There is a moment at almost every birthday party when the room changes. The lights dim, a cake appears, tiny flames tremble above the icing and everyone waits while one person silently makes a wish. Then comes the breath, the smoke and the...
Read article
You are almost asleep when the floor seems to disappear. For a fraction of a second, your body feels as though it has stepped off a ledge. A leg kicks, an arm jerks or your whole torso jumps...
Read
Stay in a swimming pool or bathtub long enough and something peculiar happens to your hands. The smooth pads of your fingers turn into a landscape of ridges and valleys, as if the skin has s...
Read
Dog owners become experts in noticing small mysteries. One week the mystery is a dog that seems unable to stop licking its front paws. The next it is the same animal stepping onto the lawn a...
Read
It often begins so subtly that you wonder whether you imagined it: a tiny flutter under one eye, a faint pulse in the eyelid, then another. A few minutes later you are staring into a mirror,...
Read
A cat is calmly eating from its bowl. While its attention is elsewhere, someone quietly places a cucumber on the floor behind it. The cat turns, sees the vegetable and suddenly launches itse...
Read
Few breakfast foods come with a better internet story than Corn Flakes. According to the version repeated across social media, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented the famously plain cereal in t...
Read
You are walking past a town hall, courthouse, school or government building when something looks slightly wrong: the flag is not at the top of its pole. It is hanging lower, leaving an unmis...
Read
A newly hatched chick enters the world with an urgent problem. It can walk almost immediately, but walking in the wrong direction could be fatal. In nature, staying near a parent means warmt...
Read
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match. The achievement looked like a milestone on the road to machine intelligence: a computer had conquered a game...
Read