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Google Patents/Erin McCarthy

Since at least the early 1900s, inventors have been trying to make Halloween even scarier through technology.

Erin McCarthy


Archive.org

You walk into a coffee shop and look around. People of all descriptions are sitting at tables, reading the news, talking about the world, and drinking dark strong cups of coffee. Scenes like this play out in coffee shops all over the world in 2013, but th

Virginia Claire McGuire




Wikimedia Commons

The United States actually has two native boa species. Their combined ranges cover much of the American west, from southern California up to Washington state, from the Pacific coast east into and east into Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

Matt Soniak


MapsofPA.com

Thanks to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, big cities and little towns lost a lot of character in the late 1800s.

Stacy Conradt
kidsdungeonadventure.com

Cavity Sam has been plugging away, suffering through numerous operations at the hands of unskilled amateurs since 1965. Here are the 10 real terms for some of the problems Cavity Sam has been dealing with over the years.

Stacy Conradt
Thinkstock

Humans have been free diving—plunging under the water with just a lungful of air—for over 2500 years, and today’s top pros can make it 700 feet deep on a single breath. If you want to explore the deep without a scuba tank, here’s what you’ll need to do.

Editorial Staff


Oregonencyclopedia.org

If you’ve ever been enrolled in the Fruit-of-the-Month Club or gotten a Tower of Treats as a gift, you’re probably familiar with the names Harry and David, but don’t know much about them. Are they real people? Do they have last names?

Matt Soniak


Thinkstock

What could be more majestic and interesting than sailing through the air before gracefully landing in the water? You get to look awesome while gravity does all of the actual work. Here’s how to successfully turn a cliff into a diving board.

Editorial Staff


Library of Congress

An analysis of 1.6 billion words from 41,829 issues of 132 newspapers in the period covering 1830 to 1860 uncovered these top 10 viral hits of the pre-Civil War era.

Arika Okrent


grandriver/Getty Images

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
ThinkStock/Erin McCarthy

The margins of books have always been a playground for their readers’ notes, doodles, and questions. From the Library of Alexandria to Europe’s medieval monasteries, here are five ancient symbols that helped readers make sense of their books.

Keith Houston




Getty Images

Wouldn’t it do just the opposite? Doesn’t it prove that the rule does not hold for all cases and is therefore not a rule at all?

Arika Okrent




Throwing a fictional universe's characters together into one film (here's looking at you, The Avengers and Man of Steel: Superman Vs. Batman!) is a popular new trend in movies, but TV crossovers have been happening for decades. Here are 11 TV crossovers

Rudie Obias