
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Back in the day


Hostess Twinkies Are Invented

The Twinkie was invented by bakery manager James Dewar, who noticed that the shop's shortcake pans were only used during the strawberry season and otherwise sat idle. His thrifty idea to use the pans during the off-season led to the development of the banana-filled Twinkie snack cake. During a World War II banana shortage, vanilla filling replaced the original banana. Today, 500 million Twinkies are produced each year. What is the "Twinkie defense," and when was the term first used?



The Mystery of Skeleton Lake

An uninhabited area located high in the Indian Himalayas, Roopkund is best known as the home of Skeleton Lake, where in 1942 a park ranger made a startling discoveryâ€”a mass grave containing the remains of some 300 to 600 people. Using radiocarbon dating, scientists traced the skeletons to the 9th century. Though people initially believed the dead were victims of landslides, an epidemic, or a blizzard, further examination of the skulls revealed that the people died in what unusual way?

Born on a day like today


James D. Watson

Watson is an American biologist who, with Francis Crick, researched the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) at Cambridge in the 1950s. Their findings earned them the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Watson later became director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and served as director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which undertook the Human Genome Project. What landmark non-fiction book did Watson write in 1968?

Last updated on Monday, 6th April 2009

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