Damn Interesting

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Science, history, psychology, and technology since 2005.

Made by humans.

Original 1948 patent for

A Possible Future

An attempt to secure the future of the site, with an unfortunate quantity of moist metaphors.

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Twenty

The authors, editors, illustrators, and podcasters of Damn Interesting mark the 20th year (so far) of making interesting stuff.

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Aerial photograph of Bellewstown racecourse.

There Once Was a Man Called Curley

A would-be priest's audacious plan to win his money back from the bookmakers.

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Omiword, a Word Game

Introducing Omiword, a free daily word puzzle from the makers of Damn Interesting.

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P.S. 110, ca. 1903.

Much Ado About Adenoids

The largest and strangest riot in New York City’s history.

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A Trail Gone Cold

Against the odds, a tiny Icelandic town speaks of a local Black ancestor. Geneticists and historians combine forces to uncover the man’s eventful life.

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Breaking a Bit

After a rough August, we're taking a much needed break. In the meantime here is a word game we made.

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Giving the Bird the Bird

A Brief Note From an Ex-X User.

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Journey to the Invisible Planet

The tangled history of humanity’s search for the solar system’s uncharted planets.

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A portrait of Chief Joseph.

From Where the Sun Now Stands

When the U.S. Army came for their land in 1877, the Nez Perce tribe complied. But tensions boiled over, and Chief Joseph led as they ran for their lives.

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A view of Bali

The Ancient Order of Bali

In 1970s Bali, a sudden rice crisis prompted an unexpectedly far-reaching scientific discovery.

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This is Dang Interesting

To whom it may concern, we now have a (mostly) profanity-free mirror site.

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Young Maurice Wilson in uniform.

Lofty Ambitions

In 1933, British WWI vet Maurice Wilson hatched an unorthodox plan to reach the still-untouched summit of Everest.

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Men in straw boaters.

The Rube’s Dilemma

A great pitcher’s great temptation.

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Artur Alves Reis.

Devouring the Heart of Portugal

In 1924 a bankrupt businessman in Portugal launched an audacious international scheme to become one of the wealthiest men in the world.

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Mount St. Helens ca. 1979.

The Mount St. Helens Trespasser

Robert Rogers, a man obsessed with trespassing, sets his sights on Mount St. Helens in the spring of 1980.

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Simon Wiesenthal ca. 1963.

Hunting For Kobyla

The true story of a runaway Nazi, a determined sleuth, and a chase around the world.

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Artist

The Unceasing Cessna Hacienda

In 1958, one heavily modified airplane flew out of Las Vegas with a single objective: Don’t land.

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Du Yuesheng.

The Kingpin of Shanghai

From the depths of poverty, Du Yuesheng rose through Shanghai’s underworld to become one of the most influential, and overlooked, figures in modern China.

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To Hell With Facebook

The earliest known version of the idiom "the straw that broke the camel's back" was written by the English philosophe...

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Posted by Alan Bellows • Suggested by J. A. Macfarlane
Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop ad Wilhelm Keitel in the defendants' box.
Nuremberg trials: ‘When you see these people in the dock, the world changes’
🌎️ rfi.fr
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Posted by Alan Bellows

For the outreach workers trying to place homeless New Yorkers in shelters, each evening presents familiar faces and fresh challenges.

Illustration of social workers offering help to an unhoused person
A Night Living in Penn Station
🌎️ newyorker.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) obliges data centers with an installed capacity of at least 500 kilowatts (kW) to report data including their energy and water consumption. In practice, few do so, despite the directive being in effect for three years.

Data center
Most data centers refusing to say how much water, electricity they use
🌎️ nltimes.nl
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We're attempting our first-ever annual fundraiser so we can improve our publication rate. We only need $18,804 more! Click for more info.
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Posted by Alan Bellows • Suggested by J. A. Macfarlane

Tahnoon and his brothers grew up steeped in a worldview that placed their family at the centre of the universe. Any form of dissent was seen as an existential threat, not just to their own power but also to the small and fragile state they were responsible for protecting.

Graphically treated portrait of Sheikh Tahnoon.
Fixer, financier, spymaster: how the UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon is setting his sights on AI dominance
🌎️ theguardian.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Londoners will soon be able to stroll down the center of Oxford Street without cars whizzing by them. A section of the street, the city’s main shopping artery, will be car-free starting on Oct. 26.

