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In the eastern woodlands of the Canadian North, there lives—in the chill of the air and in the fearful whispers of the local people—the wendigo, a horrendous creature of evil with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. There is only one thing the locals fear more than being eaten by the wendigo—becoming one.
You’ve seen him roar—the iconic Leo, MGM’s fabled Lion. Yet, his tale remains mostly untold. From Hollywood’s hushed beginnings, through its golden era and beyond, meet the eight Leos who’ve taken turns roaring into our hearts.
The story of how blow-up dolls came to be is a fascinating one. It is a story of cotton, straw, and rubber, a story of loneliness, pent-up sexual frustration, and unrequited incestual desires. It is also, perhaps, the only story that links 17th-century European sailors, fin de siècleAustrian bohemians, the Nazi Party—and Barbie!
For more than two centuries, young Italian boys were castrated to preserve their pre-pubescent singing voices. They became hotly sought-after in church choirs and operas around Europe. This is the story of the castrato singers.
Coconut crabs are fascinating creatures: the largest terrestrial arthropods, they are an apex predator with an insect-like sense of smell, and a lifespan of over a hundred years! Oh, yes, they may also have to do something with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
If spiders give you the willies, wait till you hear about parasitic wasps: they are the stuff spider nightmares are made of! Some of these wasps—such as the newly discovered Zatypota sp. wasp—lay their eggs on a spider’s back. And that’s just the beginning! The true horror begins only after the eggs hatch.
Before there was Clint Eastwood, John Wayne or even Gene Autry, there was another screen legend who epitomized the American West: Tom Mix, the original “King of Cowboys.” This is the story of the man behind the legend.
You’d think that, given their name, Mexican jumping beans would be beans, but they are not; they are actually hollow seeds. Strictly speaking, they do not jump either. But they do roll, and they do twist and turn—and all due to a fascinating little creature which lives inside them!
Until just recently, there lay, inside the Enjuin Temple in Asakuchi, Japan, one of the most intriguing mummies in the world. It was not of an ancient human or an animal, but of something in between, something which should ostensibly exist only in legend: a mermaid.
Every English student knows The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic satire of the social mores of 18th-century British gentry. What fewer people know is the model Pope used: Alessandro Tassoni’s 1622 masterpiece, La secchia rapita. Its subject is quite an unusual historical event—a 14th-century war fought over a stolen bucket!
The Ancient Egyptians were the first to use perfumes, but it wasn’t until 1888 that the first commercial deodorant hit the shelves. For decades it was just a niche product until a genius ad campaign made it a necessity in the early 1920s. Now, it seems like we can’t go a day without wearing the stuff!
In the words of celebrated neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, the Euthanasia Coaster—essentially, a 2010 quasi-kinetic sculpture—is “not fun at all as art, and is preposterous as a technical device. But it does work as provocation, regardless of intent.” And the intent? A death-themed amusement park.
In 2021, a Maine photographer was flabbergasted to unearth a feline enigma: her kitten, seemingly afflicted, was a rare jewel—Lykoi, the elusive Wolf Cat. A name mirroring its mystery, wait till you learn of its canine-like tendencies!
In 1932, tens of thousands of World War I veterans peacefully converged on Washington to demand cash bonuses they weren’t scheduled to receive for another 13 years. What they got instead was a violent clash with the US Army. This can happen here. It already did.
Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, the GI Bill of Rights was designed to provide federal benefits for returning World War II veterans. It gave them the opportunity to attend college and get low-interest loans to buy homes; it gave the country something more: hope and dreams of equality.
Once a waste product of the automobile industry, fordite—which is pretty much a fancy name for hardened car paint slag—is now a treasured material among jewelry makers and lapidary artists. It’s just too beautiful not to be.
If you’ve ever watched the movie Interstellar, that final scene, at Cooper Station, happens in an O’Neill cylinder. First envisioned by a Princeton professor and his undergraduate students in 1974, it was recently popularized as our preferred way to colonize space. Jeff Bezos fully endorses that statement.
In 1974, British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking predicted that, owing to quantum effects, black holes must constantly emit a small amount of radiation, which should eventually cause them to evaporate—entirely! It turns out he was right.
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