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
Pixiu stubbornly eats pure gold but lacks an anus
In Chinese legend, Pixiu is a winged, lionlike beast that eats gold, silver and jewels but has no anus, so its treasure stays inside. The creature symbolizes…
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A medieval king became the villain of a joke about God's design
A hostile chronicle written decades after Alfonso X's death claimed he would have improved creation if God had consulted him. Later retellings turned the…
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Tearing a dollar bill does not make two fifty cent pieces
The 51% rule means more than half the bill must remain for it to count. Otherwise, someone could present each half separately and try to claim the bill’s…
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Mydoom made infected computers recruit the next victims
The 2004 worm searched infected machines for email addresses and mailed copies of itself onward. One variant also launched a denial-of-service attack against…
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Neptune heavily influences your sleep and dreams
Astrology links Neptune with deep sleep and dreams, where its hazy influence is said to blur reality into softer illusions.
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A tiny website can still be useful to an attacker
Automated scans can look for vulnerable software without caring whether a site has a large audience. A compromised server can host malicious content or supply…
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Croft Manor's locked doors helped sell a house you could barely explore
Level designer Heather Gibson described the original manor as a training area and said many closed doors were there to make it feel realistic, not to hide…
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The gruesome cowpox trick that inspired vaccination
The gamble was that cowpox, a milder infection, could protect people against deadly smallpox. Doctors introduced material from cowpox blisters through cuts in…
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Why distance makes harming others easier
When the person affected is far away, the consequences are easier to imagine as an abstract outcome than as someone’s pain. Distance removes the face and the…
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Your bladder holds less than you think
Your bladder holds roughly a pint, but it doesn’t wait until it’s full to speak up. Nerves in its wall keep sending updates as it stretches, so urgency can…
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Upanishads summarize all existence into three obscure words
“Tat Tvam Asi” means “thou art that,” equating the individual self with ultimate reality in just three words.
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Earthing practices require walking barefoot on raw dirt
Earthing advocates say wired bedsheets connect sleepers to Earth's electrons, supposedly mimicking barefoot contact with the ground.
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An airline sick bag also took photo-processing orders
SFO Museum preserves a TWA airsickness bag printed with both a gin-rummy scorecard and a film-processing order form. The same disposable object could help…
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Early trains sometimes left their steam engine at the station
On steep sections such as the approach out of London's Euston, a stationary engine could haul carriages using a rope. The heavy power source stayed put while…
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The Bastille key Lafayette sent to Washington
Lafayette sent the key to George Washington as a token of liberty, and it still hangs in the hallway at Mount Vernon.
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Why parmesan cheese can smell like vomit
When fats break down, they can produce butyric acid, a compound found in both Parmesan and vomit. But smell comes from a whole mixture of compounds, not one…
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Why high-refresh screens make scrolling smoother
A 60 Hz screen refreshes 60 times a second; 120 or 180 Hz screens show frames more often, so motion and scrolling look smoother. That can make dragging…
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Believing nobody can see you in a crowd
Some practitioners believe they can become unnoticed in crowds by drawing their “energetic field” inward. Usually, others are just politely ignoring them.
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Bill Gates helped write a game about dodging a donkey
DONKEY.BAS put a car on a simple road and made the player avoid a donkey by changing lanes. Gates and Neil Konzen wrote it for the early IBM PC era. Before…
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Obama was gifted The Witcher 2—and never played it
In 2011, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave Obama the game as a showcase of CD Projekt Red, a source of national pride in Poland. Obama later said he…
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Nurses round birth times to nearest five
Nurses may round recorded birth times to the nearest five or 10 minutes while prioritizing medical care, leaving astrology charts based on exact times less…
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The original IBM PC had less memory than a photo
The 1981 base model had just 16 kilobytes of RAM; a single low-resolution JPEG meme could take three to four times that much.
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A tag match can make reaching your own corner the whole story
One partner fights while the other waits to be tagged in. Keeping an opponent away from that corner turns a small stretch of ring into a dramatic obstacle.…
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Correspondent banks act as middlemen for global funds
If your bank has no direct route to the bank receiving your international payment, another bank can carry it along. The transfer may pass through several…
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