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Fleeting Wonders: A Vlogging Gorilla
The Ugandan mountain gorilla, imploring you to go easy in the comments section. (Image: YouTube video screenshot)Somewhere in the mountain forests of Uganda is a three-year-old ape with a flair for...
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Why Does the Australian Flag Still Have a Union Jack?
Canada's flag, pre maple leaf. (Photo: Josh Graciano/Creative Commons)When the British Empire established dominion over half the world, the Union Jack became a ubiquitous presence. Whether flown as a...
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FOUND: A GoPro That Went to the Edge of Space And Got Lost for Two Years
What the GoPro saw (Photo: chanmnb/Imgur)In June 2013, after months of planning, five friends launched a GoPro to the edge of space. They attached the camera to a weather balloon, along with a phone...
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Kim Davis, William Franklin, And Others Who Picked The Wrong Revolution
Men gather outside the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters in 1911. (Image: Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress Public Domain)This morning—having spent the past week hopping between a...
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Fleeting Wonders: A Meeting of the Secret International Tortoise Assembly?
A member of the Pattenburg Volunteer Fire Company posing with Sulley, finally found a mile from home. (Photo: the Pattenburg Volunteer Fire Company)It was a busy weekend in the tortoise world, with not...
View ArticleWhat Miracles Have You Seen?
We know some weird things have happened to you, dear reader. Please tell us some stories! Description below. Loading...
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In 500 Years, the Sierras' Stores of Snow Have Never Been This Low
The Sierra Nevadas (Photo: François B. Lanoë/Nature Climate Change)As if there needed to be one more sign that man-made climate change is making the world a very different place to live, a new study...
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The Duke, the Landscape Architect and the World's Most Ambitious Attempt to...
Last fall, a hand-picked group of the world's top theoretical physicists received an invitation to a conference about the multiverse, a subject to which many of them had devoted the majority of their...
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Lydia Locke, the Turn of the Century Opera Singer With a Soap Opera Life
Lydia Locke, Turn of the Century Scandal Factory (All newspaper clipping images courtesy of Jim Logan and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery)Getting married seven times is a little excessive—especially when...
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FOUND: Who Does This Dennis the Menace Statue Belong To?
Whose Dennis the Menace is this? (Photo: City of Monterey)All the way back in 1956, Hank Ketcham, the creator of Dennis the Menace, helped establish a playground in Monterey, California, that riffed on...
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Fleeting Wonders: NASA Says Astropoop Turns Into Shooting Stars
Image via NASAUntil March 2016, when you wish upon a star, you may actually be wishing on Scott Kelly's feces.NASA has released a new infographic with handy facts about astronaut Scott Kelly's...
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See Avant-Garde Soviet Bus Shelters Before They Disappear
Disputed region of Abkhazia Pitsunda. (All photos: Christopher Herwig) When photographer Christopher Herwig challenged himself to shoot at least one “interesting” image per hour hour during a cycling...
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A Short History of Area 51's Shady Expansion
Area 51 keeps growing... (Image: Google Maps)Area 51, everyone’s favorite military test site turned alien conspiracy theorist hub, is growing—whether its neighbors like it or not.The Associated Press...
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Fleeting Wonders: Emu On The Lam In New Hampshire
Some emus in Australia, where they are supposed to live. (Photo: djpmapleferryman/Flickr)Police in Bow, New Hampshire are tracking down a feathery fugitive.For several days, the station has fielded...
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The Perpetually Dying Art Of The Small-Town Obituary
(All illustrations by Matt Lubchansky)After graduating from journalism school, I took a job at a tiny local paper in Northern California. I didn’t know this until I got there, but this paper was one of...
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The Victorian Traderess Who Battled Colonialism and Crocodiles in Africa
Mary Kingsley, perhaps the most fashion forward early explorer. (Photo: Courtesy of The Victorian Web)Explorer, trader, and anthropologist Mary Henrietta Kingsley was once saved from a grisly death by...
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When Treasure Hunting is the Family Business
Shipwreck haul. (Photo: Courtesy of Booty Salvage.)Not everyone wants to go into the family business. The world is littered with the children of tailors or lawyers or insurance agents who want to break...
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Take a Grand Tour of the World's Great Tattoos
A Hindu deity (Photo: Tang Ping/World Atlas of Tattoo)A Grand Tour of Tattooing, hitting all the highlights, might start in New York and end in Montreal. But in between, it would circle the world.You'd...
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Why Can’t We Get Rid of the 7-Day Week?
The almighty calendar. (Photo: Joe Lanman/Flickr)In general, units of time can be divided into two categories. One category contains the units that measure something objective and observable, typically...
View ArticleFleeting Wonders: A Thrilling Killer Whale Chase Caught on Camera
When you think of action-packed cinematic chase scenes, they don't usually involve a pod of killer whales and a motorboat helmed by two frightened fishermen.Well, here's a new spin on the genre. As the...
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