LatestCuriosities
Why Do We Clink Glasses When We Toast?
Why do we clink glasses when we toast? The poison myth is wrong. The real answer mixes ancient libations, folk superstition, soggy bread, and acoustics.
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Doge Meme History: How a Shy Shiba Inu Became the Internet's Patron Saint✦How Does an SSD Work? Flash, Controllers, and Wear Leveling Explained✦What Is an Epistolary Novel? The Format Built Entirely Out of Letters✦What Causes Tides? The Moon, the Sun, and the Stretching Sea✦The Kuleshov Effect: How One Soviet Experiment Proved Editing Creates Meaning✦Why Do We Clink Glasses When We Toast?✦Doge Meme History: How a Shy Shiba Inu Became the Internet's Patron Saint✦How Does an SSD Work? Flash, Controllers, and Wear Leveling Explained✦What Is an Epistolary Novel? The Format Built Entirely Out of Letters✦What Causes Tides? The Moon, the Sun, and the Stretching Sea✦The Kuleshov Effect: How One Soviet Experiment Proved Editing Creates Meaning✦Why Do We Clink Glasses When We Toast?✦
Curiosities — Featured
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Showing 14 of 36 posts
CuriositiesWhat Is Catatumbo Lightning? The Venezuelan Storm That Never Really Leaves
What is Catatumbo Lightning? The nightly Venezuelan storm over Lake Maracaibo strikes up to 260 nights a year.…
CuriositiesWhat Causes Deja Vu? The Brain Glitch That Feels Like a Memory of the Future
What causes deja vu? The eerie sense you have been here before is a brain glitch where familiarity…
CuriositiesWhy Does Time Feel Faster as You Get Older? The Science of Our Shrinking Years
Time really does feel faster as you get older, and it is not your imagination. The science of…
CuriositiesWhat Is Ball Lightning? The 2,000-Year-Old Mystery Science Almost Solved
Ball lightning explained: glowing spheres in thunderstorms, the silicon vapor theory, the 2012 Tibet spectrograph capture, and why…
CuriositiesWhat Are Sailing Stones? The Death Valley Mystery a Light Breeze and Some Ice Finally Solved
Sailing stones explained: how rocks move across Death Valley's Racetrack Playa on their own, using thin ice, a…
CuriositiesThe History of Knocker-Uppers: How Britain’s Human Alarm Clocks Tapped on Windows Until 1973
The history of knocker-uppers: Britain's human alarm clocks who tapped windows with bamboo poles and pea shooters from…
CuriositiesWhy Do We Get Goosebumps? The Science of a Useless Reflex
Why do we get goosebumps? A clear science explainer on piloerection, cold, fear, music, frisson, and the million-year-old…
CuriositiesThe History of Black Cat Superstitions: From Egyptian Goddesses to Halloween Mascots
History of black cat superstitions, from Bastet in Egypt to a 1233 papal bull, the witch trials, sailors,…
CuriositiesWhat Is the Mandela Effect? The Real Reason Millions of People Misremember the Same Things
What is the Mandela Effect? The shared false memory phenomenon explained: Berenstain Bears, Fruit of the Loom cornucopia,…
CuriositiesWhat Is Petrichor? The Smell of Rain Explained by Geosmin, Soil Bacteria, and Champagne-Bubble Physics
Petrichor explained: the 1964 word, geosmin from Streptomyces bacteria, MIT high-speed camera science, and why humans detect it…
CuriositiesPtilotus Senarius Just Came Back From Extinction Because a Horticulturalist Uploaded a Photo to iNaturalist
A plant that vanished from the scientific record in 1967 just showed up on a private cattle station…
CuriositiesThe Chinese Money Plant Quietly Solved a Computer Science Problem in Its Leaves
There is a houseplant sitting in roughly half the apartments on Instagram that has been quietly solving a…
CuriositiesEmpty Waymo Cars Are Circling an Atlanta Cul-de-Sac by the Dozens and Residents Beat Eight of Them With a Children’s Traffic Sign
A robotaxi is supposed to take you somewhere. That is the entire pitch. You tap a button, an…
CuriositiesStreetlights Are Pulling 5,500 Pill Bugs at a Time Into Death Spirals and Israel Just Filmed the Whole Thing
An amateur naturalist named Eviatar Itzkovich was wandering the Golan Heights one summer night and noticed something deeply…
Showing 14 of 36 posts