Why we owe food regulation to a 19th-Century chemist who poisoned his colleagues
Try to imagine twelve fine young men sat around a fine dinner table with a fine white tablecloth and fine silver settings, with their bow ties rested at their chins […]
Tunguska Event: the mystery that puzzled scientists for almost 100 years
A huge mysterious blast rocked eastern Siberia on this day, June 30, 1908, leaving millions of trees lying on the ground, mostly pointing in the same direction, over an area […]
Do cicadas know mathematics?
You know what 2020 is missing? An invasion of trillions of screaming cicadas after 17 years underground! Yes, seriously. 2020 is the year of “Brood IX”, a horde of more […]
#April 10, 1633: The day bananas made their debut in England
Among scientists, Thomas Johnson is known as “the father of British field botany”. But, more confidentially, he is celebrated as the first man to sell bananas in England. Born in […]
The “anomalous” burial of a child in a 5th century Umbrian cemetery
Lugnano in Teverina is a small village, located in the region of central Italy Umbria, surrounded by green hills that descend towards the valley of the Tiber river. At the […]
536 AD: the never-ending winter of the worst year in history
If you ask medieval historian Michael McCormick of the University of Harvard what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer. Not 1349, when the Black […]
Edward Leedskalnin and the mysteries of Coral Castle
Coral Castle is one of the most visited places in Florida and is the most modern monolithic complex in the world, made with calcareous oolite. Commonly mistakenly believed to be […]
Kola Superdeep Borehole: 12 Km towards the Earth’s core
Someone said that the human beings knows more about certain distant galaxies than it does about the ground that lies beneath its very feet. In fact, while it took the […]
Point Nemo: the most remote place on Earth, and Space Vehicles cemetery
People often vaguely refer to “the middle of nowhere,” but as it turns out, scientists have actually figured out precisely where that point is. Point Nemo, the most remote location […]
“Sokushinbutsu”: the self-mummification ritual and the myth of non-death
Although the Japanese climate is not exactly conducive to mummification, somehow a group of Buddhist monks from the Shingon sect discovered a way to mummify themselves through rigorous ascetic training […]
21 grams: the experiment that measured the weight of the Soul
It was 1901, and Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts, thought of measuring the weight of the soul, intrinsically proving its existence. According to him, at the moment of […]
Tacoma Narrows Bridge: the most popular non-fatal engineering disaster in U.S. history~
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge at the time was the third-longest suspension bridge behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the George Washington Bridge, and was opened on July 1, 1940. A […]
The cyanometer that measure the blueness of the sky in Ljubljana centre
Cyanometers have been color-coding the sky since the late 18th century, however Martin Bricelj Baraga’s sculpture adds a really modern twist. Located in the center of Ljubljana, Slovenia, the monolithic […]