This is the Yes or BS blog, where you can play the game for yourself. Either pick a random story from the pictures below, or choose your specialist subject from the categories listed here. Just read the story through and decide whether, YES, you think it’s true, or no, you think it’s total B.S—then click you answer in the box at the bottom of each post to see if you’re correct.
There’s a lot more to a piano than meets the eye. If you’ve ever poked your head inside that tired old upright in your grandmother’s front room (not a euphemism) then you’ll see all kinds of nuts, bolts, poles, shafts, hammers and moving parts, all of which work in total harmony to produce that piano’s sound. At the core of a piano, however, is a thick wooden soundboard—usually cut through with variously-sized holes—that acts as a resonator to project the sound forwards. It’s
According to the Guinness Book of Records, on 8 March 1969 Happy Birthday became the first song performed in outer space, when the Apollo 9 astronauts performed it to mark the 45th birthday of the mission’s aptly-named Flight Operations Director Chris Kraft. There are, however, a few problems to that claim to fame. Firstly, Kraft’s birthday was actually 28 February; the Apollo 9 mission—and ultimately the crew’s performance—was delayed a few days to allow some of them to reco
“And to all a good night...and a reminder I’ll be back in four weeks’ time” (Pixabay) Everyone has a favourite Christmas song. Silent Night. Deck the Halls. Reet Petite. But if Jingle Bells is your Christmas carol of choice then you might want to reconsider your vote—because back when it was written in 1851, Jingle Bells was originally intended to celebrate Thanksgiving, not Christmas. Legend has it that it was on a cold November night at a boarding house in Medford, Massachu
If you were asked to think of a dangerous job, it’s likely something along the lines of a steeplejack, a high-rise window cleaner, an oil rig driller, or a deep-sea fisherman might be among the first come to mind. Conductor of an orchestra would probably feature—well, somewhat lower on your list. But tell that to the seventeenth century French–Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who in 1687 injured himself so severely during a vigorous performance of his motet Te Deum that
The big top: smell the popcorn; run from the incoming electrical storm. (Wix) Next time you’re in the circus and the house band starts playing John Philip Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever, abandon your popcorn, throw the nearest clown out of the way, and run for the exits. In circus (and, once upon a time, theatrical) contexts, Sousa’s popular Stars and Stripes is infamously known as the “disaster march”: house bands in circuses only ever perform the piece as a warning i