Buffalo racing
Kambala is a race with a difference: the winner may not be decided directly on speed, but rather on how high they can kick up water.
Author: The Generalist
I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and am curious about most things.
School bus kidnapping
In 1976, twenty-six children riding in a California school bus were kidnapped at gunpoint and hidden inside a truck that was buried in a quarry. Twenty-seven hours later, after sixteen hours underground, they escaped.
Featured category: Mathematics & statistics
The largest number; how to build your own magic square; why a gambler should believe in God; and proof that 0.999… is equal to 1.
Space weather
When the solar wind hits the Earth, it can set off space storms, space hurricanes, and even space tornadoes.
American samurai colony
In 1869, some samurai and their families set up a colony in California. Although it only lasted two years, it was the first permanent Japanese settlement in the United States.
Featured category: Europe
The mosque in the middle of the Parthenon; the book smugglers of Russian-occupied Lithuania; the fake-real bridges of the Euro banknotes; and the time Da Vinci and Machiavelli conspired to steal a river.
Stats 3
This website is three years old today.
Most and least popular birthdays
In the English-speaking world, more people are born in September than any other month of the year; the least popular birthdays (outside of leap days) are around Christmas, New Year, and other public holidays.
Viking sunstone
The Vikings navigated by the position of the sun. But what did they do when it was cloudy?
The scientists of Mars
When asked why we have no proof of extraterrestrial life, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard joked that Martians were already among us… they just called themselves Hungarians.
First piano
The arpicembalo (harp-harpsichord) of Bartolomeo Cristofori could play notes both loud and quiet, which the harpsichord could not. It was the first piano.
The Phony King of England
Disney’s Robin Hood features a song about the “Phony King of England.” That song is based on an old (and very bawdy) English folk ballad about “The Bastard King of England.”
Buried film history
In 1978 a cache of five hundred film reels was discovered under an ice rink in Dawson City, Yukon. These buried reels included the only copy of films that had been lost for decades.
Featured category: Ancient history
The Roman measurement of a human lifetime; the extinct species of gibbon we know only from a Chinese noblewoman’s tomb; how Pompey the Great was defeated by maddening honey; and the treasure map in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
From the archives: Renaissance art
One of the few female artists of the Italian Renaissance; the Mona Lisa with and without a moustache; why the Sistine Chapel ceiling has green shadows; and the Inquisition vs. a Last Supper painting with drunken Germans, dogs, parrots, and dwarfs.
Pierced buildings
A highway goes directly through the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan; a monorail line goes directly through an apartment block in Chongqing, China.