The Grid

Stark warnings. The last few years have seen Artificial Intelligence and robotics finally start to catch up with their science fiction counterparts. Advances in "deep learning" - in which large neural networks are modeled after ...

The jinxed ship called the USS William D. Porter (DD-579). During WWII, the Allies had a ship so jinxed it destroyed itself by nearly destroying something else. The USS William D. Porter (DD-579) was named in ...

These happy animals will make your smile! The animals that look like they’re smiling are bound to warm even the stone-cold jaded hearts among us. However, the scientific jury is still out on whether or ...

Elaborate book covers have been Aniko Kolesnikova’s passion since 2009. The Latvian designer-artist, working under the name Mandarin Duck, specializes in creating dragon-, animal-, bird-, fantasy-, and nature-inspired polymer journals. She occasionally takes custom orders, too ...

The South Korean Beauty by Jaewoon U. He is a landscape photographer based in Seoul with a great eye for finding stunning landscapes reflected in mirror-like lakes and rivers. The reflections in his photos make ...

Explaining that consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 ...

Flat earth. One of the great lies told to schoolchildren is that the whole round-earth thing was first proposed by Christopher Columbus, sailing toward the edge of the Earth in hopes of encountering India. The ...

Dangerous railways. Nobody is actually really scared of trains, are they? Air travel, sure, and you wouldn't be too surprised to meet someone who gets a bit nervous crossing oceans or driving on tight roads ...

Have you ever wished for a fairy tale world to escape to? Well, if you're furiously nodding at your screen right now then you'll be glad to hear that it is in fact entirely possible to ...

Future technology. Resuscitation is one of those topics that is regularly discussed in the world of science. Resuscitation is highly unlikely at present due to the lack of the needed technology for success. However, it ...

Artificial Intelligence, defined as intelligence exhibited by machines, is on everybody's lips nowadays. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made many changes in our day to day life and has touched every industry, business, consumer and household ...

(recommend audio) The Black Death, also known as the Pestilence (Pest for short), the Great Plague or the Plague, or less commonly the Black Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, ...

The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the ...

Do you want to put a smile on someone’s face today? Maybe make their day a little better. It won’t cost you a single penny or much time to do just that. And because smiling ...

Deep in the cavities of the mind is your subliminal channel that circles the subconscious, conscious and unconscious mind. In this region of the brain is the area where the psyche resides and holds hidden ...

We can safely say that the period of man’s history from 476 AD to 1000 AD was the most maligned of all. This period, known to historians as the Early Middle Ages, is still referred ...

The dark side of selfies. Our social media feeds are full of self-shot photos of our friends and family looking better than we do, doing things that are more exciting than the things we do, ...

Ryan Koopmans tells the story:   GQ Magazine assigned us to photograph the atmosphere and culture around Area 51, a highly secretive and much talked-about US airforce institution located in the desert of Nevada. We met ...

Astronomers have a theory on how the planet Uranus got flipped onto its side. They used detailed computer simulations showing a body about twice the size of Earth must have slammed into Uranus between 3 ...

Big Bang. Dinosaurs walked the earth before humans did. A big cloud of gas and dust floated out in the universe before earth. Before the universe ... well, before that is a point that physicists ...

Dave Pollot is a painter in the US who brings new life to old and forgotten thrift store paintings by adding pop culture characters. He uses these old paintings to combine his interest in painting ...

The specific point on Earth that reigns as the planet’s hottest place turns out to be a very complex, loaded question. What defines 'hottest' exactly? Do we mean the place that reaches the highest temperature? ...

Simon Beck, who bills himself as “the world’s first and most famous ‘Snow Artist,'” is back with a new work of unique art – a massive snow dragon that he drew by walking in the ...

A mysterious prankster who has been dressing up as Pennywise the evil clown from the popular “It” films and trying to scare passers-by has been getting a lot of attention in Ukraine, including from prosecutors ...

How to motivate yourself. It will be so hard for you to do anything beneficial in your life if you lack intrinsic motivation. For one move from a single step to another, changing your way ...

Idiots that changed history. Yes, it happened to us all at one point or another. We've all felt the slow burn that comes with the realization that we've done something horribly wrong. Whatever you did, ...

(recommend audio) The Athenian Revolution (508–507 BCE) was a revolt by the people of Athens that overthrew the ruling aristocratic oligarchy,  establishing the almost century-long self-governance of Athens in the form of a participatory democracy ...

The first vampires. Many people wrongly believe that vampires were first discovered in Romania when in fact, vampires records date back as far as well over a thousands years. This wrong perception is understandable given ...

The last soldier surrendered. During World War II around 450,000 German soldiers were imprisoned in 700 camps across the United States. After the war ended, these prisoners were repatriated to Germany.  But seven of them ...

Fanta for Nazi Germany. It's February 1944 and Berlin is attempting to recover from American aerial bombing. But life and industry continues on the city’s outskirts. In farmhouses, bottles clang and a mix of ex-convicts, ...

