Google Earth is a web mapping platform and consumer application launched by American multinational technology company Google in 2005. As of 2020, Google Earth was being used by over one billion people every month around the world. However, cases of misuse have been widely reported since its creation.
A fossil that has been washed out of sediments and re-deposited in rocks and/or sediments millions of years younger.
A pebble from circa 3 million years before our era, with chipping and wear patterns formed naturally by geological processes, that make it look like a rendition of a human face.
A set of three artefacts (a ceramic pot, a tube of copper and a rod of iron) discovered in present-day Khujut Rabu, Iraq in 1936 close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150BC–AD223) and Sasanian (AD224–650) empires and believed to date from either of these periods.
A loosely connected group of activists famous for throwing pies in the faces of public figures.
Visual Essay.
A whirlwind induced by a fire and often (at least partially) composed of flame or ash.
A principle introduced in the west by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung in the 20th century, but which had been discussed earlier in the principles of traditional Chinese religion, as in Taoism and yin-yang.
A diacritic that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names of hard rock or heavy metal bands.
A rare genetic condition characterised by reduced body fat and increased skeletal muscle size. Affected animals have up to twice the usual amount of muscle mass in their bodies, but increases in muscle strength are not usually congruent.
A network of roads stretching across the Americas and measuring about 30,000km (19,000 miles) in total length. According to the Guinness World Records, the Pan-American Highway is the world’s longest “motorable road”.
A plain white, circular disc 30cm (12in) in diameter used to measure water transparency or turbidity in bodies of water. It was created in 1865 by Italian Catholic priest and astronomer Angelo Secchi.
An invented category of novel objects used as stimuli in psychological studies of object and face recognition.
A bridge designed by Dutch architecture agency RO&AD Architecten in the West Brabant Water Line in Netherlands.
An experimental quadruped walking vehicle created by American company General Electric in 1965, designed to help infantry carry equipment over rough terrain.
A constructed language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions and to have the capacity to encapsulate “the whole bulk of our knowledge”.
Meteorites are priced and sold by the gram. Scarcity, availability, the size of the specimen and the amount and quality of preparation that went into the piece can all affect this price.
A genericised trademark for a self-defence keychain weapon developed by Japanese American master of karate Sōke Takayuki Kubota in the late 1960s.
A technique developed in the early 1930s by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, who employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images.
A musical instrument consisting of a rock or pieces of rock which are struck to produce musical notes. Notes may be sounded in combination (producing harmony) or in succession (melody).
A temporary hut used by the Yanomami, an indigenous people in extreme southern Venezuela and extreme northern Brazil.
A parachute designed for deployment from a rapidly-moving object.
Any art used to assist law enforcement with the visual aspects of a case.
A colloquial name or term for a number of single-tier terraces and stands at sports stadiums, particularly in the United Kingdom, the most famous example of which is the Kop Stand at Liverpool FC’s home ground, Anfield.
A submarine volcano in the Kermadec-Tonga Ridge in the South Pacific, a ridge formed by the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate is subducted by the Indo-Australian Plate, forming a long volcanic and island chain extending from New Zealand’s north-northeast to Fiji. The volcano’s base at the seafloor is approximately 20km (12.4 miles) in diameter, rising roughly 2,000m towards the sea’s surface.
A neologism meant to disparage the assumption that the chemical processes of hypothetical extraterrestrial life must be constructed primarily from carbon (ie organic compounds) because carbon’s chemical and thermodynamic properties render it far superior to all other elements at forming molecules used in living organisms.
Two full-size Greek bronzes of naked bearded warriors, cast about 460–450BC, found in the sea in 1972 near Riace, Calabria, in southern Italy.
A photograph by American Associated Press photographer Richard Drew of a man falling from the World Trade Center during the September 11 2001 attacks in New York City, US.
Visual Essay.
Parasites with two or more hosts, capable of causing changes in the behaviour of one of their hosts to enhance their transmission, sometimes directly affecting the hosts’ decision-making and behaviour-control mechanisms. Examples can be found in bacteria, protozoa, viruses and animals.
German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was the first person to observe x-rays in 1895, in Wurzburg, Bavaria, while testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass.
A passerine bird in the family Tityridae, found throughout most of the Amazon basin which has an erectile fan-shaped crest that is red in males and yellow-orange in females.
1996 to 2022 evolution.
A 40mm- (1.5in-) tall flower mantis native to southern and eastern Africa, also known as spiny flower mantis due to the spiny structures it has on the underside of its abdomen.
A 47-floor, 202.5m (664ft)-high skyscraper building in Benidorm, Spain, the fifth tallest in the country and the tallest residential building in the European Union.
The largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, weighing 3,106.75 carats (621.35g/21.9oz/1.37lb). The Cullinan Diamond was discovered 5.5m (18ft) below the surface at the Premier No.2 mine in Cullinan, South Africa in January 1905. Its name came from Sir Thomas Cullinan, who opened the mine in 1902.
A 1998 documentary exploring the different aspects of fraternity life on an American campus, fraternities being social organisations at colleges and universities usually taking the form of houses (or housing areas) in which members live and work together.
A term for art used in cryonics ie the low-temperature freezing and storage of human remains with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future.
A project proposed by Japanese company Shimizu Corporation for the construction of a massive self-sustaining arcology pyramid over Tokyo Bay in Japan that would have businesses, parks and other services contained within the building.
The fear of the numbers 666.
An incomplete utopian novel by English philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626). It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work on natural history, Sylva Sylvarum, published posthumously in 1626.
A Belgian informatics engineer who proposed the first (pre-world wide web) hypertext system for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1987.
The regression of the quotient of an animal’s bite force in newtons divided by its body mass in kilograms; the bite force quotient (BFQ) is a means for comparison, not an indicator of absolute bite force.
