Amazon.com: The Civil War Little Black Book: Secrets, History, And Trivia of America's Defining Conflict eBook : Mayer, Bob: Kindle Store

Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War is the most frightening book I’ve read this year just as Nuclear War was last year. She really knows how to put a damper on cheery. I spent years in Special Forces, whe...

Halloween, birthday parties, any gathering with cake. The commentary writes itself: they are going to be bouncing off the walls, do not give them any more, they are already wired. The sugar-hyperactiv...

In 1901, sponge divers working off the Greek island of Antikythera found a shipwreck. Among the statues and pottery was a corroded lump of bronze that nobody could identify. It took a century to work ...

Amazon.com: MIRA SAFETY M Certified CBRN Full Face Gas Mask Reusable Respirator Professional Grade (CM-6M Mask WITH Drinking System), 2 Piece Set : Tools & Home Improvement

YouTube video by Bob Mayer

Buy MediTac Basic Bleeding Control Pack Feat. SWAT-T Tourniquet, Emergency Bandage and Compressed Gauze Dressing - Basic on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

My mother worked in the Empire State Building during World War II. Fortunately she wasn’t there on 28 July 1945. It was a Saturday. Normally 15,000 people worked in the building. That morning there we...

There is a snakebite kit in a lot of first aid bags. The little plastic case with the suction cups. Take it out and throw it away. The extractors have been tested. They remove a negligible fraction of...

YouTube video by Bob Mayer

Food expiration dates: There are some things to understand about this. First, there are several terms stamped on the food. This is what they mean: SELL BY: How long a store should display the product ...

In cold-weather folklore, the flask of whiskey is standard equipment. Stranded in a blizzard? Brandy warms you from the inside. The Saint Bernard carries a barrel of it for a reason. Excerpted from Yo...

The Nazca of southern Peru carved a hummingbird 300 feet long, a spider 150 feet across, and a condor with a 440-foot wingspan into the desert floor. The full designs are only visible from the air. Th...

Because it is counterintuitive until you understand what it is. What is survivor bias? During World War II, the military wanted to add armor to the parts of returning bombers that showed the most bull...

YouTube video by Bob Mayer

Fresh vegetables represent peak nutrition — just picked, just purchased, the full complement of vitamins and minerals intact. Frozen vegetables are a compromise: processed, degraded, the inferior option you choose when fresh isn’t available or budget is tight. The hierarchy feels obvious. For many vegetables, the nutritional hierarchy is actually reversed. Fresh vegetables begin losing […]

YouTube video by Bob Mayer

On July 17, 1864, Jefferson Davis relieved General Joseph Johnston of command of the army defending Atlanta and replaced him with John Bell Hood. It was exactly the mistake Sherman needed the Confeder...

Amazon.com: Katadyn Hiker Pro Transparent Hand Pump Water Filter | 1L Per Minute, 11.2 oz Lightweight, Portable Filtration for Camping, Backpacking, Hiking & Survival : Katadyn: Sports & Outdoors

Excerpted from You’re Doing It Wrong: Dump the Myths, Misconceptions, and Bad Advice You Believe, The math looks clean. Fat stores represent stored calories. Eat nothing, burn the stores, lose the weight. The more aggressively you restrict, the faster you get results. The body did not receive this math and responds to severe caloric restriction […]

We think of the South when we talk about American slavery. In 1703, New York City ranked second in the colonies by percentage of enslaved population — behind only Charleston. More than 42 percent of h...

Between roughly 800 and 1000 CE, the great Maya cities of the southern lowlands—Tikal, Calakmul, Copán, Palenque—were abandoned. Populations dispersed. The jungle took the monuments. A civilization th...

The advice has circulated in safety articles, on social media, and in well-meaning emails forwarded among people for years. If your car goes into the water, pull out the headrest, jam the metal posts ...

In November 2006, former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko drank tea in a London hotel bar. Three weeks later he was dead. The weapon was polonium-210, and choosing it tells you the ki...

The bluestones of Stonehenge weigh four tons each and came from the Preseli Hills of Wales—150 miles from Salisbury Plain. The builders had no metal tools, no wheels, no draft animals. That’s the logi...

At grocery stores across the country, brown eggs command a premium price over white eggs from the same display case. Consumers select them with the understanding that brown equals more natural, more n...

We remember Sherman as the man who never lost. That’s not quite the record. On June 27, 1864, he ordered a frontal assault on entrenched Confederate positions at Kennesaw Mountain, northwest of Atlanta. It cost him roughly 3,000 casualties against about 1,000 for Johnston’s dug-in defenders. The attack gained nothing. What interests me as a […]