The theory of future aliens. According to ancient astronaut theory our ancestors experiencing these huge leaps forward - advancing their knowledge in all fields - is due to extraterrestrial intervention. And maybe even genetic intervention ...

Try terrifying Japanese ghosts for size! If you know all about ghost stories or haunted house movies then there's a good chance that you might feel like you've seen it all. A floating candelabra? Boring ...

The Bell witch. It all happened in a farm house that stood on the Red River trail near Adams, Tennessee in Robertson County, which in the mid-1800’s was the site of many horrific encounters with ...

Alone with their thoughts. In 1654, scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Now, there's some science behind that statement. A ...

The Saurian Monster must have left a ghoulish sight in the wake of his macabre stride. It all started in October 1886 when workers found a sheep picked clean to the bones at the Frankton ...

Be strong and withstand this cuteness overload! Our parents can probably not wait and are probably relieved to see us grow up!  But in all honesty, our furry counterparts could please just stay babies forever ...

Jeremy Mann (American, born in 1979) is a painter best known for his moody, dark cityscapes. Mann graduated from Ohio University with a degree in Fine Art painting, and later attended the Academy of Art ...

Unlucky people. Have you ever got a sneaky suspicion that the universe is sometimes trigger-happy to assassinate you? However, you haven't met Ann Hodges. She wasn't particularly special but she was still in the universe ...

Childhood friendships. To adults, friends may be fine feathered or fair weathered. But kids have funny answers that really give adults a life lesson on the true meaning of friendship. It makes perfect sense that ...

OBE or Out of Body Experience is a term that was first used in 1943 by author George N. M. Tyrell. Tyrell was looking for a broader scientific term to replace more supernatural or mystical ...

Future dreams. Much has been written regarding dreams and their meanings or purpose. Mankind has been fascinated with our dreams since the first dreamer awoke and wondered about what their visions meant. Since ancient times ...

The best Feng Shui bed room tip that a Feng Shui expert can offer you is to have your bed in ‘command position’. What is FengShui? But before you know what is a command position ...

The winners and runners up of the 2019 Nature Photographer Of The Year were announced recently. The standards were incredibly high, as usual. The award was presented at the Nature Talks Photo Festival in the Netherlands ...

Develop fine motor skills in babies and toddlers through the coolest way possible – play. Fine motor skills are subtle movements of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes. They help achieve tasks like ...

Peter Stumpp (alternately spelled Stumpf, Stubbe or Stuppe) was a mid-16th century German farmer who was executed on Halloween in 1589. Unfortunately, we only have one surviving account of what happened in the town of ...

Mysterious shipwrecks. We are fascinated by shipwrecks, and it's easy to see why. First, there's the idea of sunken treasure, which has a pretty universal appeal in any culture that admires shiny things (all of ...

Ancient leaders. To say that some ancient leaders were really weird is probably a bit of an understatement. Being really weird was almost a prerequisite for being an ancient leader. Ancient leaders in particular were ...

Everyone knows of hypnosis because of four infamous words: "You're getting very sleepy." But aside from old Hollywood films and sideshow parlor tricks, hypnotism is viewed by many psychiatric professionals as a credible form of ...

There will be a teddy bear. There always is. Push back against the plush tide and it crashes, all fur and baleful plastic eyes, in the living room regardless. Scientists regularly find that so-called “transitional ...

Dwarf planet called Goblin. A strange little planet with a colorful name is giving astronomers new evidence in the hunt for Planet X. The Goblin is a newly confirmed dwarf planet that travels to the ...

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 ...

Time travel is the one that we want to be real of all mysterious phenomena. The possibilities are endless, and some people claimed they've already experienced them. Of course, it's easy to dismiss all these ...

Ten inventors that was killed by their inventions. Over the course of civilization, thousands upon thousands of inventions succeeded beyond their creator’s wildest dream. But some were epic fails. William Bullock invented the first modern ...

Atlantis! The name alone is enough to invoke images of mermaids, bubble cities, sunken ruins, and an ancient, technologically advanced situation that suffered ruin at the whims of the gods or their own hubris. But ...

Entire countries embarrassed. These mistakes made entire countries blush. If countries were capable of vasodilation, of course. The truth is, while countries can be large or small, they're run by people. And people are capable ...

Inspire your destiny. Are you happy with your current situation in life? Your answers could range from yes, no or maybe. Then you start pondering and have these strange thoughts that have been recurring every ...

There are things about ancient Egypt that still can't be explained. Few civilizations have a more mysterious reputation than ancient Egypt. But the point of a mystery is to solve it, and over the years we've ...

Hitler and the occult. The rise of the Nazi regime which led to the occupation of several countries and the extraction and eradication of countless Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, aged, disabled and children did not happen ...

Beijing-based MAD Architects earned themselves a place on the shortlist of the Southbank by Beulah competition with a green skyscraper that towers over the city of Melbourne. Twisting up as a single tower, the skyscraper is a multipurpose vision ...

The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The ...