CLS Check This Out!

  Four U.S. Presidents Were Cheerleaders Despite its modern association with women, cheerleading started in the mid-19th century as what was considered a masculine sport — an ideal pastime for charismatic, athletic young men. Women were actively excluded at first, but started taking the field during World War II when many college-aged men were fighting abroad, and they didn’t really overtake the sport until the 1960s; as women cheerleaders became more common, the sport was trivialized and viewed as not athletic enough for men. So even though the United States has not had a female president, it’s not necessarily surprising that four former occupants of the White House — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush — spent time hyping up a crowd as cheerleaders for their school sports teams. Though FDR didn’t play any other college sports himself, he was an avid football fan, devoting many column inches to the Harvard team while editor of the Harva...

  Why Do Cartoon Characters Tend To Have Only Three Fingers? And Why Do They Wear Gloves? If you've watched enough cartoons, you have probably noticed something odd about the characters within them. An awful lot of them have only three fingers and a thumb, and a lot of them are wearing gloves. The Simpsons have three fingers and a thumb, Mickey Mouse has the same, and Spongebob Squarepants too; you name them, and they probably don't have the usual number of fingers. Popeye is a notable exception, though the number of fingers he has fluctuates over time. Famously, God in The Simpsons is depicted as having a full set of fingers , as a choice to distinguish him. But in the final scene , even God was back down to three fingers and a thumb. Then there are characters who wear gloves. These tend to be more vintage cartoon characters, like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Goofy. So, what's the deal with this? “At the dawn of animation, certain techniques to make the animation process ...

  Original photo by Jeff Whyte/ Shutterstock There's a part of the U.S. that you can only get to through Canada. The U.S. and Canada share the longest land border in the world, and along any border that measures in the several-thousand-mile range, there are bound to be some quirks. One of those is  Point Roberts , a tiny U.S. town in Washington state that’s essentially  cut off from the rest of mainland U.S.  by the Canadian border. The small town of only 1,200 or so residents is what geographers call a “ pene-exclave ,” which is a part of a country that is only accessible by traveling  through  another country. Point Roberts lies at the tip of the ​​Tsawwassen peninsula, which is  under the 49th parallel  — the circle of latitude that largely marks the western portion of the U.S.-Canada border. Although Point Roberts residents could technically travel by plane or boat to the U.S. mainland without entering Canada, nearly everyone commutes through ...

  I n Victorian-era England, as in most of human history, bread was a dietary staple, and white bread, which was seen as containing fewer impurities and was associated with the upper class, was increasingly in vogue. Indeed white bread was so desirable that some British bakers resorted to using questionable ingredients to bleach their loaves. One such ingredient was alum, an aluminum-derived chemical compound that is toxic when consumed. It made bread not only whiter, but also heavier, allowing bakers to charge more for their wares and supplement flour doing food shortages. Alum was also cheaper than flour, meaning bakers could  pocket more profits  — but unfortunately, all this came at the expense of public health.  Alum, when consumed regularly, caused digestive issues and diarrhea, the latter of which could be fatal to young children at the time. In the mid-1850s, prominent English physician John Snow proposed a connection between Brits’ poor health — notably the ...

  W hen you think about Vikings, you may picture horned helmets — and vice versa. The horns are a staple of Viking imagery in comics, sports mascots, and Halloween costumes, but there’s actually no evidence that they were widely used. Horned helmets first entered the Viking mythos in 1876, when artist Carl Emil Doepler  included  them in his iconic costume designs for German composer Richard Wagner’s  Der Ring des Nibelungen , also known as the Ring Cycle, an epic tale of Norse mythology told over the course of four different operas. (Even if you’re not familiar with the work, you’ve probably heard “Ride of the Valkyries,” which opens up the last act of the second opera,  Die Walküre,  or  The Valkyries .) Wagner’s opera was so wildly influential on popular culture that the helmets became associated with Vikings in the popular consciousness.  Then, in 1942, two workers were harvesting peat from a bog near Veksø, Denmark, when they  uncovered ...

  Original photo by oscargutzo/ Shutterstock The sky is never totally black, even at night. Stargazers who live in major cities know all about light pollution, but this lack of complete darkness goes beyond geography. It turns out  the sky is never totally black  no matter where you live, even at night. We can mostly chalk this up to the luminous effects of moonlight and starlight, as well as to our atmosphere, which, in addition to making the planet’s air breathable, scatters all the light that passes through it. (This is what makes the sky appear blue during the day, as the atmosphere scatters blue light  more than other colors .) In highly populated areas, the effect of light pollution is known as  skyglow , and it’s what gives the night sky its milky, sometimes yellowish complexion. But even if you find yourself in an extremely remote location, the sky would be closer to a navy blue than black. As previously mentioned, this is partially because of the moon, ...

  The ruff collar is one of the most recognizable symbols of Elizabethan fashion. Picture Queen Elizabeth I, her head surrounded by a crisp, fanlike collar, or William Shakespeare, the most famous author of the time, whose own likeness and theatrical productions depict the prominent garment. Though the collar began as a modest ruffle on a shirt, it went on to become an elaborate piece of its own. In 16th-century England, it would have been hard to miss the sight of these towering, fluted sculptures circling the faces of the English elite. But why did people wear these stiff, awkward garments? Like many sartorial choices of the time, ruff collars signified more than just taste; they were statements of status, wealth, and power. In the first half of the 1500s, English men exposed just a  hint of a collar of their shirt,  ruffled up from underneath their doublets. By the mid-1500s, however, Spanish fashion began to infiltrate England, and the exaggerated collar worn by Spain...