Author: Steve DiMatteo

Tensions are high right now between the United States and China, and the latest news won’t exactly do anything to calm things down. This week, a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted hovering over the western United States, primarily in Montana, which just so happens to be where one of the country’s three nuclear missile silo fields are located, at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The balloon – hovering at 60,000 feet and is roughly the size of two or three buses – is carrying sensors and other equipment, so it’s clearly here to gain intel on the United States… right?…

There are all sorts of lake monsters out there, and in Churubusco, Indiana, a small town of fewer than 2,000 people, it is the home of the “Beast of Busco,” an enormous snapping turtle cryptid that allegedly weighs nearly 500 pounds. Why Is Churubusco Called Turtle Town? In March of 1949, there was a sighting of a monstrous turtle in Churubusco by Gale Harris, who owned the lake (Fulk Lake) in which the car-sized turtle resided. The sightings dated back to the previous year by locals Ora Blue and Charlie Wilson, but it wasn’t until the next year that Harris…

You’ll be forgiven here if the answer is no, but did you know that February is Humpback Whale Awareness Month? You might be wondering why in the world there might be a Humpback Whale Awareness Month, but I assure you it’s real, and it’s designed to, you guessed it, help provide awareness to a mammal that is an integral part of our marine ecosystem. It was started in Hawaii in 2008 by then-governor Linda Lingle, who issued the proclamation as a way to celebrate these beautiful creatures and increase public interest for getting involved in their protection. Hawaii, a prime…

Pepsi is an iconic soft drink – it’s hard to beat the crisp taste of a brand-new Pepsi you just cracked open. But that has never stopped PepsiCo from simply resting on its laurels; the soda giant is always trying to find ways to increase sales and find new audiences while, of course, attempting to crush Coca-Cola in the process. That leads to plenty of innovation in the soda drink world, with millions of pop scientists working around the clock in secret underground bunkers, desperately trying to unlock the next great Pepsi flavor – or something like that. These Are…

For a few moments at least, Howard Dean had a little bit of momentum heading into the 2004 presidential primaries, thanks to some very promising early polling and his ability to raise the most money among Democratic candidates in the latter part of 2003. It also probably helped that Dean had been a candidate for what felt like an eternity to that point, effectively launching his campaign with an exploratory committee in 2002. But any hope the populist Vermont governor had of becoming the nominee vanished pretty quick, especially after the infamous “Dean scream” that may have truly tanked his…

When Richard Nixon (who absolutely committed treason in 1968 and had no idea how to open a prescription pill bottle) was inaugurated as our 37th president on January 20, 1969, the United States was fresh off one of the worst years in its history. The war in Vietnam continued to rage on with seemingly no end in sight, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated, students were dying in protests, and there were riots in the streets. Nixon, of course, was not the president to bridge any divides or attempt in any particular way to help the nation heal. He…

Catholic nuns in the United States are quickly becoming an extinct species, as only 1% of nuns in the country are under the age of 40. Even more concerning is that the average age of an American nun is a whopping 80 years old. Why Are Nuns Decreasing in the United States? None of this should really come as much of a surprise, at least not to the younger generations of this country. Religious affiliation and participation continues to dwindle in the United States, as the number of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped 12% over the past decade.…

Garth Brooks is a country music megastar, but is he a serial killer? That’s the conspiracy theory going around the internet, though it’s less a conspiracy theory than a joke run wild. It all began on the Your Mom’s House podcast, hosted by comedian Tom Segura and his wife Christina Pazsitzky. There is a running bit on the show where the hosts make fun of Brooks, dating back to 2018 and his stadium tour/the overall awkward vibe of his social media presence. Segura pontificated in passing on a particular episode that Brooks is “thinking about all the bodies he’s got…

Franklin Pierce – our 14th president from 1853 to 1857 – is often considered one of the worst presidents in American history (and one of the most obscure), with historians typically citing his role as a pre-Civil War compromiser who greatly favored an expansion of the country at all costs. Pierce supported the expansion of the nation even if that meant ceding power to more slave-holding states, which enraged the North and only exacerbated the growing tensions between the two sides of the burgeoning conflict. Pierce even wanted to annex Cuba, even if that meant taking it by force. He…

In recent years, I’ve become quite militant over public transportation and our society’s desperate need to move away from its car fetish. That being said, that means I’m also a glutton for punishment for getting excited about sci-fi-esque pipe dream projects that will probably never happen, such as the Great Lakes Hyperloop, which purports to someday transport people from, say, Cleveland to Chicago in around thirty minutes at speeds reaching 700 miles per hour. What Even Is the Hyperloop Concept? Essentially, the Hyperloop will exist as pressurized capsules that will float on a frictionless cushion within tubes, utilizing a developed…