The ant in the devil’s garden
Within the extraordinary biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest lie circles of a single tree species – the devil’s gardens. And these pockets of uniformity are created by ants.
Month: September 2021
First joker
Although playing cards in Europe date back to the 14th century, Samuel Hart printed the first joker in 1863.
Llama berserkers
According to animal breeders you should avoid bottle-feeding baby llamas, because when they grow up they might go berserk.
Featured category: 21st century history
Politicians courting the violent fringe, the first mammal casualty of climate change, the largest free trade agreement in the world, and the phantom serial killer of Heilbronn.
From the archives: Old cloth
The oldest surviving carpet, the oldest surviving shoe, prehistoric proto-knitting, and the earliest evidence of clothing.
Cosmic ladder (Part 2)
To measure distances in deep space, you need to look for candles in the darkness. [2 of 2]
Cosmic ladder (Part 1)
It’s a lot more difficult to measure distances in space than you might think. [1 of 2]
The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom
In 2004, in response to an Australian law defining marriage as between a man and a woman only, a group of activists declared independence and raised a rainbow flag over the Coral Sea Islands.
Multilingual tautologies
What do the River Avon, the Gobi Desert, and the La Brea Tar Pits have in common? Redundancy.
Match king of Sweden
In 1930 the Swedish match magnate Ivar Kreuger negotiated a legal monopoly with Germany; it lasted for fifty three years.
Featured category: South America
Colombian Nadaists; the tomb-raiders whose blackmail returned Eva Perón’s body to Argentina; the 40,000km-long Incan road network; and why the largest national park, and the largest rainforest, in the European Union is in South America.
From the archives: Unlikely conflicts
History’s most unlikely conflicts: horses vs. ships, Manuel Noriega vs. The Clash, a jet fighter vs. a New Jersey intermediate school, and that time the Irish invaded Canada.
The Salt Cathedral
The Salt Cathedral lies 200 metres below the surface of Zipaquirá, Colombia.
Castaway cache
Between 1867 and 1927 the New Zealand government built, supplied, and maintained a set of supply huts on islands in the Southern Ocean so that no more castaways would starve to death while waiting for rescue.
Largest bell
The Tsar Bell in Moscow is the largest extant bell in the world – but it has never been rung.
The Generalist Academy 