Largest cemetery
Wadi al-Salaam, the Valley of Peace, in Iraq is the largest cemetery in the world; more than five million people are buried there.
Category: Arts & recreation
The knights’ painting
The famed Baroque artist Caravaggio painted his masterwork while on the run from Rome, as an accused murderer and a Knight of Malta. When the knights expelled him from the order, they did so beneath that same painting.
Nose tomb
The Mimizuka monument in Kyoto, Japan, is full of Korean noses. It is a hanazuka, a nose tomb.
Dance notes
Music notation gives you a record of exactly how to play a piece of music. But how do you write a record of a dance?
Town under one roof
Almost the entire population of Whittier, Alaska, lives in a single building.
Calypso queen
From 1939 until 1977, the winner of the annual Trinidad calypso competition was crowned the Calypso King. In 1978 Calypso Rose won the title, so they had to change the name.
Statue graveyards
When politicians’ historical crimes catch up with them, what happens to their statues?
The blob from the stars
The 1958 horror film The Blob was inspired by a real event in 1950: a close encounter between four police officers and a star jelly.
Animal helmets
The Vikings may not have worn horned helmets, but the ancient Greeks had helmets covered in boar tusks and the Dayak of Borneo had helmets covered in fish or pangolin scales.
Who was the real Betty Boop?
A 1932 lawsuit attempted to answer the question “who was the real Betty Boop?”
Siberian monstrators
When is a protest not a protest? In Russia, when it’s a performance art parody of a protest. But that still didn’t stop the Russian government from overreacting.
Da Vinci’s fractal trees
Leonardo da Vinci observed that tree branches together are always as thick as the trunk beneath them. This is true, and there are some good ideas why.
Big remade
Naani is a 2004 Telugu remake of the Tom Hanks film Big. I gotta tell you, though… it gets weird.
The Salt Cathedral
The Salt Cathedral lies 200 metres below the surface of Zipaquirá, Colombia.
November 22, 1963
John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis all died the same day. The following day, Doctor Who premiered.
Fart battle
The He-Gassen scroll of Edo period Japan depicts an epic battle… of farts.
The Generalist Academy 