An accident or stunt in basketball occurring when a player slam dunks the ball with sufficient force to shatter the tempered safety glass of the backboard.
An eroded meteorite impact crater in Chad, Africa.
A hairstyle, taking the form of long, thick, upright spikes.
A collection of about 33,000 small ceramic figurines found in July 1944 in Acámbaro, Guanajuato, Mexico.
A decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet found during an excavation of the Sutton Hoo, a site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. It is described as the most important known Anglo-Saxon artefact.
Six degrees of freedom (6DOF) refers to the freedom of movement of a rigid body in three-dimensional space. Specifically, the body is free to change position as forward/backward (surge), up/down (heave) or left/right (sway) translation in three perpendicular axes, combined with changes in orientation through rotation about three perpendicular axes, often termed yaw (normal axis), pitch (transverse axis) and roll (longitudinal axis).
A selfie (ie a self-portrait photograph, typically posted on social media sites) taken in outer space. This concept includes selfies taken by astronauts (also known as astronaut selfies), machines (also known as space robot selfies and rover selfies) and by indirect methods.
A white Risso’s dolphin famous for meeting and escorting ships through a stretch of water in Cook Strait, New Zealand.
The chromospheric signature of a large-scale solar corona shock wave.
Icebergs more commonly found in late May and early June in the easternmost province of Canada. Roughly 90% of icebergs seen off the coast come from the glaciers of western Greenland.
A formation of standing wave patterns that appear in the supersonic exhaust plume of an aerospace propulsion system, such as a supersonic jet engine, rocket, ramjet or scramjet, when it is operated in an atmosphere.
A society dedicated to the protection of the Quazer Beast and similar articles on Wikipedia.
A term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention centre whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the George W Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States.
A region where a radio transmission cannot be received hence also known as a silent zone or zone of silence.
A protective medical device worn by an animal, usually a cat or dog. Shaped like a truncated cone, the collar is named from the ruffs worn in the Elizabethan era.
A metaphor for threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technological advances according to the members of the American non-profit organisation the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
An optical illusion making a concave face mask appears as a convex normal face.
A large, extravagantly designed belt used primarily in combat sports to signify the champions of the competition or company, much like a cup or trophy in other sports.
An urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide or restrict physical behaviours.
A Russian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher and composer born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia) around 1866–1877 and who died on 29 October 1949.
The investigation of failures which may result in one party taking legal action, civil or criminal.
A creature alleged to exist in the Gobi Desert, a large desert or brushland region in East Asia.
A rare meteorological phenomenon consisting of a low-level atmospheric solitary wave and associated cloud. The wave often occurs as an amplitude-ordered series of waves forming bands of roll clouds.
A doubly ruled surface containing two families of mutually skewed lines.
A 1988 Australian drama-suspense film directed by Australian-Canadian film director John Hillcoat.
The first phosphate-based fire retardant to be approved by the United States Forest Service and the most used fire retardant in the world.
A species of flowering plant indigenous to South Africa which has a hard sheath, from which the flower emerges, placed perpendicular to the stem, which gives it the appearance of a colourful exotic bird’s head and beak.
A photographer from Kyjov, Czech Republic who used homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials to photograph women in his hometown.
Installation and performance, Joseph Beuys, 1984.
A series of Swiss artist Hans Ruedi Giger’s furniture designs.
An exploration game developed and published in the late 1990s by Japanese film production and distribution company Asmik Ace Entertainment for the PlayStation and conceived by Japanese artist Osamu Sato. In LSD, the player explores surreal environments without any objective and can only move and touch objects that will warp them to another setting.
A naming law restricting the names that parents can legally give to their children, usually to protect the child from being given an offensive or embarrassing name. Many countries around the world have such laws, with most governing the meaning of the name, while some only govern the scripts in which it is written.
Music piece, John Cage, 1962.
The desecration of a flag, violation of flag protocol or various acts that intentionally destroy, damage or mutilate a flag in public.
The bottom surface of gecko’s feet consists of millions of hairy structures, which on the application of stress at a specific angle, bend and create more contact with the surface in order to climb on them vertically.
The largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton.
A former official position within the Catholic church, arguing against the canonisation of a candidate during a canonisation process.
An American physician and pharmacist who provided medical care to underworld figures during the “public enemy” era of the 1930s, a term used at the time to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society.
An abnormal amount of hair growth over the body; the condition mostly found in humans but can sometimes be found in animals too such as cats, gibbons and horses.
A form of rave dance originating from the Dutch hardcore and gabber scene.
A type of amnesia in which individuals lose only certain parts of their memory, as relationships or special abilities.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Articulate Muscle, The Body As Art” exhibition at the Whitney Museum, New York, US, 1976.
A mountain situated in the Annapurna massif in northcentral Nepal. Its highest peak has never been officially climbed due to the impossibility of gaining a permit from the government of Nepal.
A British loudspeaker manufacturer based in Dorking, Surrey, England, widely known for its distinctive purple cabinets and white axehead drivers.
The ability to see in low-light conditions through a night-vision device, mostly a night vision goggle with dual eyepieces, which turns the images green.
A French man noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits, born in Lyon around 1772.
A farming practice of ploughing and/or planting across a slope following its elevation contour lines, to create a water break which reduces the formation of rills and gullies during times of heavy precipitation.
One of the largest known impact craters in the Solar System, located in the southern hemisphere of the planet Mars, first discovered in the 19th century.
A list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index; Catholics were forbidden to read them. The first edition was published in 1560 and the 20th and final edition in 1948. The Index was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI.
A practice of taking an arrested suspect through a public place, creating an opportunity for the media to take photographs and video of the event. Perp-walking has been criticised as a form of public humiliation that violates a defendant’s right to privacy and is prejudicial to the presumption of innocence.
