On August 11, 1994, a man in Philadelphia sat down at a computer and bought a CD. The album was Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the price was $12.48 plus shipping, and the seller was a young company called NetMarket. Nothing about the object...
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“The cloud” may be the most successful disappearing act in modern technology. Upload a photograph and it seems to float away. Stream a film and it arrives from nowhere. Ask an AI system a qu...
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Pour cornflakes into a bowl. Add cold milk. Pick up a spoon. You have made breakfast — unless, according to one of the internet’s most persistent culinary arguments, you have accidentally ma...
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You see someone stretch their jaw, squeeze their eyes shut and take a long, involuntary breath. A few seconds later, your own mouth opens. Sometimes you do not even need to see the yawn: hea...
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Watch a herd of cows for long enough and the group begins to look less anonymous. Certain animals repeatedly graze near one another, rest side by side or seek each other out. Some lick and g...
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A fish can be surrounded by water and still run out of oxygen. That sounds like a contradiction only because we tend to think of water itself as the thing fish breathe. It is not. Most fish...
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Ask whether snakes have legs and the obvious answer seems to be no. A cobra, viper or grass snake has no arms, no feet and no visible limbs at all. Yet the evolutionary answer is more intere...
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Put a glass of water near a cat and it may drink calmly. Turn on a faucet and the same cat might become fascinated, batting at droplets for minutes. Lower it into a bathtub, however, and you...
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Ask a child to draw the Sun and there is a good chance they will reach for a yellow crayon. Search for a Sun emoji and you will find the same convention. For centuries, artists have painted...
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On November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean left the lunar surface and rejoined Richard Gordon in orbit. Their lunar module's ascent stage was no longer useful, so m...
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