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Category: Health & medicine

By The Generalist Posted on May 24, 2022May 23, 2022

Impostor cells

Biomedical research uses immortal cell lines such as HeLa to test treatments and examine biological mechanisms. But sometimes those cell lines are not what everyone thought: they have been invaded.

Categories: Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on March 23, 2022March 24, 2022

Rabbit starvation and polar bear poisoning

If you happen to be living out in the wilderness, don’t rely on a diet of rabbit meat, and definitely don’t eat polar bear livers.

Categories: Animals, Early modern history, Food & agriculture, Health & medicine, The poles
By The Generalist Posted on February 26, 2022February 25, 2022

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.

Categories: Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on February 15, 2022February 14, 2022

Constipation Blues

The blues music genre at its core is about hardship, oppression, and suffering. But it took Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to sing about that real pain down inside.

Categories: 20th century history, Health & medicine, Music, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on January 17, 2022January 16, 2022

Original sin immunity

The first time you get sick with a virus can affect how your body responds to that virus for the rest of your life.

Categories: Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on January 5, 2022January 2, 2022

Don’t forget to breathe

People with central hypoventilation syndrome, also known as Ondine’s curse, can forget to breathe.

Categories: 19th century history, 20th century history, Europe, Health & medicine, Literature, Theatre
Blood
By The Generalist Posted on December 15, 2021December 14, 2021

Human blood type systems

Your blood type is most commonly defined by two systems: ABO (blood types A, B, AB, and O) and Rh (+ or -). But these aren’t the only systems; there are more than thirty others.

Categories: Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on December 1, 2021November 30, 2021

Sentinel chickens

Specially designated “sentinel chickens” allow health officials to track the emergence of infectious diseases like West Nile virus amongst human populations.

Categories: Animals, Health & medicine, North & Central America, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on November 4, 2021November 3, 2021

Will Rogers paradox

Someone (not Will Rogers) once joked that “When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states.” This quirk of statistics has some surprising implications for cancer survival rates.

Categories: Health & medicine, Mathematics & statistics
By The Generalist Posted on October 20, 2021October 19, 2021

Let the buyer beware of magic stones

The famous legal phrase caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) entered common law because of a 17th century dispute over a magic bezoar stone.

Categories: Animals, Early modern history, Europe, Health & medicine, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on October 6, 2021October 3, 2021

The last smallpox survivor

In October 1977, Ali Maow Maalin was the last person to contract naturally occurring smallpox. He died thirty six years later while coordinating a polio vaccination drive.

Categories: 20th century history, Africa, Health & medicine
Norwegian cow
By The Generalist Posted on September 24, 2021September 23, 2021

Cow magnets

If you’re a bovine veterinarian, one of the tools in your arsenal might be the cow magnet.

Categories: Animals, Health & medicine, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on August 6, 2021August 4, 2021

Chimeric parents

During a child support dispute in 2002, a DNA test seemed to show that a mother was not the parent of her own biological children. The truth was stranger than anyone expected.

Categories: 21st century history, Health & medicine, North & Central America, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on July 6, 2021July 5, 2021

Left snail

The shells of almost all common garden snails coil to the right. Almost all.

Categories: 21st century history, Animals, Europe, Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on July 1, 2021June 30, 2021

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.

Categories: Ancient history, Health & medicine, Middle East, Plants
By The Generalist Posted on May 14, 2021May 14, 2021

Fatal television

An episode of the 1970s television series The Goodies killed a man. He died laughing.

Categories: 20th century history, Europe, Film & television, Health & medicine

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