The world is more interesting than you think.
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A little more wonder
Asteroid Amor defines the borders of platonic love
Differentiating from raw passion, this rock focuses strictly on pure, unconditional affection. It highlights how you show deep care without an ulterior…
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Pancreas sits entirely hidden behind the stomach pouch
Operating strictly from the shadows, this oddly shaped gland cowers completely behind your main digestive vat. Despite its shy placement, it aggressively…
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Why standing ovations have an ancient Roman name
Next time you feel peer-pressured to stand up for a mediocre high school play, blame the Romans. The 'ovatio' was a lesser triumph granted to generals, where…
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Whirling Dervishes spin to lose ego
Most people spin around rapidly just to get dizzy and fall over, but this specific tradition uses severe centrifugal force to fling away their personal…
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Discarded equine footwear replaced solid iron rings
Throwing heavy U-shaped metal at a stake is the result of ancient military budget cuts. The practice started exclusively because Roman soldiers could not…
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Gunther served 1,154 cups of coffee on Friends
Proof that you can be held captive by a group of narcissistic twenty-somethings for a decade and still remain tragically underpaid. Fans with way too much…
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Why holding a door can seem sexist in Sweden
Chivalry isn't dead, but it has definitely been updated. In highly egalitarian societies like Sweden, rushing to hold a door specifically because of gender…
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Tessellation puzzles have absolutely no fixed borders
By utilizing repeating geometric shapes, these puzzles can technically expand infinitely in any direction. They offer no corner pieces and no frame of…
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Ordinary table salt was viewed as the physical body
Your french fries are currently seasoned with the fundamental building block of physical reality. In a popular historical triad, salt was designated as the…
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Duodenum forcefully mixes stomach output with enzymes
The very first segment of the lower tract acts as a highly volatile chemical mixing chamber. It takes the aggressively toxic output from above and…
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Leap year babies receive weird app updates
Software developers notoriously forget to code for February 29th, causing astrology apps to crash or skip days entirely. Leap year babies are routinely…
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The diet drink made from horns and hooves
The infamous Prolinn diet promised miracle weight loss through a highly processed liquid supplement. It was actually formulated from discarded slaughterhouse…
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Why Janissaries overturned their cooking pots
When the Ottoman Empire's most elite infantry unit was unhappy with their salary, they didn't write a strongly worded letter. Instead, they would drag their…
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Why friendly fire doesn't hurt your allies
You can happily launch a tactical strike directly onto your allies, and they will simply shrug off the blast without so much as a scorched eyebrow.
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Nekomata flaunt distinctly split feline tails
When your cat gets extremely old, it allegedly grows a second tail and learns how to start fires. A step above the basic two-legged cat monster, the Nekomata…
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Screws hold things together by converting rotation to push
A screw is literally just an inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder. When you twist it, those spiraling threads dig into the wood and mechanically pull the…
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Zosimos claimed his esoteric recipes came from weird dreams
'It came to me in a dream' has never been a valid scientific citation. This early Greek practitioner documented incredibly elaborate and somewhat disturbing…
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Emanuel Swedenborg tracked his sneeze patterns
Gesundheit essentially means spiritual breakthrough. Emanuel Swedenborg actually maintained a detailed diary of his sneezing fits, convinced they were direct…
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Gold objects centralize your entire personal focus
There is a profoundly esoteric reason people obsess over this metal. Astrological doctrine dictates that gold forcefully organizes your surrounding energy…
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How supercomputers can heat people's homes
Server farms are just incredibly loud, expensive radiators. Rather than venting the astronomical heat generated by processing massive data, facilities in…
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Air elements easily detach from highly emotional situations
Tears and shouting are messy concepts they prefer to watch from a safe distance. If someone starts crying, they will physically float away rather than provide…
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How one contestant broke split-or-steal
Prisoner's dilemma theory met its match on a British game show. When faced with the choice to split or steal the prize money, one contestant promised to steal…
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Tarmac pathways are strictly mapped for safety
When walking from the terminal to a tiny commuter plane, wandering off the heavily painted white lines is completely forbidden. Stepping even a few feet away…
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Shigetaka Kurita created the original set of one hundred seventy six emojis in the year 1999
The downfall of written language started on a tiny 12x12 pixel grid. Working for a Japanese telecom company, Kurita designed the first rudimentary emojis to…
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