A 2013 film purported as a documentary about the potential survival of the megalodon, an extinct species of mackerel shark regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have ever lived. Soon after the film premiered, however, it was swiftly debunked as a fictional production with actors posing as scientists, accompanied by “evidence” which was completely manufactured.
An alternative future or present in which digitised technologies or algorithms have caused major societal disruption.
Movement of rock or soil down slopes under the force of gravity.
The use of rough impact on physical hardware to solve some type of malfunction — frequently with mixed results.
A nearly completed statue in Kars, Turkey created by Turkish artist Mehmet Aksoy, visible from neighbouring Armenia.
A famous test of emotion recognition published in 1976 by American psychologist Paul Ekman from the 1970s. Consisting of black and white images of actors portraying the six universal emotions plus neutral expressions, the test has been used to study emotion recognition rates in normal and psychiatric populations around the world.
An ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.
A species of flowering plant in the knotweed family Polygonaceae, endemic to the central and southwestern Brazilian Amazon, first observed by botanists in 1982 during an expedition in the Canumã River, a tributary of Madeira River.
A form of body alteration in which the skull of a human being is deformed intentionally by flattening or binding the head with some kind of force. Flat shapes, elongated ones (produced by binding between two pieces of wood), rounded ones (binding in cloth) and conical ones are among those chosen or valued in various cultures.
A 1994 discussion between David Byrne, Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg about the genius of Arthur Russell.
A Swedish artist and chimpanzee who was the subject of a 1964 hoax perpetrated by Åke “Dacke” Axelsson, a journalist at the Swedish tabloid Göteborgs-Tidningen.
A collection of knowledge preserved in such a way that future generations would have access to said knowledge if all other copies of it were lost.
A famous 500-page textbook on camouflage, warning of the dangers of colouration and mimicry, by the British zoologist Hugh Cott, first published in 1940.
A form of experimental music that deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to include sounds made by humans in a directly biological way, for instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer.
The situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved as well as serving as a storytelling and writing method in cinema meant to provide different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.
Someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work.
A collaborative novel created in 2004 by a group of science fiction and fantasy authors with the express purpose of producing an unpublishable bad piece of work to test the publishing firm PublishAmerica. The completed manuscript was offered to PublishAmerica and accepted for publication in December 2004. PublishAmerica retracted its acceptance in January 2005, after the authors publicly revealed the hoax.
Visual Essay.
The optical illusion that occurs when visual perception of an object does not cease for some time after the rays of light emanating from it have ceased to enter the eye.
A severely electricity-injured and thus disfigured American man, sometimes referred to as Green Man due to the electrical shock he suffered, whose years of walks at night made him a figure of urban legend in western Pennsylvania, US.
A white, 180m (590.6ft)-high cenotaph tower in Tondabayashi, Osaka, Japan.
In the late 1990s, some major robberies in the US resembled movie scenes from Heat (1995) including armoured car robberies, in particular the 1997 north Hollywood shootout, considered one of the longest and bloodiest events of its kind in American police history.
When the Bust of Nefertiti, queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, was discovered, no quartz to represent the iris of the left eyeball was present and none was found despite an intensive search. The missing eye led to speculation that Nefertiti may have suffered from an ophthalmic infection and lost her left eye.
An office chair is a type of chair designed for use at a desk. One of the earliest known examples is the one developed by English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who put wheels on the chair so he could get to his specimens more quickly.
A medium-sized “typical owl” from the subfamily Striginae found in Mexico, parts of Central America, Cuba, Hispaniola and 10 countries in South America.
A measure of a weapon system’s precision, defined as the radius of a circle, centred on the mean, whose perimeter is expected to include the landing points of 50% of the rounds. The concept of CEP plays a role when measuring the accuracy of a position obtained by a navigation system, such as GPS.
A meteorite which fell on November 30 1954 at 12.46 local time (18.46 UT) in Oak Grove, Alabama near Sylacauga, US.
A United States $20 gold coin representing a Saint-Gaudens double eagle.
A horned, anthropomorphic figure in central and eastern Alpine folklore who, during the Christmas season, scares children who have misbehaved.
Large-scale electric discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They appear as luminous red-orange flashes, with bluish hanging tendrils below, and can be preceded by a reddish halo. Sprites have been observed over America, Europe, Central Africa, Australia, and Asia.
A type of photography generally referring to pictures of both single and multiple exposure taken by flashes of light from electrical discharges.
In 1991, Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti appeared in a concert in Hyde Park, London, UK to celebrate his 30 years in opera, which drew a record attendance of 150,000, including the Royal Couple.
A concrete and plastic sculpture designed by Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal in 1982 and located in Punta del Este, Uruguay, depicting five human fingers partially emerging from sand. The Hand is the symbol of Punta del Este and one of Uruguay’s most recognizable landmarks.
Visual Essay.
The annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His reputation soon encouraged imitators in American cities in the 1930s.
A satirical conspiracy theory created by Peter McIndoe in 2017, which posits that birds are actually drones operated by the United States government to spy on American citizens.
A length of linen cloth kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Turin, in northern Italy, and bearing the negative image of a man thought to be Jesus of Nazareth. Some believe the fabric was the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion.
The process whereby objects are frozen in just a few hours by subjecting them to cryogenic temperatures, or through direct contact with liquid nitrogen at −196 °C (−320.8 °F). Flash freezing is commonly used in the food industry to quickly freeze perishable food items.
The maraca player and dancer of English rock band Happy Mondays, chiefly remembered for his bizarre style.
The highest dormant volcano in the world and the highest peak in Chile, located in the Andes on the Argentina–Chile border. Its permanent crater lake is the highest lake of any kind in the world.
Visual Essay.
A fragmental material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition, fragment size, or emplacement mechanism. Volcanologists also refer to these airborne fragments as pyroclasts.
