Welcome! This website is meant to be informative and entertaining, with the added bonus that money generated by ads on this site go to children’s charities. So visit often because more traffic means more facts for you and more money for kids!
Stated facts are linked and/or cited to what the editors consider reputable and reliable sources. Most facts are cited to multiple sources, but may not be when one source is uniquely authoritative (such as an artist describing his or her own work or product history from its manufacturer). Visitors are always encouraged to dig deeper on any given topic, particularly when authoring their own research on a topic.
Though our universe brims with fascinating information, this site focuses on the relatively familiar and accessible. Hence, a topic such as intriguing geochemistry on some distant asteroid, for example, wouldn’t appear on this site, only because it is not “everyday” to most people who don’t study exogeology.
This site is intended for visitors age 18 or older, but only because there are occasional references to adult topics or use of adult language.
Facts themselves cannot be copyrighted, but the site creator retains copyright to the site’s layout and prose. All images are used with the permission of the photographers under an open source license, and those talented artists are much thanked for their work.
This site is not associated with nor related to the 2006 book “Origin of Everyday Things,” edited by Think Books, nor the 2016 book “Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things” by Charles Panati. Any similarity between this site and those books, besides presenting the background of commonplace things, is purely coincidental.
Every backstory has a backstory, and all context has more context. The facts here are brief and bite-sized, but please research further if you’re inspired! Also, you can develop or comment on any facts in the feedback page, just keep it clean and friendly.
Many other websites are also dedicated to facts and background, so visitors are encouraged to visit todayifoundout.com, snopes.com, mentalfloss.com, straightdope.com, wordhistories.net, wisegeek.com, atlasobscura.com, the blessed standby wikipedia.com, to get more facty fill-ups. Thanks for visiting and we hope you enjoy the site.
You can email the site creators at originofeveryday@gmail.com.
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Learned Something, LLC is the owner and manager of this website.