Damn Interesting

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Science, history, psychology, and technology since 2005.

Made by humans.

Original 1948 patent for

A Possible Future

An attempt to secure the future of the site, with an unfortunate quantity of moist metaphors.

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Twenty

The authors, editors, illustrators, and podcasters of Damn Interesting mark the 20th year (so far) of making interesting stuff.

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Aerial photograph of Bellewstown racecourse.

There Once Was a Man Called Curley

A would-be priest's audacious plan to win his money back from the bookmakers.

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Omiword, a Word Game

Introducing Omiword, a free daily word puzzle from the makers of Damn Interesting.

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P.S. 110, ca. 1903.

Much Ado About Adenoids

The largest and strangest riot in New York City’s history.

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A Trail Gone Cold

Against the odds, a tiny Icelandic town speaks of a local Black ancestor. Geneticists and historians combine forces to uncover the man’s eventful life.

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Breaking a Bit

After a rough August, we're taking a much needed break. In the meantime here is a word game we made.

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Giving the Bird the Bird

A Brief Note From an Ex-X User.

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Journey to the Invisible Planet

The tangled history of humanity’s search for the solar system’s uncharted planets.

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A portrait of Chief Joseph.

From Where the Sun Now Stands

When the U.S. Army came for their land in 1877, the Nez Perce tribe complied. But tensions boiled over, and Chief Joseph led as they ran for their lives.

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A view of Bali

The Ancient Order of Bali

In 1970s Bali, a sudden rice crisis prompted an unexpectedly far-reaching scientific discovery.

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This is Dang Interesting

To whom it may concern, we now have a (mostly) profanity-free mirror site.

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Young Maurice Wilson in uniform.

Lofty Ambitions

In 1933, British WWI vet Maurice Wilson hatched an unorthodox plan to reach the still-untouched summit of Everest.

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Men in straw boaters.

The Rube’s Dilemma

A great pitcher’s great temptation.

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Artur Alves Reis.

Devouring the Heart of Portugal

In 1924 a bankrupt businessman in Portugal launched an audacious international scheme to become one of the wealthiest men in the world.

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Mount St. Helens ca. 1979.

The Mount St. Helens Trespasser

Robert Rogers, a man obsessed with trespassing, sets his sights on Mount St. Helens in the spring of 1980.

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Simon Wiesenthal ca. 1963.

Hunting For Kobyla

The true story of a runaway Nazi, a determined sleuth, and a chase around the world.

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Artist

The Unceasing Cessna Hacienda

In 1958, one heavily modified airplane flew out of Las Vegas with a single objective: Don’t land.

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Du Yuesheng.

The Kingpin of Shanghai

From the depths of poverty, Du Yuesheng rose through Shanghai’s underworld to become one of the most influential, and overlooked, figures in modern China.

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To Hell With Facebook

The earliest known version of the idiom "the straw that broke the camel's back" was written by the English philosophe...

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Posted by Alan Bellows
The Sun as a bright circle surrounded by orange sky.
Could a giant sunshade in space ‘solve global warming’? Scientists are taking the idea seriously
Some say the concept is complete fantasy, but a detailed analysis suggests that the falling cost of rocket launches might make it feasible in a few decades.
🌎️ nature.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
a tractor-trailer truck in motion with no one in the cab
Driverless 18‑wheelers are on a few highways, but widespread use is a long way down the road
Chaotic roads are still too difficult for automated trucks to navigate.
🌎️ theconversation.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
Close up of a spider on a web
How Spiders Spin ‘Silk Dope’ Into Nature’s Toughest Material
By probing its molecular structure, biologists are uncovering how a tangle of unstructured proteins turns into a strong, flexible fiber.
🌎️ quantamagazine.org
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We're attempting our first-ever annual fundraiser so we can survive in these times. We need $18,704 more. Click for more info.
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The breach includes names, job titles, and work contact information, such as email addresses, cell phone numbers, and office locations, of more than 40,000 people who work for the federal department

The Department of Homeland Security logo.
Hacker stole personnel data about thousands of Homeland Security employees, including CBP and ICE agents
A hacker obtained personally identifiable information about more than 40,000 Homeland Security staffers, which has since been published online.
🌎️ techcrunch.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows • Curated by J. A. Macfarlane
A sinking book with cartoon eyes is lured by dollar bill bait on a fishing hook
Fake film deals and emails from top agents: who is behind the explosion in literary scams?
Writers are being bombarded daily with invitations from fake book groups and offers to publicise their work. For the scamming industry, aspiring authors can be a soft touch
🌎️ theguardian.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The death, from Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, was announced on social media.

