:00March 3, 2022|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , , |

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology took stem cells and treated them with high-frequency sound waves, which was enough to convert them into bone cells.

3 11, 2021

The Undertaker Who Developed Automatic Phone Dialing (Cool Weird Awesome 648)

By |2023-10-04T10:45:49-04:00November 3, 2021|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , , , |

Today in 1892 a phone system that made automated calls - no switchboard operator - began operating in Laporte, Indiana. The first automatic dial network happened, as the story goes, because of a business dispute between two undertakers. Plus: today in 1882, the birthday of John Baxter Taylor, Jr, the first Black American to win an Olympic gold medal.

20 10, 2021

High Jumper Dick Fosbury’s Biggest Win Was Also A Flop (Cool Weird Awesome 638)

By |2021-10-20T06:33:03-04:00October 20, 2021|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , , , , |

Today in 1968, a high jumper from Oregon, Dick Fosbury, changed his sport forever by winning gold with an unusual jumping motion now known as the Fosbury Flop. Plus: today in 2018, passengers on a bus in Paris refused to make room for a rider using a wheelchair. So the bus driver made room. 

7 08, 2020

Alice Coachman Raised The Bar For Team USA (Cool Weird Awesome 354)

By |2023-10-04T10:44:23-04:00August 7, 2020|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

We don’t have the Olympic Games right now, but we can still mark a big Olympic moment that happened on this day in 1948: the day Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win Olympic gold. Plus: a chocolate company and an engineer say they've redesigned the chocolate chip. Is it more efficient? I don't know, but I'll be happy to test it out.

4 06, 2019

The Minor Leagues Got Majorly Weird (Cool Weird Awesome 54)

By |2020-03-27T09:07:47-04:00June 4, 2019|Categories: Cool Weird Awesome, Podcasts|Tags: , , |

Attractions - especially weird ones - are a time-honored way to drum up business from people who are at best casual baseball fans, and lately that's extended to team names, including the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, the Vermont Lake Monsters, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies and the Rocket City Trash Pandas.

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