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Thwaites Glacier, in West Antarctica, is roughly the size of Florida. This glacier alone contributes four percent of the global rise in sea levels, and if it melted completely oceans would be 65cm higher – hence its alternative name, the Doomsday Glacier.
The pyramid of Amanishakheto stood for nearly two thousand years, until an Italian looter blew it up.
Bagheera kiplingi is unique amongst spiders: it’s a vegetarian.
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.
In the 2018 mayoral election for Makassar, Indonesia, Munafri Afiruddin was the only candidate, won a quarter of a million votes, and lost.
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.
Since 1939 an author named Nicolas Bourbaki has published a series of volumes on pure mathematics. But Bourbaki does not exist.
At Barra Airport, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, you cannot land at high tide.
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.
The shells of almost all common garden snails coil to the right. Almost all.
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.
The creators of the cult children’s TV show H. R. Pufnstuf once sued McDonald’s for plagiarism – and won big.
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.
In 1969, Honduras and El Salvador went to war while their football teams faced off in a World Cup qualifier.
The famed Romantic poet Thomas Gray wrote a verse about his friend’s cat drowning in a goldfish bowl. [2 of 2]
Cat poetry has a long history: Christopher Smart wrote a Romantic religious poem featuring his cat Jeoffry while confined in a mental asylum in the 1760s. [1 of 2]
The Generalist Academy 