Visual Essay.
Visual Essay.
A centennial conservation-restoration of the Statue of Liberty that occurred between 1984 and 1986. Much of the restoration effort was based on unprecedented restorative methods, as metallurgical repair work on such a large scale had never been attempted. The restored statue was reopened during Liberty Weekend, its 100-year anniversary celebration held July 3–6, 1986.
Visual Essay.
An Australian species which is the fastest-running known insect with a running speed of 2.49m/s, or 120 body lengths per second.
A Chinese opera singer from Beijing who became a spy to obtain secrets from an employee in the French embassy in the 1960s, during a 20-year-long sexual affair in which the performer convinced the man that he was a woman.
An artwork by German painter and photographer Sigmar Polke, consisting of several sheets of flannel covered with black-painted German swear words.
An Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog’s own idiom, and is presented as what humans have long believed goes on in the canine brain.
Visual Essay.
Martian sunsets typically stand out for their blue color. Since 1976, sunsets have been recorded by NASA rovers and other missions.
The fraction of the sky obscured by clouds when observed from a particular location. On average, about 52% of Earth is cloud-covered at any moment.
A British IT engineer who threw away a hard drive containing £220million in Bitcoin.
An artificial intelligence basketball-playing robot created by Japanese automotive manufacturer Toyota, that scores 100 percent of its shots.
Visual Essay.
Visual Essay.
The tallest person in recorded history. When Robert Wadlow died in 1940, his height was 8 ft 11 in (2.72 m) while his weight reached 439 lb (199 kg). Even by the time of his death, there was no indication that his growth had ended.
A direct communication pathway between the brain’s electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. BCIs are often directed at researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions.
The title given to the “visions” of the Blessed Virgin Mary which allegedly began in June 1981 to six Croatian teenagers in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Officially organised pilgrimages were prohibited till May 2019, when the Pope lifted the ban. However, clerics and the faithful are still not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such ‘apparitions’ would be taken for granted.
A swarm of associated meteoroids or meteors, observable in November, whose radiant is located in the zodiacal constellation Leo.
A 175-pound American black bear that died after ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine in 1985.
The loss of peripheral vision with retention of central vision, resulting in a constricted circular tunnel-like field of vision.
A 1965 Japanese documentary film directed by Kon Ichikawa, which documents the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, considered as one of the best films about the Olympics and, indeed, as one of the best sports documentaries of all time.
A fish mainly known for its bright red lips, found in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, mostly around the Galapagos Islands. According to marine biologists, its extremely bright red lips may be used to enhance species recognition during spawning or to attract sexual tension within the species.
Visual Essay.
An American mystery documentary television show, created by John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer, documenting cold cases and paranormal phenomena. Unsolved Mysteries aired on TV from 1987 to 2010. In January 2019, Netflix picked up a reboot of the series, which premiered on July 1, 2020.
The longest dam of the Delta Works, in the Netherlands. This nine-kilometre-long dam took more than a decade to build. The dam is based on 65 concrete pillars with 62 steel doors, that can be closed under adverse weather conditions. Oosterscheldekering’s cost of operation is €17 million per year.
An 1879 artwork by French painter Luc-Olivier Merson’s, depicting a classic scene from the gospel of Matthew, in which an angel appears to Joseph in a dream to warn him that Herod is seeking to kill the Christ child.
Open channel spillways, also known as morning glory (after the flower) or glory hole spillways, designed like an inverted bell, where water can enter around the entire perimeter. They are used to control and convey impounded water from a dam or levee, in order to prevent dam failure.
The first practical powered exoskeleton built by General Electric between 1965 and 1971. The machine was intended to allow the wearer to lift loads of 1,500 pounds (680 kg) with ease but turned not to be successful. As a result, the Hardiman was never used.
A turbine interchange with a distinctive design, that includes super elevated circular ramps, consisting of six steel twin box girder bridges. The junction connects the SR 9A and SR 202 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.
A computer worm that infected over ten million Windows personal computers on and after 5 May 2000, when it started spreading as an email message with the subject line “ILOVEYOU” and the attachment “LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs”, considered one of the most virulent computer virus in history.
An American figurative artist born in 1933 who became known posthumously for his self-portraits created from 1995 to 2001, after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Visual Essay.
A 3D suicide pod that allows people to kill themselves pain-free at the press of a button.
A wool coat produced in ancient Iran and Turkey, and mostly used by shepherds.
An example of convergent evolution in which a crustacean evolves into a crab-like form from a non-crab-like form. Carcinised crustaceans include hermit crab, porcelain crab, hairy stone crab and king crab, among others.
A code published in 1895 to help disguise internal police telegrams, considered as the 19th-century version of the encrypted email.
A variation of the eyes coloration, determined by the production, delivery, and concentration of melanin in the iris. It may be inherited, or caused by genetic mosaicism, chimerism, disease, or injury, and affects animals and humans.
An iconic land art work commissioned by the US Public Art Fund in 1982, taking the form of a two-acre field of wheat in downtown Manhattan, in order to protest against climate change and economic inequality.
The estimated weight of a 1 cubic kilometer (km3) cloud composed of water droplets is 500,000 kilograms or 1.1 million pounds (about 551 tons).
A species of frogs in the family Brevicipitidae, also known as black rain frog, plain rain frog or brown short-headed frog, due to its dark brown or nearly black colouration, with a slightly lighter ventrum and no pigmented patterns.
The bumps on a person’s skin at the base of body hairs which may involuntarily develop when a person is tickled, cold or experiencing strong emotions such as fear, euphoria or sexual arousal.
Walter de Maria, New York, 1977.
The earliest known druidic order in the world, founded in 1781 in England and based upon the iconography of the ancient druids.
Visual Essay.
The first text message ever, sent in 1992 and saying “Merry Christmas.”
