Tag: cool reads

Voodoo. In A.D. 64, a great fire broke out in Rome for six days, and devastated much of the city. According to the writer Tacitus, “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.” The “abominations” committed by the early Christians were […]

The grey wolf. The battle between wolves and farmers has been going on since the beginning of time, and has been largely uninterrupted over the course of American history. Western Europe, over the course of the twentieth century, has hunted these predators to the point of near-extinction. In the past few years, however, grey wolves […]

Hilarious incorrect quotes. It’s safe to say that almost everyone has a t-shirt or two with their favorite band, tv show or a movie. So, if you ever feel like wearing a t-shirt with a logo of your favorite band look no more because a shop called slightlywrong has you covered. Except there’s one small thing, their […]

False facts about the Titanic. The sinking of the Titanic was a disaster on a monumental scale, ending with the deaths of 1,500 passengers in the frigid Atlantic Ocean. It’s been elevated to one of those moments in history that feel more myth and legend than real, a horrible, terrible disaster that most of us […]

Vietnamese people with the same last name. The existence of last names in Vietnam dates to 111 BC, the beginning of a lengthy thousand-year occupation of the country by the Han Dynasty in China. Before this time, nobody really knows how the Vietnamese handled names, due to lack of written records. In fact even the […]

Spiders can hear you ‘walking and talking’. If you’re already scared of spiders, you’re not going to like this next part. A new study published Thursday in Current Biology found that spiders — specifically a species of jumping spider — can hear sounds from further than 10 feet away. Previously, scientists believed spiders, which lack eardrums, could only […]

How fire ants form towers more than 30 ants high. Fire ants may not be cute or cuddly, but they have some pretty cool tricks. They can form rafts to survive floods, and researchers have now figured out how they form towers to escape danger or surmount obstacles. The ants don’t consciously decide to throw themselves on […]

What life actually was like for a real pirate. In between bouts of pirate-talk and rocking out to Alestorm (or Lazy Town, whichever you prefer), you may have wondered what life would’ve been like if you actually were a pirate. As it turns out, your life on the seas would’ve been drastically different from the […]

We are entering a digital dark age You may think that those photos on Facebook or all your tweets may last forever, or might even come back to haunt you, depending on what you have out there. But, in reality, much of our digital information is at risk of disappearing in the future. Unlike in […]

The elegant beauty of the big cats. Using only a simple, dark background, Vincent J. Musi captures the elegance of lions, leopards, tigers, and more. The South Carolina-based photographer works for National Geographic and shot these breathtaking images as part of a series titled Big Cats. His photos showcase incredible, up-close details that we don’t often see, like the individual […]