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Cool Finds

A Museum in England Is Hiding a Forgery Among Its Masterpieces

A South London gallery is asking its patrons to identify the fake in order to spark discussion about how and why we appreciate the art

January 13, 2015

New Research

Your Computer Knows You Better Than Your Mom

Why machines can predict your personality more accurately than your family or friends

January 13, 2015

New Research

Ancient Dogs Likely Arrived in America Thousands of Years After Humans

New research on dog DNA shows that they migrated to the new world much later than initially thought

January 13, 2015

New Research

Separate People From Their Phones, And They Perform Less Well

Here’s what happens when you’re parted from your smartphone

January 12, 2015

Cool Finds

Two Men Tried To Cure Schizophrenia by Removing Their Patients’ Intestines

Bayard Holmes and Henry Cotton were separated by a generation, but both thought that mental illness arose from toxins produced within the body

January 12, 2015

Cool Finds

How a Single Penny Became Worth More Than $2 Million

Fifteen years ago, few would pay $1 million for a coin—no matter how rare. That’s changing.

January 12, 2015

Cool Finds

Oil Companies First Built Pipelines in the 1860s; They’ve Been Contested Ever Since

In the 19th century, reformers were happy to have oil come out of the ground—but they objected to the way oil companies controlled it

January 12, 2015

Cool Finds

On This Day in 1932, America Elected Its First Female Senator

This year, a record number of women are serving in Congress; Hattie Wyatt Caraway was the first ever in the Senate

January 12, 2015

Cool Finds

Come for the Giant Rock, Stay for the UFO History

George Van Tassel believed he could communicate with aliens

January 9, 2015

Early Food Safety Workers Tested Poisons by Eating Them

They were hailed as heroes and even had a song

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

It’s Cheaper to Make Diabetes Test Strips of Silk Than of Paper in India

Skilled handloom weavers and abundant silk hold the key for an innovative solution

January 9, 2015

New Research

Planes Fly Too Fast for Birds to Dodge

New research shows that birds are not adept at avoiding obstacles at such high speeds

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

A Museum’s Butterfly Emerged Half Male, Half Female

The rarity is like a natural experiment that tells scientists how genes and hormones interact to produce different sexes

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

U.S. Air Force Builds New Radar for Space Junk

It’s called Space Fence and should help us track the estimated 500,000 pieces of debris that orbit Earth

January 9, 2015

New Research

Europe’s Great Gothic Cathedrals Weren’t Built Just of Concrete

The designers and builders of Europe’s great Gothic cathedrals weren’t actually so innovative

January 9, 2015

Cool Finds

The 1887 Blizzard That Changed the American Frontier Forever

A blizzard hit the western open range, causing the “Great Die Up” and transforming America’s agricultural history

January 9, 2015

New Research

Monkeys Can Learn to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror

Generations of monkeys had tried and failed a classic test of intelligence, but the fault may have been in the way humans thought of the test

January 8, 2015

Trending Today

60 Years Ago, the First African-American Soloist Sang at the Met Opera

Marian Anderson performed as the fortuneteller Ulrica in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera

January 8, 2015

Cool Finds

The Flu Has Been Making People Sick for At Least 500 Years

The 1918 flu pandemic gets all the headlines, but the malady is thought to have first appeared in the 16th century—and possibly earlier

January 8, 2015

Trending Today

The Art of Vaccinations

The Art of Saving a Life is connected to a fundraising effort for an international group working to eradicate disease through vaccinations

January 8, 2015