http://www.damninteresting.com A collection of Damn Interesting things Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:25:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:11:25 +0000 Matt Castle http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=971 fingers—sit comfortably in the human hand, readily detached from their close-packed companions. Indeed, the banana appears almost purpose-designed for efficient human consumption and distribution. It is difficult to conceive of a more fortuitous fruit. The banana, however, is a freakish and fragile genetic mutant; one that has survived through the centuries due to the sustained application of selective breeding by diligent humans. Indeed, the "miraculous" banana is far from being a no-strings-attached gift from nature. Its cheerful appearance hides a fatal flaw— one that threatens its proud place in the grocery basket. The banana’s problem can be summed up in a single word: sex.]]> http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana/feed 301 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer http://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:05:21 +0000 Jason Bellows http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=972 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer/feed 125 http://www.damninteresting.com/steely-eyed-hydronauts-of-the-mariana http://www.damninteresting.com/steely-eyed-hydronauts-of-the-mariana#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:17:44 +0000 Alan Bellows http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=1101 Challenger sailed from Portsmouth, England on an historic endeavor. Although the sophisticated steam-assisted sailing vessel had been originally constructed as a combat ship, her instruments of war has been recently removed to make room for laboratories, dredging equipment, and measuring apparatuses. She and her crew of 243 sailors and scientists set out on a long, meandering circumnavigation of the globe with orders to catalog the ocean's depth, temperature, salinity, currents, and biology at hundreds of sites--an oceanographic effort far more ambitious than any undertaken before it. For three and a half long, dreary years the crew spent day after day dredging, measuring, and probing the oceans. Although the data they collected was scientifically indispensable, men were driven to madness by the tedium, and some sixty souls ultimately opted to jump ship rather than take yet another depth measurement or temperature reading. One day in 1875, however, as the crew were "sounding" an area near the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, the sea swallowed an astonishing 4,575 fathoms (about five miles) of measuring line before the sounding weight reached the floor of the ocean. The bedraggled researchers had discovered an undersea valley which would come to be known as the Challenger Deep. Reaching 6.78 miles at its lowest point, it is now know to be the deepest location on the whole of the Earth. The region is of such immense depth that if Mount Everest were to be set on the sea floor at that location, the mighty mountain's peak would still be under more than a mile of water. Nothing was known of what organisms and formations might lurk at such depths. Many scientists of the day were convinced that such crevasses must be lifeless places considering the immense pressure, relative cold, total lack of sunlight, and presumed absence of oxygen. It would be almost a century before a handful of explorers finally resolved to go down there and take a look for themselves.]]> http://www.damninteresting.com/steely-eyed-hydronauts-of-the-mariana/feed 113 http://www.damninteresting.com/somethings-afoot-at-damn-interesting http://www.damninteresting.com/somethings-afoot-at-damn-interesting#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:54:40 +0000 Alan Bellows http://new.damninteresting.com/?p=1036 http://www.damninteresting.com/somethings-afoot-at-damn-interesting/feed 143 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-total-perspective-vortex http://www.damninteresting.com/the-total-perspective-vortex#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:37:02 +0000 Christopher S. Putnam http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=864 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-total-perspective-vortex/feed 637 http://www.damninteresting.com/living-in-the-moment http://www.damninteresting.com/living-in-the-moment#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:14:37 +0000 Alan Bellows http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=861 http://www.damninteresting.com/living-in-the-moment/feed 176 http://www.damninteresting.com/a-series-of-unfortunate-hacks http://www.damninteresting.com/a-series-of-unfortunate-hacks#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:15:31 +0000 Alan Bellows http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=977 http://www.damninteresting.com/a-series-of-unfortunate-hacks/feed 96 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-remains-of-doctor-bass http://www.damninteresting.com/the-remains-of-doctor-bass#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:08:13 +0000 Alan Bellows http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=924 http://www.damninteresting.com/the-remains-of-doctor-bass/feed 99