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A Guy in Austria Tried to Enter a Court Building With a Jar of Roaches

The Associated Press, which was founded over 170 years ago and has won 52 Pulitzer Prizes in its illustrious history, reported Wednesday that a man in Linz, Austria, tried to bring a "sack full" of...

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The Tragedy of Newcomb Mott, Who Thought He Could Walk Into Soviet Russia

When Newcomb Mott flew into the small airport in Kirkenes, Norway, in 1965, nothing had ever truly gone wrong in his life.He was 27 and tall (over six feet), with notably red hair (though it was...

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Schoolchildren in Scotland Gave Their Goldfish a Viking Funeral

Two goldfish given flaming Viking burial boat send off by Orkney primary schoolchildren https://t.co/Qde08SY7AEpic.twitter.com/uy120swxDI— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) March 1, 2017Most people...

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Found: Hundreds of Minerals That Only Exist Because of Humans

There are more than 5,000 minerals in the world—naturally occurring chemical compounds that are stable at room temperature and have a unique chemical formula. But, as Scientific American reports,...

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'Da Kine,' Hawaii's Fantastically Flexible All-Purpose Noun

After I wrote about “jawn,” the all-purpose noun that’s embedded in the culture of Philadelphia, I started getting emails telling me about a similar, and maybe even wilder, term native to a small group...

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This Unborn Baby's Ultrasound Is Extremely Metal

The Ahlin family, of Santaquin, Utah, isn't sure what they're going to name their new baby. They don't know the baby's hair color or eye color, and they've chosen not to ask about their biological...

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A Tolkien Truther From Colorado Says He's the Real King of England

We may never get to see the uproarious hijinks of 1991’s comedy classic, King Ralph, but, thankfully, reality is often stranger than fiction. Take, for example, a Colorado man who believes that the...

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The Many Secrets of the World's Spookiest Trees

Dwarf beech trees are not ordinary trees. Found in a forest near Reims, France, in the summer they look like green igloos, or large turtles, or something out of The Little Prince. But instead of hiding...

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A Single Mouse Grounded a Plane in London

Yesterday, around 10:40 a.m. local time at London's Heathrow Airport, a British Airways flight to San Francisco was grounded for around four hours after the plane's crew announced there was a mouse on...

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Some Turkeys, a Dead Cat, and a Lot of Turkey Experts

Nature is full of mystery, but none are as compelling at this very moment than why these turkeys are circling a dead cat.As seen in a recently released video that has been spreading across the internet...

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When Bowling Was a Sport Reserved for Royalty

King Henry VIII may be most famous for ruthlessly beheading his wives, but he was also keen on rolling other spherical objects: namely, bowling balls. Henry VIII and his courtiers were known to be fans...

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Found: Recipes From 1793 for Calves' Heads and Pigs' Feet

In 1887, the Parsons family donated their private collection of books to Downside Abbey, a Benedictine monastery occupied since 1814 by a community of monks founded in 1606. For many years, the abbey’s...

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A Self-Assured Swedish Cat Just Came Home After Nine Years Away

Missing cat returns home after NINE years https://t.co/eejYKGzpFOв Швеции потерявшейся кот обнаружился спустя 9 лет https://t.co/IhO77BWM6bpic.twitter.com/w2Nd8tGELq— WZor (@WZorNET) March 3, 2017In...

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The Scandalous Flap Books of 16th-Century Venice

Imagine you were a rich European in the 16th century, and you wanted to travel. Top on your bucket list might be Venice, a cosmopolitan, free-wheeling city, known for its diversity, romance, and...

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Pumped-Up Politics at the Greater Scranton YMCA

"All politics is local" is a political cliché at this point, used by politicians, pundits, and journalists, among other hacks, to mean something like "I don't quite understand what I'm talking about...

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Living in Marley, the Town That Doesn't Exist

You can address a letter to Marley, Illinois. You can check into Marley, Illinois on Facebook. You can say you live in Marley, Illinois and locals will know exactly where you reside. But Marley,...

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The Art—and Anger—of Japanese Internment Camp Silk Screeners

In the late 1930s, Michihiko Wada—Mike to his friends and family—graduated from the University of Redlands, in California, and headed east to study engineering. Wada, a slim man with an easy smile,...

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Found: 600,000 Illicit Eels at Heathrow Airport

Passenger 'tried to smuggle 600,000 endangered live eels onto plane' https://t.co/gznygqLixLpic.twitter.com/XILMrRTj8V— Evening Standard (@standardnews) March 3, 2017Border agents at London’s Heathrow...

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Why Ancient Greek Temples Were Full of Disembodied Clay Limbs

In ancient Greece, guys with STDs didn’t have a ton of options when it came to medical treatments. Sick people often had no recourse other than to appeal to Asclepius, god of health and medicine....

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This Tree Burned From the Inside Thanks to Lightning

Over 7.6 million people have "liked" The Weather Channel's Facebook page, which, as far as brand accomplishments go, isn't bad. But all those millions aren't coming for a daily forecast, they're coming...

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