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Isaac Newton is widely celebrated for discovering gravity and inventing calculus, but he actually wrote more than a million words on the secretive, mystical art of alchemy,…
Isaac Newton is widely celebrated for discovering gravity and inventing calculus, but he actually wrote more than a million words on the secretive, mystical…
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Some remote Soviet navigation beacons ran on heat from radioactive decay.
Some remote Soviet navigation beacons ran on heat from radioactive decay. Thermoelectric generators converted that heat into electricity without a reactor or…
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Grigori Grabovoi, a highly controversial Russian mystic, managed to build a massive, lucrative following by aggressively claiming he could instantly cure terminal diseases and…
Grigori Grabovoi, a highly controversial Russian mystic, managed to build a massive, lucrative following by aggressively claiming he could instantly cure…
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San Francisco went through a bizarre, localized crime wave in the early 2010s where gangs of vandals started physically lifting and tipping over parked Smart cars in the middle of the night.
San Francisco went through a bizarre, localized crime wave in the early 2010s where gangs of vandals started physically lifting and tipping over parked Smart…
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Giving high accuracy ratings to personality descriptions that are supposedly tailored specifically to you, but are actually vague enough to apply to a wide range of people, is known as the Forer effect.
Giving high accuracy ratings to personality descriptions that are supposedly tailored specifically to you, but are actually vague enough to apply to a wide…
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Guatemala's land reform collided with a fruit empire and the Cold War.
Guatemala's land reform collided with a fruit empire and the Cold War. President Jacobo Árbenz's redistribution of unused land threatened United Fruit's…
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Used car prices spiked so aggressively during the pandemic supply chain crisis that slightly driven, pre-owned vehicles were actually selling for thousands of dollars more than…
Used car prices spiked so aggressively during the pandemic supply chain crisis that slightly driven, pre-owned vehicles were actually selling for thousands of…
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Armpit bacteria help turn sweat into body odor.
Armpit bacteria help turn sweat into body odor. Fresh secretions provide compounds that microbes on the skin can break down into smelly molecules. The…
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Forgetting information that can easily be found online using internet search engines is a modern memory phenomenon known as the Google effect or digital amnesia.
Forgetting information that can easily be found online using internet search engines is a modern memory phenomenon known as the Google effect or digital…
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Commercial Boeing 747 aircraft consume roughly one gallon of jet fuel every single second during a standard cruising altitude flight.
Commercial Boeing 747 aircraft consume roughly one gallon of jet fuel every single second during a standard cruising altitude flight. The 747’s engines burn…
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Autocorrect software was originally developed by Microsoft engineer Dean Hachamovitch in the 1990s as a helpful glossary feature to instantly fix common spelling mistakes in Word.
Autocorrect software was originally developed by Microsoft engineer Dean Hachamovitch in the 1990s as a helpful glossary feature to instantly fix common…
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John Patrick Bowman successfully popularized the modern system of matching baggage tags to passenger tickets in the nineteenth century, completely revolutionizing how the railway industry handled lost luggage.
John Patrick Bowman successfully popularized the modern system of matching baggage tags to passenger tickets in the nineteenth century, completely…
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Mad Max's onscreen hostility had an uncomfortable offscreen counterpart.
Mad Max's onscreen hostility had an uncomfortable offscreen counterpart. In Kyle Buchanan's oral history of Fury Road, cast and crew described serious…
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Pope John Paul II was officially gifted the four-hundredth Ferrari Enzo ever built, making the leader of the Catholic Church the proud owner of an extremely aggressive Italian supercar.
Pope John Paul II was officially gifted the four-hundredth Ferrari Enzo ever built, making the leader of the Catholic Church the proud owner of an extremely…
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An Oregon fungus is bigger than the mushrooms you can see by thousands of acres.
An Oregon fungus is bigger than the mushrooms you can see by thousands of acres. A vast Armillaria individual in Malheur National Forest covers about 2,385…
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A swimming center carries Harold Holt's name.
A swimming center carries Harold Holt's name. The Australian prime minister disappeared while swimming in 1967 and was later officially found to have drowned.…
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Season tickets helped put daily work beyond walking distance.
Season tickets helped put daily work beyond walking distance. A discounted regular rail journey made it practical for more people to live away from the place…
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John Quincy Adams took his exercise in the Potomac.
John Quincy Adams took his exercise in the Potomac. The president was known for early-morning swimming without clothes, treating the river as part of his…
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Cold water can switch on your body's alarm before you decide to react.
Cold water can switch on your body's alarm before you decide to react. Sudden immersion can trigger a gasp, rapid breathing, and a rise in heart rate as the…
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P.D.
P.D. Ouspensky was a brilliant Russian mathematician who became so incredibly frustrated with his eccentric mystic guru that he stormed off to start his own…
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Empedocles was an ancient Greek philosopher and self-proclaimed mystic who genuinely believed he was an immortal god, a theory he famously tested by dramatically throwing himself into an active volcano.
Empedocles was an ancient Greek philosopher and self-proclaimed mystic who genuinely believed he was an immortal god, a theory he famously tested by…
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Apple actually created a digital camera way back in 1994 called the QuickTake, and it was an absolute disaster that looked like a weird pair of futuristic binoculars.
Apple actually created a digital camera way back in 1994 called the QuickTake, and it was an absolute disaster that looked like a weird pair of futuristic…
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Fire ants can split sleep into hundreds of tiny naps.
Fire ants can split sleep into hundreds of tiny naps. In an artificial-nest study, workers averaged about 253 sleep episodes a day, each roughly a minute…
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Your eyes restrain immune reactions to protect delicate tissue.
Your eyes restrain immune reactions to protect delicate tissue. Barriers limit what enters, and local signals help control inflammation. That restraint…
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