There is a place in the South Pacific where the horizon contains nothing but water and the nearest scraps of land are roughly 2,688 kilometers away. No island marks the spot. There is no lighthouse, settlement or permanent buoy announcing t...
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An old tree can carry the shape of an injury long after the branch that caused it has disappeared. A swollen collar may surround the site of a lost limb. Growth rings can bend around the old...
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A setting exists on your phone but vanishes on your laptop. An onboarding screen refuses to advance even though every field appears complete. An organization account opens a dashboard that a...
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There is a peculiar kind of certainty that appears around traditional food. A grandmother made a dish one way, a restaurant in its supposed birthplace serves it another, and suddenly one ver...
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Few subjects can turn an ordinary Italian lunch into a tribunal quite as quickly as a traditional recipe. Put cream in carbonara, use pancetta instead of guanciale, add garlic where somebody...
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The idea of launching an object into space was born of a scientific and political ambition that changed the course of history. The first artificial satellite, launched in 1957, was not jus...
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Was wine invented in Georgia or by the Romans? The answer isn't as simple as one might think. While Georgia holds the title for the oldest wine, Rome may be the birthplace of modern wine cul...
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During the Cold War, the CIA launched Operation Acoustic Kitty, an attempt to use cats as covert listening devices. The plan involved surgically implanting microphones and transmitters into...
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In 1947, computer scientists working on the Harvard Mark II, one of the earliest electromechanical computers, noticed a malfunction in the system. Upon inspection, they found the cause: a d...
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Perched off the coast of Normandy, Mont-Saint-Michel is one of the most surreal places in Europe. At first glance, it looks like a medieval village rising out of the sea — complete with an a...
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