Rocket launches always happen in Florida; most of us take that for granted and never really think about it. There are actually specific reasons that rocket launches happen in Florida, and it has to do with physics. (Flat earthers, you’re going to want to skip this one because it relies on the so-called “round earth theory.”) Basically, launching a rocket closer to the equator gives the rocket a bit of a speed boost as it leaves the atmosphere. 

Animals do strange things––this is pretty much what Animal Planet and YouTube rely on for their success. But there’s one subject they tend to avoid: poop. Everyone––and everything––poops, and for the most part it’s a straightforward and kind of gross process. But for some animals, pooping is kind of an adventure. For example, penguins can projectile poop about half their height. It would be like you bending over and pooping a stream three feet away.

When you think of Japanese food, you probably think of sushi, ramen, or tempura. Well, we have some interesting news for you: Japanese tempura is not really Japanese in origin. Actually, Japanese tempura is Portuguese tempura. Portuguese travels brought tempura-style cooking to Japan in the fifteen-hundreds. Here’s the story of how tempura came to Japan via Portugal and became so stereotypically Japanese. Try to watch this without getting hungry and ordering tempura from your local Japanese (not Portuguese) restaurant.

This video is about the longest train in the world. But it’s not actually about the longest train in the world, because the simple answer to that question is really boring: four and a half miles long. No big deal. What’s far more interesting is how long the longest set of continuous tracks could be. The trick is this: countries have different gauge train tracks, so trains can’t easily travel between countries. This video describes how trains get around that problem.

Take a second to think about the oldest restaurants in your town. How old is it? Maybe twenty years old? Thirty if you live in an older town? However old it is, that restaurant probably can’t hold a candle to this one, because it’s a whopping 293 years old. In that time, its oven has been continually burning, and they’ve been continually serving their specialty: suckling pig roast. Take a tour of this piece of history here.

When ants go out on their little ant missions, sometimes some of the ants get injured. They lose a limb or maybe more than one. But the ants don’t leave their injured ones behind willy nilly. There are actually some ants who tend to the wounded. If an ant is too injured––that is, if it lacks too many limbs––it will thrash around and the helper ant can’t get close. If the ant is only missing one or two limbs, helpers will carry it back and then tend to its wounds by cleaning them with their mouths. This reduces the injured ant’s chance of dying from 80% to 10%.

Conan O’Brien has been on the air for what feels like forever. You’d think his style wouldn’t be as funny now as it was when it started, but it definitely is. This video dissects Conan O’Brien’s show’s style and what makes it so funny. Namely, Conan does everything almost, but not entirely right. He has the perfect talk show set up, but there’s always something a little bit quirky. The whole show is a funny man-straight man setup––it’s worked into the show’s format. 

As much as we all love Gene Wilder (RIP), Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory didn’t exactly give an accurate impression of how chocolate is made. Indeed, it’s nothing like that all. Take a look at this video, instead. In it, you’ll see Bon Appétit’s Brad visit a real chocolate factory, and he will explain how chocolate goes from a raw material to a dark chocolate or milk chocolate bar at your local grocery store. 

Recently, the world watched with rapt attention as SpaceX took to the sky and then landed again. People all over the world were going nuts over this, to put it less poetically. They were going so crazy, in fact, that no one really stopped to ask how they were watching it. That is, what is the technology that makes this incredible footage possible? It definitely can’t be done with a standard DSLR or camcorder. This video explains how it was done.

So, what’s the deal with laugh tracks? But really though, during the time of laugh tracks, no one really thought much about them. Maybe some people really hated them, but by and large it was the norm so it was unquestioned. When laugh tracks lost popularity, though, everyone seemed to realize how annoying they were. What was the original purpose of the laugh track, though? And how does function get fulfilled without laugh tracks?

You might have seen Wagyu Beef on a menu at a fancy restaurant, and probably with a massive price next to it. If you ever wanted to know what Wagyu beef is and how it got to be so expensive, this video is for you. It explains that Japanese cattle were entirely isolated from other cattle around the world for most of its history. Then for a brief period outside cattle were brought in and interbred. This only lasted about ten years, and then it was ceased because the half-breeds were poor quality. But during that time, some cattle turned out superior. 

Hot Ones is a famous internet interview show in which celebrities give interviews while eating very spicy wings. Over the course of the interview, the wing-spice builds and builds and the interviewee gets progressively more frenetic and hilarious. Hannibal Buress has been among the most requested celebrities, but also among the most elusive. But, for the one-hundredth episode of the show, Hannibal Buress agreed to appear and the results do not disappoint––just wait for the freestyle.