It's been speculated that in the middle of the earth, in the land of the Shire, there was, at some point, a brave little hobbit with qualities that a lot of people find admirable. Then, in 2003, according to the Smithsonian Magazine, a discovery was made on the Indonesian island of Flores.
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We all have had an occasion to lie -- sometimes about cherry trees, like George Washington, and other times, just to be polite. There is a difference between social niceties and pathological lying, though. But where is the line, and what happens when we cross it?
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Although they lack the pizzazz of lightsabers, polygraphs — better known as lie detectors — work on the equally fantastical premise that a machine can definitively say whether the subject of the test is lying or not ... and the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1998.
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As if 2020 has not yet done enough, a massive plume of dust from the Sahara Desert is now on its way to the United States.
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Baseball caps -- also tractor caps, or trucker caps -- are everywhere, especially on people's heads. Usually they come off within a reasonable timeframe, but what happens if you wear a hat every day?
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Deep space is immense, brimming with potential — and not unlike Henry Ford's Model T, you can get in any color, so long as that color is black.
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Go ahead. Swim. Splash. Sing the "Baby Shark" song. Just don't drink the cool, clear pool water.
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How far will Amazon go to manifest itself as the platonic ideal of a dystopian corporate hellscape? Very far, apparently.
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James Gunn, the writer and director of the first two movies in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy series — and, if nothing goes horribly wrong again, the planned third entry — loves his Easter eggs.
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Duct tape — or as its commercially known, Flex Tape — can do many things. Flex Tape even has commercials talking about everything it can stick together. And while it's true some things can be fixed with duct tape... don't believe everything.
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It's rare to beat a world record, let alone have two, unless you're that guy with the record for most world records. However, one dog in the UK managed this feat. Freddy the Great Dane is not just the tallest dog in the world (and one of the largest), but is also now the oldest living Great Dane.
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Thanks in large part to Brad Pitt, society bumped up their Latin vocabulary last year. Added to "et cetera" and "in vino veritas," everyone now knows "ad astra," the title of Pitt's movie about space travel, meaning "to the stars."
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.The Weather Underground carried out bombings and became one of the most notorious student-created activist groups of the 1970s. This is their crazy true story.
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The buffalo population of North America was as high as 30-75 million around the time Europeans started discovering the continent. Yet they almost went extinct.
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On November 12th, 2019, myriad viewers from around the world looked to their television sets and, irrespective of their places on the gender identity gradient, felt sudden and intense maternal impulses. The reason? Baby Yoda.
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The Loch Ness Monster has fascinated people for centuries, earning a distinguished role in the pantheon of famous mythic creatures like Bigfoot and the Chupacabra. Sadly, scientists are ready to burst your bubble — they think it's not a monster, at all.
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Genuine, committed, dyed-in-the-wool dog owners are like golfers: They're really easy to shop for. But there's one thing dog owners are split down the middle about -- dog beds? To buy or not to buy?
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Another cat behavior that can befuddle a human observer is The Stare. Why do they shoot those laser eyes into our souls?
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SARS came and went -- which seems like a real glass-is-half-full potential outcome for the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Unfortunately, there's a small pile of reasons why it's unlikely that we'll see the same miraculous contagion disappearing act this time around.
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"Small and kind of cute" doesn't necessarily mean "small and kind of cute and harmless," as any Peter Dinklage fan knows. Add "kind of cute, for something boneless" and it doesn't change. Case in point: the blue-ringed octopus. Small, and kind of cute, but astonishingly deadly.
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If you were one of the thousands who watched the SpaceX launch, you might have noticed that the feed came from Florida. A lot of space shuttles and rockets take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and there's a reason for it. But no, it isn't because astronauts get to enjoy the fun and sun.
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Between overwhelmed aunts, the folks at your church, and coworkers who won't stop pumping in the break room, there's a good chance you know somebody perpetually pregnant. Now, researchers have found a marsupial that double-bunks its pregnancies like it's running a shady hostel in its womb.
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The humble cicada begins its life as an egg, so small as to be imperceptible to all but the most astute. Then, like fossil fuels and the Uruk-hai, they emerge from the firmament and make everyone's life hell.
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Some people might tell you that once they hit Earth, meteorites go to live on a farm with other meteorites, where they can run through the fields together and chase rabbits. Some people would be wrong.
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Anything that happens in a bathroom on Earth is a little more problematic in space, but they've got that figured out, too. For instance, how many of us keep a scale in the bathroom?
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Imagine a world without cell phones. It's hard for most people, since cell phones are so ingrained into everyday life. However, if you lived in Green Bank, West Virginia, you wouldn't be able to text anyone, let alone take social media photos.
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Play a game long enough and eventually, you'll find yourself seeing it everywhere, or seeing changes in your body. This is particularly true for games involving patterns, like Tetris, where colored objects fit together like a puzzle. This phenomenon even has a name: the "Tetris effect."
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