Author: Steve DiMatteo

Update: Well, it happened again. Mitch McConnell once again inexplicably froze during a press conference, just a month after the first incident. This time, it came as a reporter was asking the 81-year-old senator if he planned on running in 2026, which really added a nice layer of absurdity to the whole thing. But hey, at least the Capitol physician has declared McConnell to be “medically clear” to essentially directly effect the lives of 332 million people. Overshadowing even the apparent admission of the government hoarding alien corpses (or perhaps even playing baseball with live aliens they’ve captured) that took…

At first glance, Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” sounds like any other pop country song these days. It hits all the same notes of small-town pride and bravado, treading over the same territory you’d hear in literally hundreds of other country songs being put out at any given time. But what makes Aldean’s song unique – and the subject of recent controversy – is the accompanying music video, which has stirred up strong reactions on both sides and has ultimately been pulled from Country Music Television’s music video rotation for the time being. Why Are People…

The beginning of July is home to a wonderful holiday celebrated by millions of Americans each and every year. No, we’re not talking about the Fourth of July; we’re talking about Bobby Bonilla Day, of course. What Is Bobby Bonilla Day? Major League Baseball contracts are guaranteed, which often puts some teams in an interesting, precarious position as the years and dollar values continue to rise in a sport without a salary cap. So in order to remain competitive in the near-term, teams sometimes have to get creative with the backends of their deals with aging veterans. Bobby Bonilla is…

Leslie Van Houten, a member of the infamous Manson family responsible for at least nine murders in 1969 (and, honestly, possibly more throughout the 1960s), has been released from a California prison. Van Houten, who was 19 when she joined the cult led by Charles Manson, is now in her 70s and was released under a three-year parole term, with a parole discharge review taking place after one year. She’ll spend that time acclimating to life in the 21st century, which looks very different from when she was convicted in 1971. Her release seemed imminent after a state appellate court’s…

Iowa – home of more pigs than humans and that glorious black dirt – could soon also be the home of a world-record number of pencils. Aaron Bartholmey has been collecting wooden advertising pencils since he was a child, amassing a collection he claims to total upwards of 70,000. As Bartholmey says, collecting these pencils really is a neat way to preserve history, because so many of them feature long-gone local businesses with no other record of their existence. The process of evaluating the collection has begun, as counters from the American Pencil Collectors Society have already seen the collection…

Capital punishment in the United States has a long, complicated, and gruesome history, and, well, its methods had to start somewhere. In the case of the electric chair, Martha Place was the first woman to ever be executed by this method. Here is what she did to warrant such a sentence. (As an interesting aside, Place was not the first woman to be sentenced to die by the electric chair. That dubious distinction goes to serial killer Lizzie Halliday, convicted in 1894. Place wasn’t the second, either; Maria Barbella got her sentence in 1895. Both Halliday and Barbella escaped the…

There was… quite a bit happening in 2016, so you’d be forgiven for not remembering the rash of clown sightings that took place that year. But it’s true: Amid one of the most contentious election seasons in American history, there were reports of evil-looking clown sightings all across the United States, with additional reports popping up in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Where Did the 2016 Clown Sightings Begin? There are many possible precursor events throughout the years, though it’s hard to pin down anything as being a direct cause of the 2016 clown sightings. There have been plenty…

You just really can’t make this stuff up. Wendy Rush, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was one of the five people who perished in the Titan submersible attempting to tour the Titanic wreckage, is actually the great-great granddaughter of a couple that died on the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912. Rush is the direct descendant of Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, both of whom perished along with more than 1,500 other people aboard the Titanic. Straus was the co-owner of the Macy’s department store, and also served as a U.S. congressman from 1894 to 1895. You…

Recently, a pod of orcas was seen off the New England coast, just 40 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts. For the scientists studying these whales, it was a once-in-a-lifetime “unreal” experience, as orcas do not typically congregate in New England waters, and these killer whales seemed to also be swimming in formation, which is even more rare to see. To this point, there is only one orca – known as “Old Thom” – that typically swims in North Atlantic waters. So this really is something to get excited about, if you’re into that sort of thing. But this is just…

The chances of being bitten by a shark in Hawaii are less than one in a million (the same probably goes for humpback whale enthusiasts in the area), but a Netflix docuseries crew nearly defied the odds while filming Our Planet II. While filming at Laysan, one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the crew was attacked by two 15-foot-long tiger sharks, who “leapt at the boat and bit huge holes,” according to the show’s director. The original plan was to get some underwater footage with the tiger sharks, but the sharks had different plans, attacking the crew in their inflatable…