Some of the tools and contraptions you have used every day have been around longer than your great-great-great-grandparents. The ancients had some ideas so perfect that even now, nobody has thought of a better way to do it. Here are ancient inventions you didn't realize we still use today.
Read MoreIn 1689, Johann Weikhard von Valvasor went to press with astonishing news: he'd found baby dragons in Slovenia. Von Valvasor was describing an olm, a species of highly specialized salamanders which live in the cave formations in Eastern Europe. And friend, they're weird to the bone.
Read MoreWe live in an age of role reversals, where traditional domestic and workplace norms are rapidly shifting to accommodate cultural changes. Now we may also be living in an age of rapid pole reversals -- because scientists are reporting the Earth's magnetic poles are shifting faster than ever, via MNN.
Read MoreThe atlas moth is sort of the Andre the Giant of the moth community. It's a remarkable species with a wingspan that can reach nearly thirty centimeters, or large enough to make anyone shudder when imagining what it would feel like to have one crawl across their face. Here is its tragic life's tale.
Read MoreWho knows why you're hellbent on nabbing the world's biggest flower? Maybe you need to apologize to your significant other for making the world's biggest mistake. But here it is. Meet Rafflesia arnoldii, heavyweight champion of the world of flowers.
Read MoreChances are if you just searched "Mediterranean booty" or "Roman jugs," you weren't expecting to read about one of the largest Roman shipwrecks ever discovered. But much like the discovery itself, it's a story worth diving into and exploring.
Read MoreOdiferous underarms, moldy cheese feet, rancid roadkill and acrid eggs -- there's a lot of stank out there, and generally we want nothing to do with it. But now scientists have identified one of the stinkiest molecules of all as a sign of potential alien life.
Read MoreBack in 1992, as most people tell it, a woman ordered a hot coffee at McDonald's, spilled it, and suffered some minor burns — only to turn around, sue the popular chain restaurant, and get rich. In reality? That is the version of the story that the McDonald's PR team has taught you.
Read MoreOutlaw Jesse James attained a folkloric air through a series of brutal robberies and gunfights across the midwest. But there's a bullet out there for every cop killing racist bandit from the 1800s, and James found his on April 3rd, 1882, when it came out of the front of his face.
Read MoreEvery name has a meaning, no matter how silly it might be, and dog names — while certainly a lot more fun and varied than human ones — are no exception. Here are the meanings behind the most popular dog names.
Read MoreWhen you're Leonardo da Vinci and one of your inventions is a helicopter, it seems strange that your most enduring creation is a tiny painting. Then again, Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous artwork in history, so maybe he isn't spinning in his grave. The thing is, who exactly is Mona Lisa?
Read MoreSometimes a musician's downfall can be traced back to a single, catastrophic incident that burns all of their bridges at once.
Read MoreOne spider that doesn't seem to freak out arachnophobes is the daddy long-legs. Who couldn't love a critter with a cute name like that? Big Daddy! Despite their towering, spindly legs, there's something about them that's less creepy-crawly than an ordinary spider. Because they aren't spiders at all.
Read MoreFreediving is a competitive sport with different variations on the theme of going dangerously deep underwater without oxygen. "No limits" freediving is the discipline where the record for the deepest free dive ever done by a human was set, and boy was it deep.
Read MoreCornered, outgunned, wounded, and hopeless, it seems likely that two of the last legends of the Old West -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- refused to be taken alive, opting instead to die on their own terms. Or did they?
Read MoreIn 2019 alone, the California Academy of Sciences announced the discovery of 71 new species. Some of these animals have insane abilities, some are masters of disguise, while others are just plain weirdos. Here are the most bizarre creatures discovered in 2019.
Read MoreAmazon's forthcoming The Lord of the Rings TV Series is seeking "'hairy hairy people" with 'wrinkles and lots of them please' to play orcs in the new show," according to the Independent.
Read MoreTwenty people -- that's how many were executed in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Nineteen of them were hanged, per Famous Trials, and the other "was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges." Here's the real reason the Salem Witch Trials happened.
Read MoreWhile there will never be another Beethoven, a group of musicologists and programmers has been training artificial intelligence to complete his unfinished tenth symphony.
Read MoreThe Purge is kind of a goofy concept, but hey, enough of the movie-watching public has bought into the concept (in movie form, at least) that we're several movies and a TV series deep. But c'mon ... let's use our brains here. Here are dumb things in the Purge movies people just ignored.
Read MoreA high-end copy machine nowadays can produce prints with as many as 9600 by 600 dots per inch. With that caliber of printing prowess you might ask yourself "why don't I buy a ream of mint green stationery, shove a few sawbucks in the Xerox, and photocopy me some money?" Read what happens first.
Read MorePaige was the WWE's "Anti-Diva:" A pale, skinny goth girl whose rocker garb and unassuming attitude challenged the company's long-standing tradition of buxom, glittery female wrestlers who looked like cheerleaders. What made Paige quit her sport? What made her retire from the WWE?
Read MoreEveryone knows Windows XP is the pinnacle of Bill Gates' operating systems. It all just worked. Perhaps this is why 18 years after it was released, and long after it has stopped being supported, Windows XP is still Vladimir Putin's OS of choice.
Read MoreThere's another painting that looks an awful lot like the Mona Lisa residing in the Louvre. It's known as the 'Isleworth Mona Lisa' to some, and 'Earlier Mona Lisa' to others -- and some experts think that it might be da Vinci's early attempt at what would become the most famous painting in history.
Read MoreAs Macedonia's king and a consummate world-beater, Alexander the Great portrayed himself as an "invincible god," according to Livius, though he might not have believed it himself. Here's how Alexander the Great really died.
Read MoreOn March 5th, 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died in his country home near Kuntsevo. If you were looking for a satisfying explanation of the details surrounding his passing, that's as good a place as any to stop reading, because heads up, the rest of the story just sort of keeps getting weirder.
Read MoreWorld War II combined the height of human ingenuity with the lowest point of human nature. The Allied forces showed a MacGyver-like inventiveness in their attempts to outfox the Axis Powers. In one the craziest operations of all, British spies devised exploding rodents to sabotage Nazi factories.
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