Functional coffins from the Greater Accra Region in Ghana, representing priestly insignia, animals, or proverbs and used to protect the deceased in the afterlife.
A carbonaceous asteroid from the background population of the intermediate asteroid belt, popularised by American fast-food company McDonald’s, which explored with NASA an advertising agreement for a planned mission to the planet.
An 19th century Prussian showman, considered the father of modern bodybuilding, as one of the first athletes to intentionally develop his musculature to predetermined dimensions.
A meteorological optical phenomenon that sometimes occurs transiently around the moment of sunset or sunrise, popularised by Jules Verne’s 1882 novel The Green Ray.
A popular cheese slicer invented and patented by Norwegian inventor Thor Bjørklund in 1925, which is one of the most important export product of Norway.
Visual Essay.
The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication. It is a form of visual communication used over a long distance. In general smoke signals are used to transmit news, signal danger, or to gather people to a common area.
If an Irish Guard starts to feel light-headed while on duty they are trained to “faint to attention” meaning they have to keep their disciplined pose even when falling to the ground. This is why you often see pictures of passed out guards lying flat on their face.
Men from the Asaro tribe in Papua New Guinea, also known as the Holosa, who wear a traditional costume notably composed of a huge mask made of mud. The “Mudmen” live nearby the village of Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province. Their masks have unusual designs, such as long or very short ears either going down to the chin or sticking up at the top, long joined eyebrows attached to the top of the ears, horns and sideways mouths.
DrugsData (formerly EcstasyData) is the independent anonymous laboratory analysis and drug checking program of Erowid Center. Its purpose is to collect, review, manage, publish testing results from their lab and republish those from other analysis projects worldwide.
A Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures, also known as The Iceman. Since the early 2000s, Wim Hof has set numerous Guinness World Records.
A Japanese dog known as chūken Hachikō (“faithful dog Hachikō”), remembered for his remarkable loyalty to his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, for whom he continued to wait for over nine years following his death.
Visual Essay
We Are Our Mountains is a large monument north of Stepanakert, the capital city of the Republic of Artsakh. The sculpture, completed in 1967 by Sargis Baghdasaryan, is widely regarded as a symbol of the Armenian heritage of the region. The monument is made from volcanic tufa and depicts an old man and woman hewn from rock, representing the mountain people of Karabakh.
A town in Camargue, in southern France, where director Leos Carax set up his movie Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991). To date, it remains the most expensive set of French cinema.
A cactus species commonly referred to as queen of the night, that bloom only one night in late spring or early summer and turn white as the hours pass.
The most common user eye-scanning pattern, also known as F-Shaped Pattern, popularised by a Nielsen Norman Group’s eye-tracking study, which found that users typically scanned blocks of content in a pattern looking like the letter F.
1983 album by Japanese percussionist Midori Takada, which became an international success 30 years after its release thanks to the YouTube recommendation algorithm.
The largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, founded in 1946 in Oxford, England. Mensa is a non-profit organization, consisting, in the late 2010s, of around 134,000 members in 100 countries and in 54 national groups.
An ancient Persian ice house, used since the 1st millennium BC; the ancestor of the modern refrigerator. Mainly built in high-altitude deserts, the yakhchāl was used to store food. The structure is a dome, completed by a large subterranean storage space, that allows cold air to enter the lowest part of the building, while the tall conical shape guides heat outside.
A confidence game in which the victims (or “marks”) are tricked into betting a sum of money, on the assumption that they can find the target card (or “money card”) among three face-down playing cards. The Three-card Monte is an example of a classic “short con”.
The most widespread species of the genus Upupa, native to Europe, Asia, North Africa and northern Sub-Saharan Africa. The call is typically a trisyllabic oop-oop-oop, which may give rise to its English and scientific names.
Junya Watanabe Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2002 menswear collection.
A metaphor used to describe a situation where a person who knows nothing is getting advice and help from another person who knows almost nothing.
In January 2021, the Sahara desert, which is the largest hot desert in the world, was hit by an icy blast with temperatures dipping below freezing, making snow fell. Snow even blanketed parts in the Tabuk region in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
A non-linear two-terminal electrical component relating electric charge and magnetic flux linkage, first described in 1971 by American electrical engineer and computer scientist Leon Chua.
A series of coordinated shootings, also known as the Beltway sniper attacks, that occurred during three weeks in October 2002, mainly in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, USA. Ten people were killed and three others were critically wounded by the two snipers, John Allen Muhammad (age 41 at the time) and Lee Boyd Malvo (age 17 at the time), who traveled in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan.
The first Ferrari-branded amusement park, located on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
A biannual international art magazine running from 1984 to 2017.
Visual Essay.
A term coined by British mathematician Ian Stewart and biologist Jack Cohen to define the cultural capital that is available to us in the form of external media (eg legends, folklore, books, music or video tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc). Stewart and Cohen contrast extelligence with intelligence, or the knowledge and cognitive processes within the brain.
Visual Essay.
A species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish named by German biologist August Weismann in 1883. The immortal Jellyfish (or Turritopsis dohrnii) is found free-living in the plankton in temperate to tropical regions in all of the world’s oceans and is the only medusa known to have developed the ability to return to a polyp state, by a rapid specific transformation process.
War that occurred between societies without recorded history. The existence — and even the definition — of war in humanity’s hypothetical state of nature has been a controversial topic in the history of ideas.
Visual Essay.
One of the three primary colours of pigments in painting and traditional colour theory, as well as in the RGB colour model. On the spectrum of visible light, blue lies between violet and green. The eye perceives blue when observing light with a dominant wavelength between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. Most blues contain a slight mixture of other colours: azure contains some green, while ultramarine contains some violet.
Visual Essay.
Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX) projects are two field experiments that study tornadoes.
