Haley Sweetland Edwards

Haley Sweetland Edwards

We live among ancient trees that are thousands of years old.

The oldest known trees are thousands of years old. The ancient plants have witnessed the rise and fall of multiple civilizations.

Haley Sweetland Edwards
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Most of us think of international borders as invisible, but clear-cut, lines: stand on one side, and you’re in one country; stand on the other, you’re in another country. But here’s a list of five international borders that, for one reason or another, are

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Christopher Columbus did a lot of naming in his day. As it turns out, he had a hand in naming four of the five island-nations with two names. Is that an obscure enough fact for you? Still, this is definitely the kind of fact that shows up on pub trivia ni

Haley Sweetland Edwards
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Anyone with even a fleeting relationship to political news these days has probably noticed that partisan bickering in the U.S. Congress has reached a bit of a crescendo of late. So we got to thinking: When do politicians just give up on the vitriolic rhet

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Pretty much ever since humans discovered flight, we’ve been strapping animals into our new devices just to see what would happen. Over the last 330 years or so, we’ve launched dogs, cats, chimps, monkeys, roosters, ducks, spiders, fruit flies, silk worms

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Blizzard image via Shutterstock Forty years ago this week, the deadliest blizzard on record ripped through the lower Caucasus and into Iran, where it left 4,000 people dead. The Blizzard of 1972, as this hellish storm has come to be known, wasn’t your ru

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Some of the world’s most famous, civilization-altering discoveries happened by accident. Take Penicillin, for example. The guy who discovered it, Sir Alexander Fleming, simply forgot to clean up his work station one night and returned to discover the worl

Haley Sweetland Edwards

Earlier this year, Bill DeMain introduced us to 15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent. Now that you've integrated those into your vocabulary, here are 14

Haley Sweetland Edwards