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Francisco Hernandez: The Coolest Explorer You've Never Heard Of
An illustration of a dragon, from Francisco Hernandez, "Nova plantarum, animalium et mineralium Mexicanorum historia", Rome, 1651. (All Photos: Courtesy the History of Science Collections, University...
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How Ferris Wheels Escaped the Fair And Became High-End Urban Attractions
The Pacific Wheel in Santa Monica. (Photo: Gaston Hinostroza/Flickr)The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 captured the imagination of the country; a city within a city was constructed to contain the event,...
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See Ravishing Photographs of Cuba Taken By Cuban Greats and Magnum Pros
Gilda Perez, Untitled, from the series La Habana, 1988. (Photo: © Gilda Perez/Courtesy of Lehigh University Art Galleries - Museum Operation)At a New Year’s Eve party in 1958, Magnum photographer Burt...
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How Book Designers Around the World Interpreted Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in...
Earlier this year, Amazon released the first episode of The Man In the High Castle, a series adapted from Philip K. Dick's classic 1962 novel of paranoia, espionage, and science fiction in a...
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FOUND: Mysterious Photos of Beautiful Women
Who is this? (Photo: Meagan Abell/Facebook)Who is the woman in this picture? Who took it? Where is she?Meagan Abell, a photographer herself, found the negatives of these images at a thrift store. "From...
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The History of Vending Machines Goes Back to the 1st Century
(Image: Courtesy Tedium)Vending machines are one of the few things keeping us away from the dream of a cashless society. The devices, which offer up an array of items for a little bit of pocket change,...
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Object of Intrigue: A Passport for Falcons
A blindfolded falcon ready to rack up some sweet frequent flier points. (Photo: yeowatzup on Flickr/Creative Commons)If you're boarding a flight to or from the United Arab Emirates and spot a...
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The Bizarre Tale of 'ISIS Book Club'
A museum in Aleppo, Syria. (Photo: © UNESCO/ Prof. Abdul Karim) The stash of books about ancient coins and Egyptian pyramids seemed to belong more in a 1950s library in Germany than on the back of a...
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FOUND: A Giant Mass of Glowing Squid Eggs
Off the coast of Turkey, divers found the ghost of a shape—translucent, dotted with spots of light. They were 22 feet deep, but the thing they had found was around 13 feet in diameter. It felt "very...
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Number One With A Bullet: The Rise of the Billboard Hot 100
A 1947 Billboard Jukebox Chart—one step on the road to Hot 100 greatness. (Image: Billboard)Say you want a three-minute break from work, something to help you kick back and forget about the world for...
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The Virgin Rainbow, The World's Finest Opal, Is About To Go On Display
(Photo: Courtesy of the South Australia Museum)Put together a team of your best bag men and cat burglars, because the world’s finest opal, the “Virgin Rainbow,” is about to go on display at the South...
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Beijing's Olympic Park is Now Full of Tiny, Technicolor Food Stalls
(All Photos: Anja Hitzenberger)The sign reads, “Say Goodbye to Ordinary French Fries!” Amid garish greens and yellows, deep fryers and drawings of potato slices on sticks, a fast food worker looks at...
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FOUND: Unusual Single-Litter California Mountain Lion Kittens
Meet P-44 (Image: NPS)Two spotted mountain lion kittens were found recently by the National Park Service, and these girls are fierce. Born in SoCal, a little bit north of Malibu about an hour apart,...
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The Almost Perfect World War II Plot To Bomb Japan With Bats
Mexican Free-tailed bats spill out of Bracken Cave in Texas. (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service)Imagine: a quiet, tense night in the middle of wartime. A plane rips through the air above your city,...
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Netball: The Sport America Invented, Then Lost
What is this not-quite-basketball sport they are playing? (Photo: VanninPhotos.com/Creative Commons)On Friday August 7th, teams of women from 16 nations will gather in Sydney to contest the 2015...
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FOUND: The Gates of Gath, Home of Goliath
The dig site (Image: Bar-Ilan University Expedition to Gath)At an archaeological site in Tel Tzafit National Park, archaeologists have uncovered a large gate that, they say, adds evidence that this...
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Investigation: Do Bears Get Drunk Off Rotting Fruit?
A black bear in Minnsota. (Photo: Critterbiz/shutterstock.com)We humans never seem to tire of stories about drunk animals—horses that topple into pools, birds that fly erratically, moose that get stuck...
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FOUND: A Plant that Can Make You Blind
If you see this plant, stay away. (Photo: Rüdiger Wölk/Creative Commons)A giant hogweed—a white-flowered plant that has the power to cause blindness in humans—has been found growing beside a road in...
View Article100 Wonders: The Middle Finger of Modernity
Once you are dead you have very little say about what happens to you next. When Lenin died he expected to be buried in a cemetery next to his mother, but mother Russia had other plans. Lenin's...
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