The graph of a system of parametric equations which describe complex harmonic motion. This family of curves was investigated by American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch in 1815, and later detailed in 1857 by French physicist Jules Antoine Lissajous, hence its name.
A bridge where one or both ends are broken, incomplete, or unconnected to any roads. If it is an overpass or an interchange, the term overpass to nowhere or interchange to nowhere may be used, respectively.
A group of rare genetic connective-tissue disorders, which result in defects in the structure or processing of the protein collagen. As the disorders weaken the body’s connective tissue, symptoms may include skin elasticity and joint hypermobility.
The fourth Oasis-class cruise ship owned and operated by Royal Caribbean International and the largest cruise ship in the world by gross tonnage.
Mythical or magical animals mentioned in editions 1 to 5 of the 18th-century Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus’ seminal work, Systema Naturae.
The difference of the arrow’s alignment between the moment of the shot and its final trajectory.
A Japanese mountaineer and the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest and to ascend the Seven Summits (ie climbing the highest peak on every continent.)
A micronation, founded in May 1987 by a Canadian citizen, that has no sovereign territory of its own and has never been recognised by any other sovereign state as existing. The name Aerican Empire stems from the term “American Empire”; it is conventionally referred to in short form as Aerica.
A captive orca that spent most of its life performing at SeaWorld Orlando in Florida, USA. Tilikum, nicknamed Tilly, was the largest bull orca in captivity, measuring 6.9m (22.5ft) long and weighing about 5,700kg (12,500lbs).
A primary colour in subtractive colour systems and a secondary colour made by combining red and green at equal intensity in the RGB colour model. Yellow is between orange and green on the spectrum of visible light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 570–590 nm.
Johnson’s criteria, or the Johnson criteria, created by John Johnson, describe both spatial domain and frequency domain approaches to analyze the ability of observers to perform visual tasks using image intensifier technology. It was an important breakthrough in evaluating the performance of visual devices and guided the development of future systems. Using Johnson’s criteria, many predictive models for sensor technology have been developed that predict the performance of sensor systems under different environmental and operational conditions.
Water intoxication, also known as water poisoning, hyperhydration, overhydration, or water toxemia, is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain functions that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside safe limits by excessive water intake.
Earthquake Baroque is a style of Baroque architecture found in the Philippines, which suffered destructive earthquakes during the 17th century and 18th century, where large public buildings, such as churches, were rebuilt in a Baroque style during the Spanish Colonial period in the country.
Neurons are the cells that transmit information in an animal’s nervous system so that it can sense stimuli from its environment and behave accordingly. Not all animals have neurons, Trichoplax and sponges lack nerve cells altogether. Neurons may be packed to form structures such as the brain of vertebrates or the neural ganglions of insects. The number of neurons and their relative abundance in different parts of the brain is a determinant of neural function and, consequently, of behavior.
Image that continues to appear in the eyes after a period of exposure to the original image. An afterimage may be a normal phenomenon (physiological afterimage) or may be pathological (palinopsia). Illusory palinopsia may be a pathological exaggeration of physiological afterimages. Afterimages occur because photochemical activity in the retina continues even when the eyes are no longer experiencing the original stimulus.
Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, Gaelic football, badminton, hurling, rugby union, association football and volleyball, to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile of its statistically most likely path as a moving image. The onscreen representation of the trajectory results is called Shot Spot.
The LaGuardia Committee was the first in-depth study into the effects of smoking cannabis in the United States. An earlier study, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, was conducted by the colonial authorities in British India in 1893–94. The reports systematically contradicted claims made by the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, deteriorates physical and mental health, assists in criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, and is a “gateway” drug to more dangerous drugs.
A monster truck is a specialized truck with a heavy duty suspension, four-wheel steering, and oversized tires constructed for competition and entertainment uses. Originally created by modifying stock pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), they have evolved into purpose-built vehicles with tube-frame chassis and fiberglass bodies rather than metal. A competition monster truck is typically 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, and equipped with 66-inch (1.7 m) off-road tires.
The Weekly World News was a tabloid which published mostly fictional “news” stories in the United States from 1979 to 2007, renowned for its outlandish cover stories often based on supernatural or paranormal themes and an approach to news that verged on the satirical. It ceased print publication in August 2007. The company has a library of 100,000 articles and 300+ original characters.
In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter that is composed of the antiparticles (or “partners”) of the corresponding particles of “ordinary” matter. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles are generated daily at particle accelerators – total production has been only a few nanograms (ng)– and in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form anti-atoms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling.
Cerro Torre is one of the mountains of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in South America. It is located in a region which is disputed between Argentina and Chile, west of Fitz Roy (also known as Cerro Chaltén).
Agalmatophilia is a paraphilia involving sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin or other similar figurative object. The attraction may include a desire for actual sexual contact with the object, a fantasy of having sexual (or non-sexual) encounters with an animate or inanimate instance of the preferred object, the act of watching encounters between such objects, or sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into the preferred object.
The Mind’s Eye series consists of several art films rendered using computer-generated imagery of varying levels of sophistication, with original music scored note-to-frame. The series was conceived by Steven Churchill in 1990. It was produced, directed, conceptualized and edited by Jan Nickman of Miramar Productions and produced by Steven Churchill of Odyssey Productions.
The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William Kinsey Hutchinson, International News Service (the predecessor of the United Press International) editor-in-chief, who were discussing ways to promote capture of the FBI’s “toughest guys”.
Greenwashing (a compound word modelled on “whitewash”), also called “green sheen”, is a form of marketing spin in which green PR (green values) and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization’s products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly.
In Japan, yaeba are human teeth, especially upper canines, with an uncommonly fang-like appearance. It is perceived as a sign of youthfulness and natural beauty. In 2013 it had become a trend where teenage girls would undergo dental procedures to cap the upper canines.
