Comic Scrabble
The French comic publishing house L’Association made a game that plays like Scrabble – except that it uses comic panels instead of letters.
Cats of Islam
Cats hold a special place in Islam, reaching back as far as Muhammad’s own love of the animals.
Knockout mice
How do you work out the function of a specific gene? Knock them out one by one and see what happens.
Earth’s shadow
That band of deep blue in the sky opposite a sunrise or sunset? It’s the shadow of the planet.
City ziggurat garden
Fukuoka, Japan, is home to an iconic ziggurat-like building topped by a dozen roof garden steps.
Ghost lights
On a theatre stage in the middle of the night, one light remains lit. It’s there to appease old ghosts… or prevent accidents that would make new ghosts.
Human letters
In 1909 two suffragettes mailed themselves to the the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Pope vs. khan
In 1245 CE a letter from Pope Innocent IV travelled 7000km to Güyük Khan (Genghis’ grandson) demanding peace. The letter back from the Great Khan was… not friendly.
Second human in orbit
Yuri Gagarin may have been the first person to orbit the Earth in space, but Gherman Titov was the first to orbit the Earth more than once, the first to pilot a spacecraft, and the first to throw up in space.
Binational island
Île des Faisans is part of France from February to July only. Isla de los Faisanes is part of Spain from August to January only. They’re the same island.
Government hair
Between 2004 and 2005 the North Korean television show Common Sense ran a propaganda series titled Let’s Trim our Hair in Accordance with the Socialist Lifestyle.
Law vs. tenement
The latter half of the 19th century saw an arms race between New York City legislators and the builders of slum-like tenements. The battleground: windows and fresh air.
Update 4
Time for another round of updates!
On categories of knowledge
Any attempt to categorise knowledge inevitably reinforces our cultural and epistemological biases. And nowhere is this demonstrated better than the absurd taxonomy of animals created by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Undisputed dog
Dogs diverged genetically from wolves between 20 and 40 millennia ago. But the first specimen that is indisputably a dog was found in a German quarry and dates back 14,200 years.
