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Cool Finds

Victor Hugo with friends during his exile to Guernsey

Cool Finds

Victor Hugo Also Created Dramatic Pen and Ink Drawings

The sketches, many done with pen and ink, are almost modern and surreal

On March 3, 1939, Harvard freshman Lothrop Withington, Jr., swallows a, live, squirming goldfish to win a ten dollar bet. He reportedly practiced the feat for days before by swallowing baby goldfish and tadpoles.

Cool Finds

The Great Goldfish Swallowing Craze of 1939 Never Really Ended

A Harvard undergrad’s $10 bet set off a sensation among college students that still echoes on the Internet today

Cool Finds

This Is How New Words Enter the Vernacular of ASL

Selfie, photobomb and five-second rule all have signs in progress

This image of a Martian sunset was captured in 2005.

Cool Finds

Watch the Sunset from Mars

Opportunity rover helps capture a hauntingly blue view of nightfall on the Red Planet

Cool Finds

Impatient Scientists Used Paint-By-Numbers Technique to Create the First Image From Mars

Scientists used raw data to create their first image of the red planet

A rover developed by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and considered for use in the early 1970s, not a moon race competitor

Cool Finds

Forget the Race to the Moon. These Rovers Will Race on the Moon.

It’s going to be a pretty slow race, however

Screen shot of video "Global ship traffic seen from space - FleetMon Satellite AIS and FleetMon Explorer"

Cool Finds

See Shipping Traffic Move Through Straits Around the World

A visualization shows a week’s worth of vessel movement

Cool Finds

Meet the Man Who Can Taste Words

For some, taste mixes with other sense—a form of synesthesia that isn’t as common as experiencing the colors of words

A man walks on a tight rope in the remote mountain village of Tsovkra-1.

Cool Finds

The Russian Village Entirely Populated by Tightrope Walkers

The circus-skill tradition goes back so far in tiny Tsovkra-1 that no one knows quite how or why it started—but it may end before long

Peanut butter, known to the National Institute of Standards and Technology as SRM 2387.

Cool Finds

The Weird World of Standard Reference Materials, From Peanut Butter to Whale Blubber

Get the full story behind a $761 jar of peanut butter and other exorbitantly priced everyday objects used by scientists

Cool Finds

Found: One Lost Sherlock Holmes Story

It was in the attic, my dear Watson

Jackie Kennedy Onassis, New York Harbor in 1976

Cool Finds

For the Kennedys’ Virginia Home, Jackie Had Ideas About Every Detail, Down to the Guest Room Ashtrays

She drew inspiration from French magazines and colors from Colonial America

A 19th century engraving of King John signing the Magna Carta

Cool Finds

Legend Says the Ankerwycke Yew Witnessed the Magna Carta’s Signing

The tree on the bank of the River Thames may be 2,000 years old

A lithograph depicting an ancient Egyptian physician treating a patient for lockjaw. In the village of Deir el-Medina, this man may have still been paid while missing work.

Cool Finds

Some Ancient Egyptians Had State-Sponsored Healthcare

Craftsmen who built royal tombs enjoyed sick days, designated physicians and rationed medicine—all paid by the state

Cool Finds

These Glass Sculptures Were Inspired By the New York City Ballet

The artist wanted to convey that “all of your memories are stuck inside your bone marrow” and make them visible

Cool Finds

Divers Discover Graveyard Filled With Giant Lemur Skeletons

A Madagascar cave is packed with the bones of extinct species

Cool Finds

LED Skylights Perfectly Mimic Natural Sunlight

The lights fool human brains and camera eyes

A cross section of a polymetalic deep sea nodule of manganese and cobalt discovered on a previous expedition.

Cool Finds

An Underwater Field of Weird Metal Balls Is a Key to Both Past And Future

A huge deposit of manganese nodules beneath the Atlantic might be a potential source of highly prized rare earth metals

These fragmented black lines are actually seagulls flying

Cool Finds

See the Swoops of Seagulls’ Flight Patterns

Special video effects shows more than an hours worth of seagull flight as curling paths

A visitor to MoMA views Jackson Pollock's painting "One (Number 31, 1950)"

Cool Finds

A Computer Can Tell Real Jackson Pollocks From Fakes

Genuine Pollacks really are distinguishable from random splatters of paint—there’s now software to prove it

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