A compass needle points north. Almost everyone knows this and almost nobody knows what it means.
It does not point at the North Pole. The geographic North Pole is a…
Source: Wikipedia
Palaeolithic cave art is among the most extraordinary things humans have left behind, and it presents a problem that almost no other heritage site does: the act of looking…
Two variables define everything below: temperature, which determines whether the food is cooked or merely flavoured, and time, which determines how deep the effect goes. Here are fifteen.
1. Smoked…
Food naming is a poor historical record. Restaurants name dishes for regulars, stories improve with retelling, and the version that survives is usually the most quotable rather than the most…
Card games spread along the same routes as trade and armies, mutating at every border. Here are seventeen, and what is known about where each came from.
1. Whist -…
There is a case to be made that the most consequential object of the twentieth century is a corrugated steel box.
It is not an impressive thing to look at.…