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Oxford University Is Older Than the Aztecs The historical timeline you keep in your head is all messed up As early as 1096, teaching had already started in Oxford. By 1249, the University of Oxford had grown into a full-fledged university, replete with student housing at the school’s three original “halls of residence”—University, Balliol and Merton Colleges. Oxford isn’t the oldest university, no
Researchers Transfer a Human Protein Into Plants to Supersize Them While a promising route to boosting crop yields, experts say more work needs to be done to understand why the tweak works Transplanting a human protein, known for promoting growth, into crops may engender larger, heavier and more bountiful plants. jxfzsy/Getty Images Every year, 9 million people in the world succumb to hunger—that’
People Can Learn Echolocation in Ten Weeks Researchers taught 12 people who are blind and 14 people with sight to use clicks to navigate their environments The researchers taught 26 volunteers to use mouth clicking to observe nearby objects and navigate outdoors. Canva stock footage / Courtesy of Durham University For years, a small number of people who are blind have used echolocation, by making
One-Thousand-Year-Old Mill Resumes Production to Supply Flour Amid Pandemic In April alone, the Sturminster Newton Mill ground more than one ton of wheat The Sturminster Newton Mill has stood on the banks of the River Stour in Dorset County since 1016. Photo by Finnbarr Webster / Getty Images With stay-at-home orders in effect across the United Kingdom, bulk buyers and consumers alike have been pu
Take a Free Virtual Tour of Five Egyptian Heritage Sites The sites include the 5,000-year-old tomb of Meresankh III, the Red Monastery and the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Barquq A virtual view of the Red Monastery, one of five Egyptian heritage sites newly detailed in 3-D Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Earlier this month, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the release
Why Bats Are One of Evolution’s Greatest Puzzles Paleontologists seek the ancestors that could explain how bats became the only flying mammals. Listen carefully on a quiet summer night and you might hear them. Even if you don’t see a bat’s frantically fluttering form, you might catch its high-pitched chirp as it searches the night for dinner. You’re probably hearing a little brown bat, a common in
Amid Pandemic, Artists Invoke Japanese Spirit Said to Protect Against Disease Illustrators are sharing artwork of Amabie, a spirit first popularized during the Edo period, on social media According to traditional Japanese folklore, Amabie predicts good harvests and protect against disease. Courtesy of Kyoto University A long-haired merperson with three scaly tails and a beak might not seem like so
Goodbye, Barrow, Alaska. Hello, Utqiagvik The most northerly city has officially reverted back to the Inupiaq name for the settlement on the Arctic sea Yesterday, Barrow, Alaska, was wiped off the map (not literally, though it has been called "ground zero" for climate change). On December 1, the town of approximately 4,300 people officially changed its name to Utqiagvik, the village’s traditional
Hidden Japanese Settlement Found in Forests of British Columbia More than 1,000 items have been unearthed there, among them rice bowls, sake bottles and Japanese ceramics In 2004, archaeology professor Robert Muckle was alerted to a site within the forests of British Columbia’s North Shore mountains, where a few old cans and a sawblade had been discovered. He suspected the area was once home to a
Dolphins Seem to Use Toxic Pufferfish to Get High The dolphins’ expert, deliberate handling of the terrorized puffer fish implies that this is not their first time at the hallucinogenic rodeo Humans aren't the only creatures that suffer from substance abuse problems. Horses eat hallucinogenic weeds, elephants get drunk on overripe fruit and big horn sheep love narcotic lichen. Monkeys' attraction
The Corn of the Future Is Hundreds of Years Old and Makes Its Own Mucus This rare variety of corn has evolved a way to make its own nitrogen, which could revolutionize farming The corn variety Sierra Mixe grows aerial roots that produce a sweet mucus that feeds bacteria. The bacteria, in turn, pull nitrogen out of the air and fertilize the corn. If scientists can breed this trait into conventional
When Scientists “Discover” What Indigenous People Have Known For Centuries When it supports their claims, Western scientists value what Traditional Knowledge has to offer. If not, they dismiss it A team of researchers in northern Australia have documented kites and falcons, “firehawks,” intentionally carrying burning sticks to spread fire: It is just one example of western science catching up to I
Google Earth Leads to Discovery of 400 Stone “Gates” in Saudi Arabia Amateur researchers first came across the rock structures in 2004. Four years later, after seeing them again on Google Earth, they decided to investigate With the help of Google Earth, researchers examining the deserts of Saudi Arabia have found around 400 unreported stone structures in the Arabian Desert, likely built by nomadic
There Never Was a Real Tulip Fever A new movie sets its doomed entrepreneurs amidst 17th-century “tulipmania”—but historians of the phenomenon have their own bubble to burst When tulips came to the Netherlands, all the world went mad. A sailor who mistook a rare tulip bulb for an onion and ate it with his herring sandwich was charged with a felony and thrown in prison. A bulb named Semper Augustus
Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World’s Oldest Continuously Run Libraries The centuries-old texts were erased, and then written over, by monks at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a sacred Christian site nestled in the shadow of Mount Sinai, is home to one of the world’s oldest continuously used libraries. Thousands of manuscripts and books are kept there—so
In 1948, amidst the chaos of China's civil war, Nationalist forces evacuated thousands of priceless artifacts from Beijing to Taiwan. The preemptive decision proved timely: By the following year, Mao Zedong’s Communist Party had seized power. In lieu of this regime change, the evacuated collection never returned to its home country. Instead, the artifacts remained in Taiwan’s National Palace Museu
Why the Japanese Eat Cake For Christmas A tradition beginning in war and ending in cake A dog eats a special Christmas cake in Tokyo, celebrating with the festive red and white dessert. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye) Fluffy white sponge cake might not be the first dessert that comes to mind around Christmastime, but in Japan, the cake is king. Despite less than one percent of Japan’s population identifyi
Thirty Years Later, a Gigantic Arch Is Set to Cover Chernobyl The New Safe Confinement is one of history’s most ambitious engineering projects—and it comes not a moment too soon
A print of Lake Suwa from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Corbis Almost every winter, after Lake Suwa in the Japanese Alps freezes, the male Shinto god Takeminakata crosses the ice to visit the female god Yasakatome at her shrine, causing a ridge known as the omiwatari to form. At least, that’s what the priests living on the shores of the lake believed. When the water froze, they would
In 2015, Lake Michigan Was So Clear Its Shipwrecks Were Visible From the Air A Coast Guard patrol spotted the wrecks in shallow waters that are only clear after the lake’s ice melts and before summer sediment swirls and algae blooms This 133-foot long wooden steamer, the Rising Sun, is in 6 to 12 feet of water just north of Pyramid Point, where she stranded on October 29, 1917. All 32 people on bo
This European lobster (Homarus gammarus) can live at least 50 years in the wild. Courtesy of Wikicommons/Cefaclor In recent weeks, photos of lobsters have been floating around social media with captions calling the crustaceans “biologically immortal.” Anyone with an Internet connection can even create a meme juxtaposing this fact with a joke of his or her own. But is this fun fact actually, well,
Kamakura Shirts owner Yoshio Sadasue opened a New York store on Madison Avenue. Raymond Patrick A couple of years ago I found myself in a basement bar in Yoyogi, a central precinct of Tokyo, drinking cold Sapporo beers with big foamy heads while the salarymen next to me raised their glasses to a TV displaying a fuzzy, obviously bootlegged video of an old Bob Dylan concert. The name of the bar, My
150 Years Ago, Sochi Was the Site of a Horrific Ethnic Cleansing Czar Alexander II may have freed the serfs, but his war against the stateless people of the Caucasus cannot be ignored History has largely been kind to Alexander II, the Russian czar who freed the serfs in 1861, just two years before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 (the two world leaders even corresponded
The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath While studying brain scans to search for patterns that correlated with psychopathic behavior, James Fallon found that his own brain fit the profile Compared to a control brain (top), neuroscientist James Fallon’s brain (bottom) shows significantly decreased activity in areas of the frontal lobe linked to empathy and morality—anatomical patterns
This Insect Has The Only Mechanical Gears Ever Found in Nature The small hopping insect Issus coleoptratus uses toothed gears on its joints to precisely synchronize the kicks of its hind legs as it jumps forward The small hopping insect Issus coleoptratus uses toothed gears (magnified above with an electron microscope) to precisely synchronize the kicks of its hind legs as it jumps forward. All im
Tweets from around the world, plotted by location as part of a new study. Click to enlarge. Image via First Monday/Leetaru et. al. It’s hard to appreciate just how quickly and thoroughly Twitter has taken over the world. Just seven years ago, in 2006, it was an idea sketched out on a pad of paper. Now, the service is used by an estimated 554 million users—a number that amounts to nearly 8 percent
U.S. Patent No. 207,559. The first appearance of the QWERTY keyboard. Google patents What came first: the typist or the keyboard? The answer depends on the keyboard. A recent article in Smithsonian’s news blog, Smart News, described an innovative new keyboard system that proposes a more efficient alternative to the ubiquitous “universal” keyboard best known as QWERTY – named for the first six lett
Smithsonian’s 10th Annual Photo Contest Finalists: Natural World Check out the 10 finalists in the Natural World category The photographer captured this image of the Milky Way rising up from behind Mount Rainier with a Nikon D800. “The stars almost looked as though they were erupting from the mountain and I knew this was a moment in time that I had to capture,” Morrow says. Wallpaper Download: Des
Any Two Pages on the Web Are Connected By 19 Clicks or Less There are more than 14 billion pages on the web, but they are linked by hyperconnected nodes, like Hollywood actors connected through Kevin Bacon The Opte Project creates visualizations of the 14 billion pages that make up the network of the web. Image via Opte Project Note: After publishing this article, it came to our attention that Bar
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