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
Pac-Man has a perfect score because the game eventually breaks.
Pac-Man has a perfect score because the game eventually breaks. A flawless arcade run collects every available point through the reachable stages, ending at…
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Darwin recognized an important bird after it had become dinner.
Darwin recognized an important bird after it had become dinner. During the Beagle voyage, a small rhea was cooked before Darwin realized it might be the…
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Park rangers at the Grand Canyon have to constantly rescue tourists who blatantly ignore warnings and attempt to hike all the way down to the river and back up in a single day,…
Park rangers at the Grand Canyon have to constantly rescue tourists who blatantly ignore warnings and attempt to hike all the way down to the river and back…
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Boxer8 launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for the Ouya, an open-source Android gaming console that raised over eight million dollars on the promise of revolutionizing the…
Boxer8 launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for the Ouya, an open-source Android gaming console that raised over eight million dollars on the promise of…
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Mapping the surface of Mars and the Moon has been done in far greater detail than mapping the bottom of our own oceans on Earth.
Mapping the surface of Mars and the Moon has been done in far greater detail than mapping the bottom of our own oceans on Earth. Satellites can spot broad…
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Blaring car alarms are statistically useless at preventing auto theft and exist primarily as a massive noise nuisance for everyone living in the immediate area.
Blaring car alarms are statistically useless at preventing auto theft and exist primarily as a massive noise nuisance for everyone living in the immediate…
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Shigeru Miyamoto and his team revolutionized 3D gaming with Super Mario 64, but navigating the new dimension required an entirely new mechanic, leading to the creation of Lakitu…
Shigeru Miyamoto and his team revolutionized 3D gaming with Super Mario 64, but navigating the new dimension required an entirely new mechanic, leading to the…
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Putting seat belts in cars came years before making people wear them.
Putting seat belts in cars came years before making people wear them. New U.S. passenger cars were equipped with belts well before New York enacted the first…
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A sweat-soaked shirt is a cooling system at work.
A sweat-soaked shirt is a cooling system at work. Evaporating water carries heat away from your skin. Sweat can contain traces of many substances, but their…
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Sloths get rope bridges so they don't have to cross roads on the ground.
Sloths get rope bridges so they don't have to cross roads on the ground. A gap in the treetops can force a sloth into a slow, exposed crawl through traffic…
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Freight train horns are federally mandated to be ear-shatteringly loud specifically because drivers keep ignoring flashing lights and getting obliterated on the tracks.
Freight train horns are federally mandated to be ear-shatteringly loud specifically because drivers keep ignoring flashing lights and getting obliterated on…
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Justus von Liebig accidentally created the massive modern bouillon cube industry because he was desperately trying to figure out what to do with mountains of rotting cow flesh!
Justus von Liebig accidentally created the massive modern bouillon cube industry because he was desperately trying to figure out what to do with mountains of…
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The original N-Gage hid its game slot behind the battery.
The original N-Gage hid its game slot behind the battery. Changing a game on Nokia's 2003 phone-console meant opening the device and removing the battery.…
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Tuvalu's two-letter internet code became an export.
Tuvalu's two-letter internet code became an export. The country was assigned .tv, a domain ending valuable to broadcasters and video businesses far beyond its…
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Fairy rings are naturally occurring circles of mushrooms that pop up in forests and lawns, but European mystics were absolutely convinced they were portals to dangerous magical realms.
Fairy rings are naturally occurring circles of mushrooms that pop up in forests and lawns, but European mystics were absolutely convinced they were portals to…
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Filling potholes with temporary asphalt patches is a Sisyphean bureaucratic ritual that structurally guarantees the road will crumble again in a few months.
Filling potholes with temporary asphalt patches is a Sisyphean bureaucratic ritual that structurally guarantees the road will crumble again in a few months. A…
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Etymology of the word disaster traces back to the ancient Greek and Latin roots dis meaning bad and aster meaning star, literally translating to an ill-starred event; before we…
Etymology of the word disaster traces back to the ancient Greek and Latin roots dis meaning bad and aster meaning star, literally translating to an…
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Human hearts will literally reshape themselves and thicken their muscular walls to cope with the relentless strain of chronic high blood pressure.
Human hearts will literally reshape themselves and thicken their muscular walls to cope with the relentless strain of chronic high blood pressure. The left…
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Blizzard's release of StarCraft in 1998 triggered such a massive cultural phenomenon in South Korea that it basically birthed the entire concept of modern esports, complete with…
Blizzard's release of StarCraft in 1998 triggered such a massive cultural phenomenon in South Korea that it basically birthed the entire concept of modern…
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Cruise-ship fins fight the roll one movement at a time.
Cruise-ship fins fight the roll one movement at a time. Sensors track the ship's motion, and stabilizer fins adjust their angle in the water to produce forces…
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Super Bowl XLIX halftime show famously featured a backup dancer in a giant shark costume who completely forgot the choreography and just wildly flailed his fins on live television alongside Katy Perry.
Super Bowl XLIX halftime show famously featured a backup dancer in a giant shark costume who completely forgot the choreography and just wildly flailed his…
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Greek Magical Papyri is a massive collection of spells, rituals, and curses from Greco-Roman Egypt that reveals ancient magic was mostly just petty squabbles and aggressive dating tactics.
Greek Magical Papyri is a massive collection of spells, rituals, and curses from Greco-Roman Egypt that reveals ancient magic was mostly just petty squabbles…
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Haruspicy was the highly respected ancient Etruscan and Roman religious practice of predicting the future by aggressively inspecting the freshly removed livers of sacrificed sheep.
Haruspicy was the highly respected ancient Etruscan and Roman religious practice of predicting the future by aggressively inspecting the freshly removed…
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A scientist drank bacteria to test a theory about stomach disease.
A scientist drank bacteria to test a theory about stomach disease. In 1984 Barry Marshall swallowed a culture of Helicobacter pylori and developed gastritis.…
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