Put a slice of aged cheddar in a hot pan and things can become unpredictable. It may soften beautifully, but push the temperature too far and orange oil can pool around clumps of tightening protein. Put a familiar slice of American cheese o...
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Every September, the technology calendar suddenly becomes crowded. New phones appear within days of one another. Operating systems move from summer previews to public releases. Chipmakers an...
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If someone asks when World War II ended, the safest short answer is 1945. If they ask for the exact date, history becomes more interesting. Was it May 8, when Nazi Germany's defeat ended the...
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A family flight from the Bahamas to South Florida turned into a frantic international search after a small twin-engine aircraft disappeared over the water west of Andros Island. By the follo...
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On the evening of October 29, 1969, a student programmer at UCLA began typing a word into a computer. The machine was connected over a network to another computer at the Stanford Research In...
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Look closely at the tip of your finger and you are looking at a landscape that began forming months before you were born. Ridges curve, split, stop and rejoin in patterns so detailed that th...
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Draw a line from Miami to Bermuda, another from Bermuda to Puerto Rico, and a third back toward Florida, and you have the rough outline of one of the most famous imaginary places on Earth. T...
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Nelson Mandela did not die in a South African prison in the 1980s. He was released in 1990, became South Africa’s first Black president in 1994 and died in 2013 at the age of 95. Yet some pe...
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Near the heart of the Milky Way lies a cloud with a reputation that sounds invented for a science-fiction cocktail menu. Sagittarius B2 contains alcohol. It also contains ethyl formate, an o...
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In 1929, while scholars were cataloguing manuscripts in Istanbul's Topkapı Palace, they encountered a fragment of an extraordinary world map. Painted in vivid colors on parchment traditional...
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