A street jammed with a dozen double-decker buses in 1961, beneath decorative lights.
Take a Historic Stroll Down Oxford Street, London’s Shopping Artery
🌎️ nytimes.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
Simple sketch of a boy crouching
An Enigmatic Chalk Drawing, Rediscovered in a Private Italian Collection, Has Been Identified as the Long-Lost Work of Édouard Manet
🌎️ smithsonianmag.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

neuroscientists measured traveling waves of neural activity and observed a menagerie: source waves that appear to emanate from one location, sink waves that converge on a spot, and vortexlike spiral waves.

Illustration of a brain thinking about music
Surprisingly Complex Waves Reveal the Brain’s Inner Workings
🌎️ quantamagazine.org
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The simulations, which took three years to run even on high-powered supercomputers, are the most detailed model to date of how a galaxy like the Milky Way might have evolved over the first several billion years of existence.

Computer simulation showing beautiful clouds of purple, yellow, and white on a black background.
New simulation projects what the Milky Way looked like at ‘cosmic dawn’
🌎️ news.uchicago.edu
Video
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Posted by Alan Bellows

On this day in 1769 Isabel Godin headed into the Amazon jungle to seek out her long-lost husband.

Illustration of Isabel Godin in a boat in the jungle
Welcome to the Jungle
🌎️ damninteresting.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, China, and Spain present new evidence that an unusually cold lava world might challenge our understanding of lava worlds due to its potential possession of an atmosphere.

Artist's illustration of a lava exoplanet. (Credit: NASA)
Coldest Lava Exoplanet Found to Hold an Atmosphere
🌎️ universetoday.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
Video: This Device Turns Anything into a Suction Cup [13:49]
🌎️ youtube.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The effect itself is easy to describe. Let a crowd roam within a closed space with no particular destination, and it slowly begins to rotate, almost always to the left. Nobody directs that motion. Nobody decides it.

Pedestrians are crossing the road from one side to the other
Almost everyone naturally turns left when walking – and we still have no idea why
🌎️ theconversation.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

“There are many serious problems with this video,” Edward Phelps, associate professor at Florida University, says on LinkedIn. Phelps points out that “purple structures pop in and out of existence” and “green cilia also appear from nowhere and do not match the known size.”

A fluorescence microscopy image shows a layer of cells with long, green, hair-like cilia extending from their surface.
Nikon ‘Re-Reviewing’ Winner of Small World in Motion Contest After AI Accusation
🌎️ petapixel.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows • Suggested by J. A. Macfarlane
Adolf Hitler leans on a windowsill, gazing out at snow-capped mountains near Garmisch
‘Hitler was a lazy criminal who slept in until noon’: why most of what we think we know about the rise of the Nazis is wrong
🌎️ theguardian.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows
Star
Astronomers May Have Found a Planet in The Habitable Zone of The Hottest Star Yet
🌎️ sciencealert.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

Spread across thousands of ordinary homes, this “power plant” has become Vermont’s largest power source. It’s protecting owners from outages and providing cheaper, cleaner energy.

An illustration showing houses shaped as batteries feeding into an electricity pylon
The US state replacing power plants with home batteries
🌎️ bbc.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

SpaceX has signaled it no longer wants to be in the business of flying astronauts into low-Earth orbit. Today, the grand plans for a low-Earth orbit economy, at least involving humans, appear to be going sideways.

Crew Dragon
NASA has a Dragon dilemma, and there appear to be no good answers
🌎️ arstechnica.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows

There are some Holocaust details in this one, grim stuff.

Germany - Parades and Rallies in the Third Reich Celebrations marking the 750th anniversary of Guben (a town in Brandenburg); the head of the Nazi district of Guben, Wilhelm Kube (r), is receiving a report on the formations lined up in the stadium
The Plot to Kill a Nazi Who Tossed Candy to Kids in a Mass Grave
🌎️ popularmechanics.com
(see also)
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Posted by Alan Bellows

The breach exposed personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, alongside a person’s name, date of birth, sex, race, and other information about their military service. The notice says that the personnel records were unencrypted.

Aerial view of The Pentagon
Hackers stole millions of US military personnel records during months-long data breach
🌎️ techcrunch.com
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Posted by Alan Bellows • Suggested by J. A. Macfarlane
A portrait shot of Emily staring at the camera. She is wearing dark glasses and a black jacket, and has light brown hair. She us holding a cup of coffee in front of her.
Why caffeine makes some people buzz – and others barely notice
🌎️ bbc.com
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