The world is more interesting than you think.
Unexpected facts, big ideas, and little discoveries. Find something that sparks your curiosity today.
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The Brink's-Mat gold was melted to hide where it came from
After the 1983 robbery, stolen bullion was melted and mixed with copper before resale. Changing the form and purity helped blur the link between recognizable…
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Why beer pong cups are filled with water
The cups hold water for the game, while players drink from a separate can instead of consuming liquid a ping-pong ball may have touched.
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Why sitting formally can make your legs go numb
The seiza posture means kneeling with your weight on your heels and your back straight. Holding it for about ten minutes can leave your legs numb.
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Your keyboard can carry a microbial trace of you
In a 2010 study, researchers compared bacteria on people's fingertips with bacteria left on their keyboards and computer mice. The communities were similar…
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Why your best friend’s looks can feel threatening
A gorgeous stranger is easy to admire and move past. A gorgeous best friend is harder: closeness makes the comparison personal, and their good looks can…
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Blind individuals experience highly sensory nightmares
Nightmares can still be frightening without visual imagery: they may be experienced through sound and touch instead.
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Lamingtons are sponge cakes covered in chocolate coconut
The cake was reportedly invented to use up stale sponge: squares were dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in coconut.
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Why Electronic Arts made its own game cartridges
To avoid hefty royalties, EA reverse-engineered its hardware partner's console and made its own bulky, yellow-tabbed cartridges, prompting a compromise.
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Street pianos turn passersby into an audience
Luke Jerram's Play Me, I'm Yours began with 15 pianos around Birmingham in 2008, free for anyone to use. Communities played and decorated them; the instrument…
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Libra energy mandates constantly rearranging furniture
In astrology's Libra stereotype, decorating is never done: a new idea can send someone sliding a sofa around at dawn to see how the light falls.
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Automatic transmission fluid is heavily dyed bright red
The red dye makes transmission fluid easy to spot under a car and easy to distinguish from other fluids. A bright puddle points mechanics toward the right…
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The billion-dollar bank heist that used three taxis
The order came hours before the 2003 bombing began: load a billion dollars in $100 bills into three waiting taxis. Iraq’s dictator sent his son to the Central…
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Ancient Athens chose officials by lottery
To limit the advantage of wealthy or charismatic candidates, Athenians used a stone device called a kleroterion to assign citizens to public offices at…
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In Elder Scrolls Online, the witness is part of the crime
Stealing where nobody sees you can spare you a bounty. Let someone catch you, and the same action becomes a problem with the guards. The justice system makes…
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Why Hubble was denied a Nobel Prize
The Nobel committee didn’t consider astronomy an eligible branch of physics at the time. Hubble could discover that the universe was expanding and still fall…
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The companies that exist mainly to hide their owners
Some companies have no office, staff or physical business to point to; they exist on paper. That makes it harder to find the real people who own them.
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First commercial graphical web browser was called Mosaic and it fundamentally popularized surfing the internet in 1993
It let images sit alongside text, making web pages far more visual than the text-heavy pages early users were used to.
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The Soviet Union outlived itself in a web address
The .su domain was assigned before the USSR dissolved, and it continued to exist afterward. Internet identifiers have their own administrative histories,…
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Creed Bratton’s real life was stranger than The Office
The writers drew on Bratton’s real past as a member of the rock band The Grass Roots, deciding his life was stranger than anything they could invent.
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A lawsuit can silence a critic without ever winning
A journalist or activist can be buried in legal bills without the plaintiff ever needing to win. These defamation claims use the cost of defending a lawsuit…
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Garnet is widely used to make sandpaper
Its hardness and low cost make crushed garnet useful as an abrasive in industrial sandpaper.
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Council members in Tuszyn discussed Winnie-the-Pooh as a playground mascot, then objected to his clothing and ambiguous sex. A recording of the discussion…
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The rubber tiles that help submarines evade sonar
Rubber tiles with tiny cavities absorb sound instead of bouncing it back like a hard hull. That muffles the submarine’s own noise and weakens sonar…
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How your fist-sized stomach makes room for a feast
When your stomach is empty, deep folds in its lining are tucked in. As food and liquid arrive, those folds unfold, letting the stomach expand far beyond its…
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