Catatumbo lightning is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. It originates from a mass of storm clouds at an altitude of more than 1 km, and occurs during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day, and up to 280 times per hour. It occurs over and around Lake Maracaibo, typically over a bog area formed where the Catatumbo River flows into the lake.
With the synthesis of information from human orthopedics, biophysics, and materials science, veterinarians and engineers have been able to develop effective and technologically advanced animal prosthetics.
A fallstreak hole (also known as a cavum, hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, cloud canal or cloud hole) is a large gap, usually circular or elliptical, that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds. Such holes are formed when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing, but the water, in a supercooled state, has not frozen yet due to the lack of ice nucleation. When ice crystals do form, a domino effect is set off due to the Bergeron process, causing the water droplets around the crystals to evaporate: this leaves a large, often circular, hole in the cloud.
The Centennial Light is the world’s longest-lasting light bulb, burning since 1901, and almost never switched off. It is at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department. Due to its longevity, the bulb has been noted by The Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and General Electric.
The Klencke Atlas, first published in 1660, is one of the world’s largest atlases. Originating in The Netherlands, it is 1.75 metres (5 ft 9 in) tall by 1.9 metres (6 ft 3 in) wide when open, and so heavy the British Library needed six people to carry it.
Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe, and for that injury’s reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life.
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (Indonesian: Letusan Krakatau 1883) in the Sunda Strait began on the afternoon of Sunday, 26 August 1883—with origins as early as that May—and peaked on the late morning of Monday, 27 August 1883, when over 70% of the island of Krakatoa and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed as it collapsed into a caldera.
Here and Elsewhere (French: Ici et Ailleurs) is a 1976 documentary film by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. It is a film essay, narrated by Godard and Miéville, on the limitations and artificiality of cinema in attempting to portray reality. It is additionally a critique of the Dziga Vertov Group, the partnership of Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin who together made a number of political, pro-Marxist films between 1968 and 1972.
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.
The growth of plants in outer space has elicited much scientific interest. In the late 20th and early 21st century, plants were often taken into space in low Earth orbit to be grown in a weightless but pressurized controlled environment, sometimes called space gardens.
A coloboma is a hole in one of the structures of the eye, such as the iris, retina, choroid, or optic disc. The hole is present from birth (except for one case, where it developed within the first few months of the child’s life) and can be caused when a gap called the choroid fissure, which is present during early stages of prenatal development, fails to close up completely before a child is born. Ocular coloboma is relatively uncommon, affecting less than one in every 10,000 births.
Thomasson or Hyperart Thomasson is a type of conceptual art named by the Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei in the 1980s. It refers to a useless relic or structure that has been preserved as part of a building or the built environment, which has become a piece of art in itself. These objects, although having the appearance of pieces of conceptual art, were not created to be viewed as such.
Visual Essay.
Fires of Kuwait is a 1992 documentary film on the Kuwaiti oil fires directed by David Douglas. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film was the winner of the 2005 Hall of Fame Award from Giant Screen Cinema Association. The documentary focuses on the international effort to extinguish Kuwait’s burning oilfields in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Busta Rhymes Island is a proposed name for an otherwise unnamed island in Shrewsbury, Worcester County, Massachusetts. The name refers to the rapper Busta Rhymes. The island is located in Mill Pond in Shrewsbury and measures 40 by 40 feet (12 m × 12 m). The proposal was made by Shrewsbury resident Kevin O’Brien who began frequenting and caring for the upkeep of the island. O’Brien stated he wanted it to be called Busta Rhymes Island as it had “rope-swinging, blueberries, and … stuff Busta would enjoy.”
The Lüscher color test is a discredited psychological test invented by Dr. Max Lüscher in Basel, Switzerland. Max Lüscher believed that sensory perception of color is objective and universally shared by all, but that color preferences are subjective, and that this distinction allows subjective states to be objectively measured by using test colors. Lüscher believed that because the color selections are guided in an unconscious manner, they reveal the person as they really are, not as they perceive themselves or would like to be perceived.
Kirov Reservoir, is a reservoir of the Talas River, located in Manas District of Talas Province of Kyrgyzstan. It is used for irrigation of lands in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Ribs, also known as music on ribs, jazz on bones, bones or bone music are improvised gramophone recordings made from X-ray films. Mostly made through the 1950s and 1960s, ribs were a black market method of smuggling in and distributing music by foreign and emigre musicians that was banned from broadcast in the Soviet Union, such as Pyotr Leshchenko or Alexander Vertinsky, or Western artists such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald and Chubby Checker.
Visual Essay.
Chindōgu originated in Japan and is characterized by the invention of ingenious everyday gadgets that seem to be ideal solutions to particular problems, but which, in fact, cause more problems than they solve.
In addition to size classification, icebergs can be classified on the basis of their shapes. The two basic types of iceberg forms are tabular and non-tabular. Tabular icebergs have steep sides and a flat top, much like a plateau, with a length-to-height ratio of more than 5:1.
844-NEED-SCIENCE, also called The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a communications outreach program of the National Academy of Sciences. The Exchange maintains a local office in Los Angeles that is located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles at the California NanoSystems Institute. The Exchange connects entertainment industry professionals with leading scientists to “create synergy between accurate science and engaging storytelling” in both film and TV programming.
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov (July 18, 1916 – November 22, 1998) was a Soviet scientist and organ transplantation pioneer, who performed several transplants in the 1940s and 1950s, including the transplantation of a heart into an animal and a heart–lung replacement in an animal. He is also well known for his dog head transplants, which he conducted during the 1950s, resulting in two-headed dogs.
The Battle of Surfaces was a men’s tennis exhibition match that was held on May 2, 2007, between Roger Federer, the then top-ranked men’s singles player, and Rafael Nadal, the then World No. 2 in men’s singles. The match was played in the capital city of Nadal’s home island, Palma de Mallorca, in front of a home crowd at Palma Arena. Nadal won 7–5, 4–6, 7–6(12–10).
