smithsonianmag.com

An hour before dawn, in a nameless rock pile in the world’s largest hot desert, Djimet Guemona clambered up a narrow gully. The route was hemmed by high walls, where uncountable centuries of weathering had cinched the sandstone into a rumpled, reptilian skin. From its base, the outcropping had looked like any one of the numerous rock formations, or hoodoos, in the northwest corner of the Ennedi Natural and Cultural Reserve, in eastern Chad.

Robin Giles did not quite believe the rumors that passed among his neighbors. He couldn’t yet picture the carnage: pastures bloodied by the carcasses of sheep and goats with highly distinctive wounds—bite marks at the throat, abdominal cavities emptied of lungs and liver, entrails left to rot in the Hill Country sun. Coyotes.

Sitting in his family’s living room in New York City, 14-year-old Miles Wu was astonished to find that a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight. For a total of more than 250 hours, Wu had diligently designed, folded and tested copious variations of the technique—a series of tessellating parallelograms that can fold or unfold in one fell swoop—to find one that could be used to build deployable shelters for emergency situations like natural disasters.

Sitting in his family’s living room in New York City, 14-year-old Miles Wu was astonished to find that a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight. For a total of more than 250 hours, Wu had diligently designed, folded and tested copious variations of the technique—a series of tessellating parallelograms that can fold or unfold in one fell swoop—to find one that could be used to build deployable shelters for emergency situations like natural disasters.

Archaeologists have discovered a trove of rare artifacts used by children at the site of a new development in London.

Apennine brown bears have been living alongside humans in central Italy since at least the era of the Roman Empire. This prolonged proximity to people seems to have affected the isolated creatures’ genes, causing the animals to become less aggressive than other brown bears, according to a study published December 15 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. The findings are one of the latest examples of how humans can affect wild critters—such as garbage-eating urban raccoons developing shorter snouts and feeder-visiting hummingbirds evolving longer and larger beaks.

Eighty years ago, five planes vanished during a training run off the Florida coast. A patrol plane sent to search for the men went missing, too, giving rise to a host of conspiracy theories

Early on the morning of January 8, 1902, two young women, Sadie Scott and Minnie Rice, stood on a snow-covered train platform in New Rochelle, New York, waiting for the 7:48 A.M. express that would take them to their jobs as stenographers in New York City.

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Summary:

study (Wayback Machine)

Something was wrong with the squirrels of Appalachia. It was the fall of 1968, and they appeared to be making a sudden pilgrimage: attempting improbable swims across lakes, sprinting over highways and bursting into buildings. One squirrel, while fleeing, climbed into a critical piece of infrastructure and reportedly short-circuited power to much of Clarkesville, Georgia. “The squirrel,” the wire services reported, “was also extinguished.” The highways were lined with hundreds of dead squirrels. One scientist spotted 13 squirrels swimming due north across the reservoirs of North Carolina. Nothing could make them turn around. Assuming the squirrels must be starving, concerned citizens began sending boxes of acorns and hickory nuts to the afflicted areas, and grocery stores put up signs encouraging shoppers to feed the squirrels.

Some of the most common depictions of Vikings show large warriors wearing helmets affixed with horns. But new research finds that the famed helmets discovered in Viksø, Denmark, 80 years ago actually date to about 900 B.C.E., nearly 2,000 years before the Vikings.

Today of all days, and for reasons known only to themselves, the Smithsonian Magazine decided to publish an article on class warfare and schemes of execution.

Since the Renaissance, scholars have been engaged in a curious and feverish debate over where the people who populate England came from. Did they arrive as conquerors, as Gildas would have it? Or by a more gradual and peaceful migration? The answer matters because it provides an explanation for a perplexing reality: In a remarkably short three centuries after the Roman occupation, Britain was transformed into a dramatically different kind of place.

In the late 1600s, London coffeehouses were a preferred hangout for political men and writers.

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A really good read, and it delves a little into the etymology of “drag” in addition to the intersectional history which I thought was pretty fascinating!

Salgaia zein izan zen jakiteak harrituko zaitu. Edo ez, tartean 70. hamarkadako unibertsitate ikasleak zeudela jakinda ;)