A black-and-white photo of the bald Patrick Stewart.
Patrick Stewart, Master of Shakespeare, ‘Star Trek’ and More, Has Died
The British actor was 86. He achieved pop-culture stardom as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
🌎️ nytimes.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows • Curated by J. A. Macfarlane
An aerial view of a seaside village.
Rising water is forcing this French town off Newfoundland to move. Not everyone is ready to leave
New homes under construction as Miquelon tries to save itself from climate change
🌎️ cbc.ca
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Though recognized today as a pseudoscientific fantasy, telepathy was, for much of the twentieth century, considered a real possibility—one whose secrets modern science could and would eventually discover.

From the cover of Hacking the Iron Curtain: A Media Archaeology of the Russian Internet by Natalia Konradova
How Telepathy Helped Build the Russian Internet
During the Cold War, Soviet scientists pursued an unlikely way to communicate with the outside world.
🌎️ daily.jstor.org
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Posted by Alan Bellows

From NASA, compare and contrast Hubble’s view of the Cat’s Head Nebula with the one from James Webb Space Telescope:

Hubble:
Hubble's view of the Cat’s Head Nebula

JWST (near-infrared):
Webb's view of the Cat’s Head Nebula

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Posted by Alan Bellows • Curated by J. A. Macfarlane
Illustration of a person’s silhouette in profile, overlaid with colorful anatomical sections of the head, neck and spine
‘My mother donated her body to science. I really wasn’t prepared for what came next’
The process included a gala featuring medical students doing aerial yoga and singing Taylor Swift to donors’ families. In some ways, it was absolutely perfect
🌎️ theguardian.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
Video: Are we running out of sperm? [20:24]
🌎️ youtube.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The pendulum has swung so far now that SpaceX seems increasingly disinterested in the US government for most contracts outside of data services, such as Starshield for military communications and observations.

Slot machine
SpaceX no longer needs NASA, and that’s a problem for America’s space agency
“NASA desperately needs SpaceX, and SpaceX knows it, and Elon knows it.”
🌎️ arstechnica.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
A man pushing a cart near a river
After 28 Years Walking Across the Globe, He’s Almost Home
Karl Bushby has walked 31,000 miles, crossing some of the world’s harshest landscapes. He plans to reach his mother’s house in England next week.
🌎️ nytimes.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

In 1800, women in Paris were banned from wearing trousers. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Century, many flouted or found a way around the law

Jane Dieulafoy (c 1890s)
‘Condemned as unnatural’: 10 images of 19th-Century Parisian women who lived and dressed as men
🌎️ bbc.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Most comets would have been traveling too fast and at too steep an angle to Earth for prebiotic compounds to survive impact with the planet, researchers contend October 28 in Scientific Reports.

A comet's long tail arcs over a sunset over a lake, framed by trees.
Comets probably didn’t deliver life’s building blocks to Earth
The speed and angle of impact would have destroyed most organic compounds from comets
🌎️ sciencenews.org
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The latest from the Bell Brothers: Classic films It’s a Wonderful Life and Night of the Living Dead combined using editing, compositing, and rotoscoping (no AI as far as I know, these guys have been doing this sort of thing since well before AI video was a thing).

movie poster
Video: It’s a Wonderful Night of the Living Dead [8:24]
It’s a not-so-wonderful life for George Bailey when a horde of flesh-eating ghouls come to town on Christmas Eve.
🌎️ youtube.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Happy Halloween! A warning–this article contains a fairly gnarly image of the worm-removal procedure.

Pregnant female worm releases first-stage larvae
Worms mate in man’s eyes, get plucked out right before larvae burst out
Case study gives a whole new meaning to “bedroom eyes.”
🌎️ arstechnica.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The government still purports—on faded billboards, in party speeches—to meet all of the material and spiritual needs of its citizens, but it is now bankrupt in every sense.

a dog walks in an empty apartment complex
The Collapse of Cuba
Hunger. Sickness. Blackouts. Abandoned streets. The withering of the state is shocking to behold.
🌎️ theatlantic.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Epic Games issued a DMCA notice against a vibe-coded browser port of Fortnite on October 10, and Microsoft has issued multiple DMCA notices for Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Halo-related web browser ports over the past month.

Master Chief Fortnite Trailer Epic Games Xbox
Now That The Shoe Is On The Other Foot, Microsoft And Epic Games Suddenly Agree That AI Is Theft
Rules for thee, but not for me
🌎️ kotaku.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
An orbital photo of underside of secret Chinese space plane, Shenlong.
China’s super-secret space plane visible in clearest photo yet
The U.S. quietly dropped the picture inside a recent unclassified report.
🌎️ yahoo.com
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