Mina Nakatani

LA-Based Freelance Writer and Editor

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How WWI Changed London Forever

It's hardly an overstatement to say that World War I was a huge event in history, one that brought with it plenty of change and set the stage for the conflicts that occurred throughout the rest of the 20th century. After all, just about anyone you talk to knows about World War I, even if only in the most vague of terms. But despite the war's massive impact on international affairs for years to come, it also had much more local effects.
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Elements The World Could Run Out Of - Grunge

At the current moment, there are plenty of discussions of resources that the world may be running out of. The usual suspects when it comes to those limited resources are typically things like oil, coal, or natural gas — non-renewable energy sources with controversial long-term effects on the environment. But there are other potential shortages that most people likely don't take into consideration, and which, rather ironically, might sometimes be caused by the shifts away from those non-renewable fuels.Just what are those surprisingly limited resources? Well, they're some of the elements on the good old periodic table.

One Little Pill

Just one little pill. That’s all they’d said — or, at least, that’s what the man with the kind eyes and the warm, brown suit had said. Just take this one little pill and stay in the office overnight, and he’d be able to make all those gambling debts go right away. My partner wouldn’t even need to know they’d ever existed; everything could go back to the way things were, before all the secrets and the lies and the late nights away, trying to find more money than I’d ever seen. No more days spent dreading the moment when enough would be enough and the ruse would fall apart and take our relationship with it. All because the cards had refused to fall right on the table on a night or two or three.
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Crown Jewels That Mysteriously Went Missing - Grunge

Most of the time, when you hear the term "crown jewel," it seems to be in reference to the treasures kept by the British royal family, used and worn for special occasions like coronations. Really, though, it can also be used as a bit of a broader term, referring to valuables in the possession of a nation's royal family. In that case, you'd probably assume that the crown jewels are always kept behind lock and key, completely impossible to get at for anyone who isn't a mythical master thief.
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How Germany's Eulenburg Affair Helped Lead To WWI - Grunge

The generally accepted narrative of what started World War I is pretty universal. After all, ask just about anyone, and if they have any answer to give you about the cause of the First World War, it's probably something to the tune of "the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand." A Serbian national kills a visiting Austro-Hungarian noble, everyone starts pointing fingers at everyone else, and then all of a sudden, a world war breaks out. It makes sense.
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Opera Nazionale Balilla: Fascist Italy's Version Of The Hitler Youth - Grunge

Adolf Hitler. Nazis. Fascism. World War II. You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find someone who wasn't familiar with all of those terms. After all, it's tough to forget what was happening in Germany in the 1930s and '40s. However, when it comes to fascism in the early 20th century, Germany wasn't the only country embracing that ideology; for that matter, it wasn't even the first. For that, you'd have to look to Italy and its fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.
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The Worst Nuclear Disasters Throughout History - Grunge

When you hear talk of nuclear disasters – you know, the sorts of stories that often get used to warn people away from investing into nuclear energy – it's always the same ones that get mentioned. But there are more incidents involving nuclear power and radioactive sources than the forever-infamous explosion at Chernobyl, for example. It's not like every single brush with nuclear power leads to something being blown sky high, though.
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The Andretti Family Curse Explained - Grunge

When it comes to the world of motorsports, if there's just one name that you associate with the sport overall, there's a good chance that name is Andretti. And rightfully so. Mario Andretti is a bonafide legend in the racing world, having racked up accolades and wins across multiple different series, including IndyCar and Formula 1, and spawning a family full of race car drivers. But here's a bit of a strange fact: despite his fame and numerous trips to victory lane, there's one win that proved surprisingly elusive.
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Military Experiments That Sound Made Up, But Aren't - Grunge

When it comes to military research and experiments, there are a couple of different brands, so to speak. There's the devastating stuff, of course – the atomic bomb comes to mind, in this case. Then there's the disturbing stuff – the Cold War has plenty of that, even if you choose to discount the many, many times the CIA decided to dose unwitting subjects with hallucinogenic drugs. But then there's also the stuff that's just weird.
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The Disturbing History Of The Demon Core Nuclear Accidents - Grunge

Accidents Imagine a little sphere of metal, about 14 pounds in terms of weight and 3-and-a-half inches in diameter. Nothing too strange about that, right? Maybe that sphere of metal seems a bit denser than usual, but all of that sounds pretty harmless so far. Now, replace whatever metal you're thinking of with radioactive plutonium. Undoubtedly, that just changed a lot with regard to your mental image, didn't it?
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Messed Up Things That Happened During The Cold War - Grunge

When you hear "Cold War," what do you think of? Maybe it's the Space Race — Sputnik and the Moon landing and all of that. Maybe there's some thought of spies and espionage and sabotage. Or maybe it's just the looming threat of nuclear war and everything that would entail should the U.S. and the Soviet Union start firing nukes at each other. And, yeah, all of those things were part of the Cold War, but there's a lot more than just that.
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Famous Scientific Theories That Were Proven Wrong - Grunge

Science is a beautiful thing. It's this constant search for answers, for ways to explain what's going on in this wild world, for a better understanding of just about anything. Trying to learn about what's what in current scientific research is sometimes painfully mind-boggling, but it's also incredible that people are out there, coming up with these insane explanations for why things do what. But science isn't all about getting the answers right on the first try.