Episode 5

Slang Words

In 1916, the following words were considered to be slang words:
Awful, Fake, Fan, Fresh, Grouchy, Hunch, Pub, Kid.

Kik Messenger

The popular Kik Messenger app was co-created by a man called Chris Best.
After several years, he and two employees who worked with him decided to leave Kik in 2017 and set up a different business called Substack.

No Time To Die

The final James Bond movie to star Daniel Craig cost over $350 million to make and was delayed multiple times due to COVID-19.
At the opening weekend, it made $56 million, partly due to many cinemas still not open and people hesitant to return to public places.

Cyber Insurance

Cyber Insurance is provided by insurance companies to businesses, offering to pay out if the company loses business due to a cyber attack.
One of the bigger companies to offer insurance is AIG, which has had to keep increasing its premiums by 20-40% every year due to the volume of Ransomware attacks hitting its clients.
AIG has already said that unless Ransomware attacks are reduced, they will no longer be able to offer insurance as they are at the point where the premiums are not covering the payouts.

Sport Fans

According to a survey on sports fans, the results found that in the NFL, 79% of fans supported a favourite team, while 54% supported a favourite player.
In NBA it was 67% had a favourite team and 50% had a favourite player.
But in NHL, while 60% had a favourite team, only 27% had a favourite player.

Vehicle Accidents

According to a recent study,  a heavy vehicle involved in a pedestrian accident is more likely to cause injuries than a lighter vehicle going at the exact same speed.
This isn't good news for the Electric Vehicle industry which, due to heavy battery technology, tends to be heavier than the exact same petrol/diesel model.

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming is a revolutionary way to grow food. It involves growing crops in vertically stacked layers, rather than in traditional horizontal rows. This method can produce hundreds of times more food per acre than traditional farming while using less water and energy.

One company that is at the forefront of vertical farming is 80 Acres Farms. 80 Acres Farms is a Cincinnati-based startup that has built several vertical farms across the United States. The company's farms use robots and artificial intelligence to control the growing environment, which allows them to produce high-quality produce year-round.

80 Acres Farms is not just focused on sustainability. The company also aims to reduce food waste by growing produce locally. This means that the product is delivered to consumers within hours of being harvested, which helps to ensure its freshness.

Crawfish

There are over 600 types of Crawfish and some of those crawfish are now reproducing with the wrong species due to the mixing of species by fishermen who are dumping their catch in local rivers rather than where they came from.
As a result, reproductive rates are dropping and numbers in some areas are diminishing.

Carbon Eating Fish

Fish are extremely good at removing carbon from the atmosphere and then pooping out the carbon as a solid material to rest on the seafloor.
They are so good at it that scientists estimate 1.9 billion tons of carbon are removed from the atmosphere each year by fish.
To put that into context, it is believed the UK emits 360 million tons a year, which suggests that fish are removing the carbon emissions of five United Kingdoms each year.

Henry Cavill

In Mission Impossible: Fallout, the fight scene in the public restroom where Henry shakes his arms out, also known by the fans as him "cocking his guns", was completely unscripted and was Henry just warming his aching arms up for the next take of many takes that day.
When Tom Cruise and the director re-watched it, they loved how he did it and decided to leave that unscripted moment in the movie, even including it in the movie trailer.

Flight Problems

In 2021 the number of fines issued to passengers by the FAA in the US exceeded $1 million.
Some of the fines were issued for failure to wear a mask on the flight, but other fines include smoking in an aircraft toilet ($16,000 fine), vaping on a plane and arguing with the aircrew over it ($10,000 fine), and one large $45,000 fine for a passenger who threw objects at other passengers leading to the aircraft diverting and performing an emergency landing to have the offender removed.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla sat in his laboratory and wrote notes while his magnifying transmitter is sending electrical charges all around him.

Phone Speaker

If your smartphone is not busting out the bass as loud as you want, then take a toilet roll cardboard insert, cut a slot big enough in the side for your phone to sit, add some thumbtacks as the legs of the tube, and now you can pump out music in a much louder way.

Banking Scam

A 48-year-old Russian man was recently arrested for arson. But why is that quirky?
He was contacted by a scammer claiming to be from the largest Russian bank who told him a story about how his account was getting unusually suspicious activity and that he should transfer his funds to a second account allegedly created just for him by the scammer.
But how did the victim get arrested for arson? After transferring all his funds to the scammer's fake account, the scammer decided to take it one further and told the victim the only true way to make sure he doesn't lose all his money, was to burn down the local branch that he did his banking at.
As to why the victim believed this was standard policy for bank fraud is not clear but he was arrested a couple of days after throwing a petrol bomb into his local branch.
Not only did the arson attack fail as it was quickly extinguished by the staff, but he will go to prison AND lose all his money to the scammer who has not been traced.