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
Fallout's West Virginia map became a tourism ad
The game’s map is accurate enough that real-world tourism boards used it in promotional campaigns, despite its post-apocalyptic setting.
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Radical sects conducted church services entirely nude
The Adamites believed original sin was a mistake and that nudity could restore the innocence of Eden, so they held their religious services without clothes.
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Thousands of recognized priests worship The Big Lebowski
Inspired by the slacker in a ’90s movie, the legally recognized Church of the Latter-Day Dude has hundreds of thousands of ordained priests. Its laid-back…
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Demographics show a massive boom in girls trips
A girls’ trip offers something a group chat can’t: hours of shared time, new places, and stories that belong to the people who were there. Traveling together…
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Link has to deliver a meal made of rock
In Breath of the Wild's A Brother's Roast quest, Link carries a Rock Roast back for the exhausted Goron Gonguron. Once fed, Gonguron resumes digging and…
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Persona 5 lets a burger challenge build Guts
The Big Bang Burger challenge connects an absurdly large meal with the protagonist's social statistics. A routine visit to a fast-food restaurant becomes part…
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The beaver that grew as large as a bear
A bear-sized beaver sounds ready to fell trees, but its teeth tell a quieter story. They were broad and blunt, unlike the sharp chisels modern beavers use to…
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The giant flightless bird that lived in the desert
The bird’s enormous size and inability to fly are clear; how it managed life in an ancient Egyptian desert is not. Paleontologists are still trying to connect…
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Auguste Comte created a totally secular religion for humanity
He rejected traditional religion but built a godless “religion of humanity,” complete with secular cathedrals, scientific saints, and a calendar honoring…
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Why crossing your arms can help you persist
Crossing your arms can make a hard task feel like something you’re physically gearing up to do. In experiments, people who crossed their arms persisted longer…
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The eggplant emoji shares a standard with hieroglyphics
The Unicode standard defines both emoji and characters for ancient scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform, letting devices represent them…
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Some homes come with a slide beside the stairs
A slide beside the stairs gives children a faster route downstairs—and gives parents a reason to remind them that stairs exist. The smooth chute turns a trip…
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Right-to-left overrides flip text backwards
A Unicode right-to-left override character can make following English text display backward, a trick sometimes used to disguise digital text.
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Why one sickle-cell gene can help fight malaria
One copy of the altered hemoglobin gene changes red blood cells in a way that can make malaria harder for the parasite to thrive in. That offers some…
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Antibodies clump invaders together like a net
An antibody’s two arms can latch onto targets on different microbes, linking them into a clump. That makes the invaders easier for other immune defenses to…
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North America once had several kinds of giant camel
Fossils record a succession of giant camel relatives, including Titanotylopus in what is now Nebraska. A Smithsonian study identified seven giant-camel genera…
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Why nobles built fake ruins in their gardens
Nobles wanted the romance of an ancient ruin without waiting for one to crumble, so they built sham castles and temples among their manicured lawns. It was…
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Facebook is now a digital retirement community
It began as an exclusive network for college students, but its user base has aged; local-news debates and inspirational quotes are now familiar sights in the…
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The prehistoric mammal with a tank-like shell
Picture a Volkswagen Beetle-sized mammal wearing a dome of solid bone. Some Glyptodons added armored tails, leaving much of the animal protected from front to…
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Sumo wrestlers lived on massive high protein stews
The stew combines meat, tofu, and vegetables in calorie-dense portions, and wrestlers often sleep after eating.
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Some bacteriophages look like microscopic lunar landers
A tailed bacteriophage attaches to a bacterium and delivers genetic material through its tail. The cell can then be commandeered to produce more viruses. The…
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Beekeepers really do mail entire colonies
Beekeepers ship worker bees in ventilated boxes with a caged queen, giving a new hive its starter population. The postal service delivers the package; the…
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Kingdom Hearts menus change colors based on your location
The command menu changes its colors and style to match the Disney world you're visiting.
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A wedding veil was once an outfit for the whole bridal party
V&A fashion records show bridesmaids and guests wearing veils in the 1830s too. Matching clothing could emphasize the group surrounding and protecting the…
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