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1500 questions
60
votes
1 answer
Are most cases of polio derived from the polio vaccine?
According to this National Public Radio article:
For the first time, the number of children paralyzed by mutant strains of the polio vaccine are greater than the number of children paralyzed by polio itself.
So far in 2017, there have been only six…
Roger
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4 answers
Did climate scientists in the 1980s predict a 1 meter sea level rise by now?
Stuart Agnew is a Member of the European Parliament for the Eastern Counties (in the UK) and stood on the UKIP ticket. His web site describes attending a global warming conference in the "mid-Eighties" at the University of East Anglia. He…
Paul Johnson
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60
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Neil Armstrong: “One small step for man” or “one small step for a man”?
Today on Facebook the Science Museum (London) posted:
#OTD in 1930 American astronaut and aeronautical engineer Neil Armstrong was born.
In July 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin performed the first manned Moon landing. When he…
A E
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60
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2 answers
Are statistics in controversial Australian antigay posters true?
According to the photo of an anti-gay poster depicted here:
92% of children of gay parents are abused
51% have depression
72% are obese
My questions:
Are these stats supported by other studies? If not, how much do they deviate from other…
Paul Smith
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60
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3 answers
Were Mermaid passengers shipwrecked by 5 different vessels before being successfully rescued?
In a post by dotcommerce.ro called You think you had bad luck ? Think again! this story was mentioned:
It’s either a case of the worst luck in history or the best:
In 1829, a ship called The Mermaid was four days away from her destination of…
EMBLEM
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60
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2 answers
Is this André the Giant's hand holding a can of beer?
Is this a genuine image of the hand of André René Roussimoff (André the Giant) holding an everyday 12-ounce (350 mL) can of beer?
Uproxx and reddit suggest it's real (and word is he once drank 119 beers in a single sitting), but I'm not so…
samthebrand
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60
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4 answers
Have several hundreds of thousands of people died because of the Chernobyl disaster?
The Wikipedia article on this is littered with [citation needed] and a commenter on hacker news linked to it while stating:
Chernobyl cost several hundred thousand lives. Let's hope and pray Fukushima will not exact a similar cost.
However I read…
Kit Sunde
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60
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1 answer
If American churches paid taxes, how much revenue would that generate?
A recent Cracked.com photoplasty contest produced this image:
Is this image correct? Would taxing churches generate that much money, and would that much money be enough to cover food stamps and house the homeless? At what tax rate would churches…
Publius
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60
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4 answers
Do you eat a certain number of spiders whilst you sleep?
Over the course of your life time, the average person eats X spider/insects/whatever whilst they are sleeping.
X tends to vary according to who you ask. Is this just an urban legend?
MSpeed
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2 answers
Is there a worldwide helium shortage?
I've seen a number of news articles about scarcity of Helium lately, for example:
At the moment, helium is cheap, primarily because the US government built up a large surplus supply, then decided to get out of the helium business. But the Earth…
Jeff Atwood
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60
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1 answer
Is cleaning yourself with toilet paper cleaner than using water?
As a Westener, I've always been raised to believe that the best way to clean most objects is warm water and soap - self, dishes, clothes, pretty much everything. Except what is probably thought of as the "dirtiest" thing of all - our butts after we…
Dogmafrog
59
votes
3 answers
Does a mobile phone charger that is plugged in but has no phone attached to it use energy?
Obviously, I am talking about simple charger without any indicator lights etc. If yes, why does it use energy when the circuit is not closed?
Examples of the…
Dan
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2 answers
Did the CIA blow up the Nordstream 1 pipeline, using BALTOPS 22 as cover?
In September 2022, the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines off the coast of Denmark were sabotaged
Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist, recently published a blog post, How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline…
seldon
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2 answers
Was Andrew Tate raided by police because of a pizza box revealing that he is in Romania?
After the arrest of controversial internet personality Andrew Tate on December 29th 2022 it has been claimed in multiple highly viral posts (example on Reddit) that the arrest was made possible because in a video he created during an online spat a…
Haris
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3 answers
Is Elon Musk's jet trackable using only public data?
According to Elon Musk:
My plane is actually not trackable without using non-public data
This is a part of an ongoing controversy surrounding the bans on accounts posting the location of his private jet.
Can the location of said jet be obtained…
JonathanReez
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