In biology, coevolution occurs when two or more species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution through the process of natural selection. The term sometimes is used for two traits in the same species affecting each other’s evolution, as well as gene-culture coevolution.
Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its “extraction” from banana peel was originally published in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967.
The birthday effect (sometimes called the birthday blues, especially when referring specifically to suicide) is a statistical phenomenon where an individual’s likelihood of death appears to increase on or close to their birthday. The birthday effect has been seen in studies of general populations in England and Wales, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United States, as well as in smaller populations such as Major League Baseball players.
The Dreamachine (a contraction of Dream Machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs’ “systems adviser” Ian Sommerville created the Dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter’s book, The Living Brain.
Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is an abnormal sensory perception during sleep in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up. The noise may be frightening, typically occurs only occasionally, and is not a serious health concern. People may also experience a flash of light. Pain is typically absent.
A thagomizer is a term coined in 1982 by cartoonist Gary Larson in his comic The Far Side to refer to the tail spikes of stegosaurian dinosaurs. These spikes are believed to have been a defensive measure against predators. The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name; the term thagomizer was, and thereafter became, gradually adopted as an informal term occasionally used within scientific circles, research, and education.
Winona Laura Horowitz, known professionally as Winona Ryder, is an American actress. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Golden Globe Award and has been nominated for two Academy Awards. On December 12, 2001, Ryder was arrested on shoplifting charges in Beverly Hills, California, accused of stealing $5,500 worth of designer clothes and accessories at a Saks Fifth Avenue department store.
The Longyangxia Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam at the entrance of the Longyangxia canyon on the Yellow River in Gonghe County, Qinghai Province, China. The dam is 178 metres (584 ft) tall and was built for the purposes of hydroelectric power generation, irrigation, ice control and flood control.
A tidal bore, often simply given as bore in context, is a tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave (or waves) of water that travels up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay’s current.
John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer who campaigned as an independent write-in candidate during the 1964 United States presidential campaign. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed the Blues House, and he would have a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA)…
A googol is the large number 10100. In decimal notation, it is written as the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeroes: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures. Generally, articulatory phonetics is concerned with the transformation of aerodynamic energy into acoustic energy. Aerodynamic energy refers to the airflow through the vocal tract. Its potential form is air pressure; its kinetic form is the actual dynamic airflow. Acoustic energy is variation in the air pressure that can be represented as sound waves, which are then perceived by the human auditory system as sound.
Obetrol was the brand of amphetamine mixed salts based drugs indicated for treatment of exogenous obesity by the American pharmaceutical company Obetrol Pharmaceuticals. Obetrol was a popular diet pill in America in the 1950s and 1960s. The ready availability of methamphetamine-based medications in the 1960s led to their use and abuse as recreational drugs. Obetrol was the recreational drug of choice for artist Andy Warhol.
The Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport is a small public use airstrip about five miles south of Green River, Wyoming on a mountain known as South Hill. It opened in 1963.
The Schmidt sting pain index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt (born 1947), an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona, United States. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject, and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera.
The Peanut Hole was an area of open ocean at the center of the Sea of Okhotsk until 2014. From 1991 to 2014 its status was the subject of international disputes, although since March 2014 Peanut Hole’s seabed and subsoil is part of continental shelf of Russia.
Visual Essay.
Tornado Alley is a loosely defined area of the central United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tornado climatologists distinguish peaks in activity in certain areas and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.
Eunice aphroditois is a benthic bristle worm of warm marine waters. It lives mainly in the Atlantic Ocean, but can also be found in the Indo-Pacific. It ranges in length from less than 10 cm (4 in) to 3 m (10 ft). Its exoskeleton displays a wide range of colors, from black to purple. This species is an ambush predator; it hunts by burrowing its whole body in soft sediment on the ocean floor and waiting until its antennae detect prey. It then strikes with its sharp mouthparts. It may also be found among coral reefs.
Ideasthesia is a neuroscientific phenomenon in which activations of concepts (inducers) evoke perception-like sensory experiences (concurrents). The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἰδέα (idéa) and αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), meaning “sensing concepts” or “sensing ideas”. The notion was introduced by neuroscientist Danko Nikolić as an alternative explanation for a set of phenomena traditionally covered by synesthesia.
Plan Voisin was a planned redevelopment of central Paris designed by French Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1925. It was sponsored by his friend, the avante garde aircraft and automobile builder Gabriel Voisin, whose cutting-edge design aesthetic Le Corbusier admired. The project is one of Le Corbusier’s most well known.
A class of stony-iron meteorite, mostly composed of small olivine crystals but also schreibersite, troilite, chromite, pyroxenes and phosphates. Pallasites were once thought to originate at the core-mantle boundary of differentiated asteroids that were subsequently shattered through impact. An alternative recent hypothesis is that they are impact-generated mixtures of core and mantle materials.
In fluid dynamics, a blast wave is the increased pressure and flow resulting from the deposition of a large amount of energy in a small, very localised volume. The flow field can be approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a self-similar subsonic flow field. In simpler terms, a blast wave is an area of pressure expanding supersonically outward from an explosive core. It has a leading shock front of compressed gases.
Visual Essay
The Maltese tiger, or blue tiger, is a reported but unproven coloration morph of a tiger, reported mostly in the Fujian Province of China. It is said to have bluish fur with dark gray stripes. Most of the Maltese tigers reported have been of the South Chinese subspecies.
The Controlled Impact Demonstration (or colloquially the Crash In the Desert) was a joint project between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that intentionally crashed a remotely controlled Boeing 720 aircraft to acquire data and test new technologies to aid passenger and crew survival. The crash required more than four years of preparation by NASA Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, the FAA, and General Electric.