-
+5 +2
Everything You Need to Know About Boxing Day
If you’re looking for something that explains the origins of Boxing Day, well, you’re not going to find it here. The day-after-Christmas holiday is celebrated by most countries in the Commonwealth, but in a what-were-we-doing-again? bout of amnesia, none of them are really sure what they’re celebrating, when it started or why.
-
+17 +6
My Mao, on His Hundred-and-Twentieth Birthday
In 1991, fifteen years after Mao Zedong’s death, I met the Great Helmsman for the first time. It was not the most dignified of encounters. At the time, I knew his face better than that of my own father, who had moved to the other side of the world, to a place called Boston, when I was two.
-
+6 +1
The History of Video Game Consoles
Sega's final console, Sony and Microsoft throw their hats in the ring, Nintendo's hits and misses. All that and more in part two of our continuing history of video game consoles.
-
+5 +3
Exposing Houdini’s Tricks of Magic (Nov, 1929)
Harry Houdini, Prince of Magicians, carried with him to the grave the secrets of his extraordinary feats of illusion. Only one man, the artisan who made his magic apparatus, knows the working secrets of Houdini's most mystifying stunts. That man, Mr. R. D. Adams, continues here his fascinating expose of the master magician's methods.
-
+14 +3
Archaeologists unearth oldest musical instruments ever found
Archeologists announced today that they had unearthed the oldest musical instruments ever found - flutes that inhabitants of southwestern Germany laboriously carved from bone and ivory at least 35,000 years ago.
-
+23 +5
Film found from photographer killed in Mt. St. Helens blast
An undeveloped roll of film from 33 years ago with never-before-seen photos of Mount Saint Helens days before it erupted just resurfaced at The Columbian newspaper. The pictures are part of Northwest history and were taken before Columbian photographer Reid Blackburn died in the May 1980 eruption.
-
+19 +3
5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human History
Here are five simple, powerful reasons why you should believe the world has never been better -- and is getting better still.
-
+22 +4
The Electronic Avenue: How Xerox Predicted the Internet With a Broadway Show Tune
It’s no secret that Xerox helped invent the modern computer. At the famed Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox researchers dreamt up everything from the graphical user interface and laser printing to object-oriented programming and Ethernet networking. What you may not realize that the company predicted its own revolutionary genius with a toe-tapping show tune.
-
+23 +7
Modern science to unlock the secrets of couples holding each other in loving embrace for 3,500 years
Extraordinary Bronze Age graves unearthed in Siberia: but could there be a macabre explanation?
-
+26 +6
Internet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games online
Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing. The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision. The games do not have sound, but will soon, the Internet Archive said.
-
+20 +5
2013: Both a Ho-Hum Year and a Great One for Tech
Christopher Mims of Quartz, like many folks who write about tech, has wrapped up 2013 by reviewing the year’s events. He’s not impressed. Actually, he’s downright merciless, saying that it’s been “a lost year” and “an embarrassment.” His complaints, which are many and varied, include it being a fallow period for smartphones and one in which lots of companies tried their hands at wearable devices but no game-changing device emerged.
-
+16 +5
Thousand-Year-Old Vineyards Found in Spain
Traces of ancient vineyards that date back 1,000 years were discovered in the terraced fields of a medieval village in Spain.
-
+15 +4
1934 Rose Parade -- 'Tales of the Seven Seas'
The Rose Bowl Parade coming up on New Years Day. Take a look back at 1934's parade.
-
+16 +4
The Best Magazine Ever Published Was Life Magazine, in Summer 1945
Last summer in a used bookstore, I happened on an enormous, bound volume of Life magazine, from July–September 1945. I opened to the very first story in the first issue, July 2, 1945. The headline read: “This Is Art by Piet Mondrian: Mondrian Hated Curves.” Can you imagine a...
-
+20 +5
The Soviet Union spent $1 billion on mind-control program
THE race to put man on the Moon wasn't enough of a battle for the global super powers during the Cold War. At the time, the Soviet Union and the United States were in an arms race of a bizarre, unconventional kind - that has been exposed in a new report.
-
+13 +3
In Textbook Fight, Japan Leaders Seek to Recast History
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative government has begun to pursue a more openly nationalist agenda on an issue that critics fear will push the country farther from its postwar pacifism: adding a more patriotic tone to Japan’s school textbooks. The proposed textbook revisions have drawn less outcry abroad than Mr. Abe’s visit on Thursday to a shrine that honors war dead, including war criminals from World War II.
-
+14 +2
Agatha Christie's poisons and other writers' fascinating lives
Some thriller, crime and detective novelists have had lives as interesting as those of their protagonists. From Ian Fleming's CIA past to Anne Perry's own experience in bloodshed, check out these authors whose lives were stranger than their fiction!
-
+19 +3
The icebreakers of old
Icebreakers have helped carve paths through frosty seas since the 1800s; of course, the designs of these behemoths have much improved upon the glorified whalers that once sliced through the ice.
-
+22 +5
98-year-old photo negatives discovered in Antarctica
In 1915, an ill-fated expedition known as the Ross Sea Party took to the New Zealand side of Antarctica to establish supply depots for explorers. After their ship broke loose from the moorings, the six men were stranded and struggled to survive, spending three years on the continent before they were eventually rescued. Now, nearly a century later, a new discovery suggests the men may have left behind more than we realized.
-
+17 +5
Why Are Textbooks So Expensive?
Textbooks were not always so expensive. At some point during the 1970s, books started to get expensive. Publishers capitalized on professors’ willingness to adapt new editions of a book every two or three years. Textbooks became less about educating the masses and more about exclusivity and profitability. By the 1990s, the textbook market was an oligopoly, and prices skyrocketed.
Submit a link
Start a discussion