Damn Interesting is one of the few remaining specimens of an endangered species: we are a website which actually researches and writes original material. Please help prevent our species' extinction. Send us a few dollars to help us keep the servers running.
DamnInteresting.com was founded in 2005 and since that time we have written many books' worth of material on all things sciencey and historical. We've spent our spare hours combing through books, newspaper archives, old photo collections, and other such dust-encrusted stuff. We've attended lectures and spoken to experts and scrutinized scientific papers. We mine all this data for obscure nuggets, then smelt and hammer them into non-fiction stories the best we know how. Then we give away the end product for free...no paywall, no advertisements. For the good of humanity and the love of the craft.
Because we are a long-lasting source of reliable original material, our stuff is linked from and cited by hundreds of thousands of other websites and writings. Our articles also appear frequently on high-traffic sites such as Reddit. Consequently our servers are under a constant substantial load, which means our operating costs are expensive. So much so that Alan, our founder, can no longer afford to pay for it out-of-pocket as he has done for almost a decade.
What do I get for donating?
We're not just asking for support, we're also offering extra stuff in exchange. In addition to a warm feeling of giving, we can send you professionally-designed eBooks containing our entire catalog of articles, or a high-quality audio book version of our Greatest Hits. We'll even personally sign a one-of-a-kind eBook for you if you can help us out even more.
If there's something else we can offer to make donating worth your time, let us know. We're not some faceless corporation with a customer service department...our contact page just sends an email to Alan. If your message requires a reply it'll be from him.
About Our E-books
Our e-books are of professional quality and design, and they are compatible with Kindles, Nooks, iPads, Androids, and pretty much any other e-book-compatible contraption. You can even get it as a PDF for comfortable offline computer reading.
About Our Audiobook
We are currently recording an audiobook version of our Greatest Hits as read by the buttery voice of the inimitable Simon Whistler. If you donate $36.00 or more you'll gain access to download the entire audiobook. Here's a sample chapter:
Chapter 23: The Smoldering Ruins of CentraliaChapters 1 through 40 are currently available (of total), and they consist of hours of pleasurable listening (192kbits/s MP3). As other parts become available we'll email donors with download links. Our ETA to complete the audiobook is August 2013. We anticipate the final product will be over 14 hours, with an average chapter time of around 15 minutes.
The Future
We have many ideas we'd love to explore. We recently launched an audiobook-like podcast and the response had been good. We have another podcast in the works that is made up of some of the loose interesting bits we couldn't quite fit into our articles. We're working on some science-and-history posters that may intrigue you. We'd love to explore making mini-documentaries based on our material.
If you donate you can bring this glistening future even closer to the present.
