Vegetarian spider
Bagheera kiplingi is unique amongst spiders: it’s a vegetarian.
Month: July 2021
The Yellowstone loophole
Thanks to a loophole in United States law, it may be possible to murder someone in a small section of Yellowstone National Park and get away with it.
None of the above
In the 2018 mayoral election for Makassar, Indonesia, Munafri Afiruddin was the only candidate, won a quarter of a million votes, and lost.
The sound of hell
An urban legend from the late 1980s claimed that Soviet scientists had drilled so far down they hit hell – and brought back an audio recording of the suffering souls. But it was actually Baron Blood.
Featured category: Plants
Diamond-, copper- and gold-prospecting forests; the smallest tree in the world; the lost plant species that provided ancient Rome’s birth control (and our modern heart symbol); and the tree still defending itself against an extinct giant.
From the archives: Complete gibberish
Fake slang of the Seattle grunge scene, nonsense as a propaganda tool, the American accent as imagined by an Italian singer, and the ultimate expression of engineering technobabble.
Mathematical collective
Since 1939 an author named Nicolas Bourbaki has published a series of volumes on pure mathematics. But Bourbaki does not exist.
Underwater airport
At Barra Airport, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, you cannot land at high tide.
Feminist utopias
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw many feminist utopias that portrayed a society run by women: by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Irene Clyde, former New Zealand prime minister Julius Vogel, and the influential Bangladeshi author Begum Rokeya.
Left snail
The shells of almost all common garden snails coil to the right. Almost all.
First Olympic marathon
The first Olympic marathon was pretty wild: an Australian competitor collapsed and then punched a spectator, the third-place runner was disqualified for riding in a carriage, and a woman prevented from entering ran the same course the next day.
Featured category: Theatre
Ayn Rand’s choose-your-own-adventure play, the magician in the oven, the shortest play in history, and the cross-eyed kabuki pose.
From the archives: A bridge too far
The ingeniously twisted canal bridge; the first bridge of iron; the “bridge” to Sri Lanka; and folding, curling, tilting, swinging, and submerging bridges.
McDonald’s vs. H. R. Pufnstuf
The creators of the cult children’s TV show H. R. Pufnstuf once sued McDonald’s for plagiarism – and won big.
Dragon blood island
Socotra, the alien island wedged between the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden, is home to the dragon blood tree: a source of dye, paint, medicine, varnish, and magic.
The Generalist Academy 