There is a reasonable assumption most people make about the Hollywood sign: that it was put up to mark Hollywood, by somebody who wanted to celebrate the film industry, as…
Fingerprints feel like a distinctly primate thing, and mostly they are. Humans have them, as do chimpanzees, orangutans and other primates, which makes sense given how recently we shared an…
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be the most misunderstood environmental subject there is, and the misunderstanding is remarkably specific. People do not merely have a vague sense of it;…
Some questions look simple and turn out to have no answer. How long is the coastline of Britain is one of them, and the discovery of why is one of…
For most of recorded history, ancient Egypt was legible only in fragments. Its monuments, tombs and papyri were covered in writing, and the knowledge of how to read that writing…
Military research has a habit of producing things nobody anticipated, which then outlive the purpose they were built for. These twelve are all in ordinary use now, and all began…