Danish Protest Pigs It’s no revelation that the history of Europe is complex. The countries we see today are just the latest configuration of a jigsaw puzzle that has altered shapes and piece totals over thousands of years. If anything, today’s map is relatively uncomplicated compared to centuries past, before nation-states existed and tiny kingdoms, […]
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Lava-Fired Pizza Objectively, a top-five human creation is the pizza. It helps when one of the constituent parts is also an all-timer, the wheel of the culinary world, a miraculous building block: bread. Whoever figured out, accidental or not, how to create bread is one of the greatest humans to have ever lived. Paired with
Mistletoe “the Yule clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe, with its white berries, hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.” — Washington Irving, Christmas Eve One of the strangest Christmas traditions I recall learning as I grew up was both ubiquitous and absent. The notion of kissing under
The Mad Hatterpillar In 1820, Washington Irving popularized the character of the Headless Horseman, a ghost who terrorizes the countryside looking for his missing head. Though the myth reaches farther into time – Irish folklore, for example, features the Dullahan (“dark man”) who carries his head by horseback – Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hallow destined this character
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Skeleton Lake In northern India, the world’s 23rd-highest peak – Nanda Devi – is surrounded by an eponymous national park. In Hinduism, Nanda Devi is a manifestation of the utmost goddess of the religion, Parvati. Nanda Devi means “Bliss-Giving Goddess.” Looking at this imperious mountain, one can see why the deity and this rock were paired. Nanda
Spontaneous Hay Bale Combustion Many people declare autumn their favorite season. With its colorful leaves, jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin spice, costumes, and crisp weather, what’s not to love? Lurking in the background of many Halloween landscapes are seemingly innocuous rectangular prisms or cylinders. Sitting in fields along country roads, providing seats for tractor rides at pumpkin patches, outlining mazes at fall festivals,
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Vampire Squid From Hell “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” — William Beebe We refer to space as the final frontier, but, for large stretches of human history, the oceans presented a challenge beyond our comprehension. These scary bodies perplexed us in two dimensions:
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The Fastest Human-Made Object “Many years later, when I was in Baikonur, the subject of Russia being the first to launch something into space came up. I did not raise my hand to add to the discussion, though I thought about doing so.” — Robert Brownlee What is the fastest object ever crafted by humans? If
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Rainbow Ghost Planes After the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the human viewpoint of Earth radically shifted. No longer were we mere stargazers, now we could watch what happened at home from a lofty viewpoint. Since the first satellite hit space, we have enhanced our abilities to gaze downward to astonishing levels. Governments and militaries
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Fighter Planes Shooting Themselves Down Son, I’m sorry, they got us. — Henry Jones, Sr. If Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade can serve as a real-world guide, the perils of a dogfighter circa World War II stretched beyond incoming fire from the enemy. Gunners had to make sure they didn’t imperil their own craft, too. More modern (and
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