According to an online social media post covered by Snopes, Cricket Powder, being sold and marketed as Acheta Powder, is being snuck into many food products. According to the post, this is being promoted as a “good thing.” While Snopes has been waiting for a corporate response email since 2024, an examination of the facts, … Read more
If you had tried to put beer in a tin can in 1933, you wouldn’t have ended up with a drink, you would have ended up with a bomb. While canned food had been a staple for a century, the first canned beer was delayed by a huge engineering problem. Beer presented a physical nightmare … Read more
The unregulated quack remedies of the 1800’s, such as those featured in traveling medicine shows, may be confusing. How could these “patent medicines” have been patented? Does this term refer to the United States Patent Office or any other patent-granting organization? In reality, the term patent used in patent-medicines had nothing to do with the … Read more
Musterole was a medicinal rub that was used similar to Vicks VapoRub but could also be used similarly to Ben Gay and other muscle and joint pain rubs. It is often said that Musterole existed long before Vicks Vapo-Rub, but this is an erroneous assumption, as we shall see. Musterole was first introduced in 1905, … Read more
Take a look at the little guy in the photo below. This little guy, a common earthworm, is completely safe to eat, as long as you cook it. An important question, however, came up in a Labrador retriever forum where the article referenced in the link above was shared for reference. Can dogs eat worms? What … Read more
When it was common for consumers to pay deposits for bottles and then return the bottles to a retailer to reclaim the deposit, the type of plastics used in the bottles were known. Now that curbside recycling or drop-off recycling centers are common, it is much more difficult to identify particular types of plastic. Plastic … Read more