A British woman has abstained from smiling for the last 40 years in an extreme attempt to ward off wrinkles. Tess Christian, 50, told the Daily Mail that she adopted a permanent poker face as a child to prevent laughter lines around her mouth, eyes, and forehead. “My dedication has paid off,” she said. “I don’t have a single line […]
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A solar-powered airplane landed in India on March 10, completing the second leg of its bid to become the first aircraft to circle the world by solar energy alone. Solar Impulse 2, which launched in Abu Dhabi, will make 12 stops on its 22,000-mile (35,000 km) journey.
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Neopagans in Iceland are erecting a temple dedicated to the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Frigg for the first time in over 1,000 years. The temple will be built by the Asatru movement, which was founded in the 1970s to revive the ancient religion and now has more than 2,000 followers ina coutnry with just 320,000 people. Hilmar Orn Flilmarsson, Asatru’s […]
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Cary Clevenger, 14, was playing with his friend Gavin Starns outside Gavin’s house in Austin when he happened to look up. Perched on the ledge of a second-story window was Gavin’s 2-year-old brother, Cannon. At that moment, Cannon pushed through the screen and tumbled forward. He bounced off an exterior lamp—and into Cary’s arms. The two hit the ground but were […]
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Portion of the Indian Ocean that is underexplored by scientists because of pirates: 1/4
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Portion of China’s carbon emissions that is produced by manufacturing goods for export: 1/4
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A New Zealand man who was bitten by a shark calmly stitched up his own wounds, then joined his friends at the pub while still bleeding and drank a beer before heading to the hospital. James Grant was spearfishing when the shark clamped down on his leg. “[| thought], ‘Bugger, now I have to try and get this thing off,’ “he said. […]
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The two deadliest drugs in America are both legal. Tobacco kills more than 500,000 Americans a year. Alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths a year (including those caused by drunk driving and violent behavior) and more than 4.6 million emergency room visits.
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Sorry, science-fiction fans: Time travel is impossible. That is the sobering conclusion, anyway, of a Hong Kong-based team of physicists. They found that the maximum speed of a single photon, the basic unit of light, “obeys the traffic law of the universe,” Agence France-Presse reports. The photon cannot go faster than the speed of light—186,282 miles per second—and thus provides […]
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Estimated minimum gallons of water used annually to produce Coca Cola products: 8,000,000,000,000 Portion of the world’s population that amount would supply with drinking water each year: 1/4
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