The world is more interesting than you think.
Unexpected facts, big ideas, and little discoveries. Find something that sparks your curiosity today.
A little more wonder
The 1953 computer creatures that evolved
In 1953, virologist Nils Aall Barricelli programmed digital organisms on Princeton's IAS computer to mutate, reproduce, and develop parasitic relationships—an…
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Matthew Parker's books preserve a quarter of surviving Old English manuscripts
The Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, holds around 40 Old English manuscripts among a collection of more than 600 manuscripts overall.…
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Lotte Reiniger built an animated world out of silhouettes
For The Adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926, Reiniger animated carefully cut figures against illuminated backgrounds. Layered staging created depth without…
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Kowloon Walled City's maze was replaced by a park
The densely packed enclave was demolished in 1993–94, and Kowloon Walled City Park opened on the site in 1995. Parts of its older history, including the…
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Tugan-Baranovsky blamed crashes on factory tools
Factories borrowed heavily for new equipment, then found they had built more than customers could buy. Tugan-Baranovsky saw the trouble in those idle…
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Agatha Christie experienced her own Orient Express delay
In 1931, storms and flooding stopped her train, and she described the journey in a letter to her husband. The disruption and fellow travelers helped feed…
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The ocean's mysterious Bloop came from breaking ice
Hydrophones thousands of kilometers apart recorded the powerful sound in 1997. Later monitoring near Antarctica connected noises of this kind to icequakes as…
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How Roman soldiers won the right to keep their loot
Roman law gave fathers control over their children’s property, but soldiers had a special escape hatch. Under peculium castrense, they could keep their…
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Gossip columnists practically governed Hollywood
With 35 million readers, her columns could help studios punish actors who crossed political or moral lines. Studios fed her exclusive rumors to keep their…
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America forgave old taxes to switch to pay-as-you-go
Moving to current-year income-tax collection risked making workers pay two years' taxes at once. The 1943 compromise forgave much of the overlapping liability…
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The animator who threw his life's work into the Seine
In 1892, Reynaud hand-painted hundreds of frames on gelatin squares for his Théâtre Optique and pioneered synchronized sound and projected animation. After…
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A sticker on your glasses can correct double vision
When the eyes point slightly differently, they can send the brain two images that don’t match. A thin Fresnel prism on the glasses bends light before it…
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The woman who directed Charlie Chaplin
Mabel Normand often directed her male co-stars, including a rookie Charlie Chaplin, during the Keystone comedy era. She also performed her own stunts, but her…
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Frozen’s snow tools helped investigate Dyatlov Pass
Researchers adapted snow-simulation methods used for Disney’s Frozen to test an avalanche explanation for the hikers’ deaths. Their model examined how a…
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Tenure track academics sanitized Kabbalah
Gershom Scholem helped establish Jewish mysticism as a subject of academic study, examining Lurianic Kabbalah’s trances, demonology, and cosmic ideas in…
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Roman women filled the streets over a dress law
Livy describes women lobbying for repeal of the Oppian law in 195 BC. It limited gold, colorful clothing and carriage use, restrictions introduced during war…
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Baby Peggy grew up to document the child-star world that used her
Diana Serra Cary became famous in silent films as a very young child, then later wrote about Hollywood and its young performers. Her adult work gave her a…
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When the FCC froze new TV stations for four years
The FCC froze new station licenses from 1948 to 1952 to sort out signal interference caused by its channel-allocation plan. Cities that already had stations…
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Two Swiss women drove from Geneva toward Kabul in 1939
Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Ella Maillart set out together in a Ford as Europe approached war. Their journey crossed countries by road rather than following a…
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The first global flight was a multi-day ordeal
Pan Am’s Flight 001 circled the globe, turning air travel into a grueling, multi-day journey for wealthy passengers.
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Victorian trains dropped carriages while moving
A guard released a special coupling and braked the detached coach as the locomotive carried on. The coach rolled into the station on its own, saving the main…
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The crystal symmetry that was called impossible
A quasicrystal follows a pattern without repeating the same basic tile over and over. Shechtman’s sample showed five-fold symmetry—a pattern ordinary…
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The highway built for Alaska's oil pipeline
The Dalton Highway was built to move workers and supplies during construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, then support its upkeep. It runs through remote,…
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Early movies gave audiences a train driver's view
For phantom rides, filmmakers mounted a camera at the front of a moving train. Tracks rushed toward the audience without an actor or narrator to explain the…
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