Clam, 405, is Oldest Animal Ever

The record-breaking shellfish, 31 years older than the previous oldest animal, another clam, was caught last year… More

Trichopterae

An unusual artistic collaboration between the French artist Hubert Duprat and a group of caddis fly larvae… More

Dayton Man, Famous for Diary, Remembered

Among other accomplishments, the Rev. Robert Shields kept possibly the world’s longest diary… More …Previously

Hobo Nickels

Using little more than a pen-knife, Depression-era drifters painstakingly altered the extremely hard Buffalo nickels…. More

Mystery of Singing Sands

One of the strangest tales of the desert happens to be true… More

The Shadow Goes

Can shadows move faster than light? … More

Treed Fish

Birds live in trees, fish live in water. The trouble is, no one bothered to tell the mangrove killifish… More

Remember This

AJ remembers every day of her life. EP remembers only his most recent thought. The best and worst memories in the world… More

Face Off

What do an executed prisoner from Texas, a former UN official, and an eccentric Cornish aristocrat have in common? They’ve all had their death masks made by sculptor Nick Reynolds… More

Stereo Sue

Oliver Sacks reflects on the wonders of stereoscopic vision, and a case of regained stereoscopic sight…More

When a ‘Duplicate’ Family Moves In

Sufferers from Capgras Syndrome believe their families have been replaced by inexact duplicates… More

Next Stop Wonderland

The Musée Patamécanique, a curious art institution in Bristol, RI… More

Is Napoleon’s Death Mask a Masquerade?

The wrong face graces the emperor’s tomb in Les Invalides, French amateur historian says… More … Previously

Got Arachnophobia? Here’s Your Worst Nightmare

The discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists… More

Mystery of the Prehistoric Stone Balls

Why should hundreds of perfectly shaped spheres, ranging in diameter from a few inches to eight feet, be scattered through the jungles southwestern Costa Rica? … More … Previously

New Pig-faced Lady Portrait

Jan Bondeson shares a recently discovered image of a pig-faced lady from a most fortuitous source… More

The Pearl of Allah

The giant clam yielded its treasure only after slaying a native diver trapped when its great jaws snapped shut. Worshipped as the gift of Allah, the 14-pound pearl was finally presented to the author by a Mohammedan chief whose son he saved from death… More

Staying Awake by Switching Brain Hemispheres

How new sleep-deprivation record holder Tony Wright tells altered his brain chemistry… More … Previously

How Does a Human Calculator Do It?

Alexis Lemaire has broken the record for finding the 13th root of a 200-digit number. How?… More … Previously … Also

I Ropebot

This astonishing idea raised some intriguing questions: was da Vinci influenced by an earlier design? And if so, how far back in history can we trace programmable robots?…More











