General Knowledge
Exploring "Why" questions about General Knowledge
481 articles
why Verizon workers are going on strike?
The Verizon employees who are on strike have not had a contract since August of 2015. Negotiations with the company have not produced the results they felt were appropriate and they have elected to st
Why do all contests have a NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN clause ?
If a purchase is necessary, it becomes gambling, which is illegal in most states. As such, in order for contests to be legal, they have to include an entry option that doesn't require the entrant spen
Why do hotels skip seemingly random room numbers?
Could be for any number of reasons. How does the layout of rooms on floor 2 and 3 compare to each other and floor 1/4? The hotel may opt to keep each floor's numbering as similar as possible verticall
Why does the the human mind ignore the second “the”?
There's a phenomenon called [attentional blink](_URL_0_) where, when you're rapidly presented with stimuli, your brain will perceive two identical stimuli in a row as a single stimulus. Basically, you
Why do we clap our hands as an act of cheering?
There's no real reason really. We could have chosen any gesture to represent cheering such as snapping fingers or stomping feet. However, clapping makes a lot of noise, doesn't require another surface
Why do some people with special needs have such similar facial features?
Because people who have the same problem generally have the same cause for that problem. Take, for instance, Down's Syndrome. It's caused by having 3 copies of the 21st chromosome instead of just two.
Why are .jpg’s so bad?
Jpeg is good for for photographs or other things that have lots of subtly different color gradients, but aren't great for things like logos or line drawings, or other things with sharp color transitio
why all the big leaks, even from 2016, look like they have been typed on a typewriter? Surely in this day and age, there must be more modern font than a typewriter.
It's because they use a monospace font. That means every letter takes up the same amount of space (instead of "l" taking up less room than "W"). The emails were not sent in that font.
why do people with accents lose their accents when singing?
Because when they sing, they are consciously controlling their voice and producing a particular phonetic effect. Like you would if you're imitating birdsong. They are in very good control of their voi
Why are we circumcised?
From what I understand, it was a religious reason to Jewish folks, but it became more mainstream when John Kellogg(as in the cereal company) recommended it to prevent masturbation. I may be wrong, but