All stories — Page 2

Every story in the Unbubly reading feed.

National-team players helped build their stadium.Laos's baseball team used to rent soccer fields for practice. When the country's first baseball stadium was b…
It missed New Year's Eve, but made Lunar New Year's Eve.An Indiana TV station promised to launch by December 31, 1983. Weather delayed construction, and it finally s…
The first drunk-driving charge involved an electric cab.Just 22 days after London's Bersey electric cab service began, driver George Smith crashed into a building. F…
Sixty-four Hawaiian bee species may trace to one arrival.The 64 known Hawaiian Hylaeus bee species are thought to descend from one ancestor that reached the islands a…
A joke during online poker became a TV series.During a 2020 online poker game, director Jeff Baena joked about re-dubbing old films. He began taking the id…
At 15, her first event became a world record.Canadian ski jumper Isabel Coursier set a women's world record of 26 metres during her debut at Mount Revelst…
Copy the shoe? Then use the greener materials too.After criticizing an Amazon shoe for looking like its Wool Runner, Allbirds' founders publicly invited Amazon…
A political jab with a chamber-pot pan.Laurence Sterne's 1759 satire turned a church dispute into farce. One scene has a character carrying the pan…
A hare that prefers the forest to open ground.The Manchurian hare lives in forests of northeastern China and eastern Russia and avoids open areas. Its wood…
Run a subway station. Empty the bins yourself.Overcrowd asks players to build platforms and gates, but also to manage heat, hunger, and cleanliness. Even e…
Cups and coins keep time. A whistle joins the song.Bangladeshi singer Abanti Sithi is known for performing with rhythms made from plastic cups, foil, and coins,…
That eerie Yeti growl began as a toilet flush.The growl of the Yeti in Doctor Who was made by slowing down the sound of a flushing toilet. An everyday nois…
The theater burned three times. Each fire started elsewhere.Atlantic City's Academy of Music was destroyed by fire in 1892, 1898, and 1902. Rebuilt each time, it was rep…
Researchers call them “funny w” and “funny r.”In reconstructions of Proto-Siouan, scholars use the labels “funny w” and “funny r” for certain proposed soun…
“Release the game!” “Give us 10 to 20 minutes.”When a Steam user pushed for Door Kickers 2's release, a developer replied that it would take 10 to 20 minute…
His roster included cats, a dog, and a rainbow-trailing cat.Ben Lashes worked as a meme manager for Keyboard Cat, Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, Doge, and other internet phenomen…
A music duo named itself after its delivery habit.The American duo Food House got its name from how often its members used Uber Eats, rather than from a plan t…
They built sailing warships. Steam had arrived by launch.The U.S. Navy's Potomac-class frigates were designed to sail without engines. Construction took so long that…
The walls used soil from termite mounds.Builders of St Peter's Cathedral on Malawi's Likoma Island used soil from compacted termite mounds in the mor…
Hit the hippo; the ducks stay safe.In Ducks Ahoy!, the hippo knocks the gondola back but does not hurt the ducks. Its creators deliberately avoi…
A world-class trampolinist who fears heights.Ryusei Nishioka broke a trampoline difficulty record in 2021 with seven triple somersaults in one routine. Ye…
The episode was “World.” The poster said “Worlds.”Disney promotional posters for Doctor Who's 2024 Christmas episode Joy to the World added an s, calling it Jo…
Their coup failed. Even the family crests had to go.After a failed 1310 coup in Venice, leaders' houses were demolished. All members of the Tiepolo and Querini f…
Antarctica has a moss that belongs to that continent alone.Coscinodon lawianus grows on exposed rock in East Antarctica. Of roughly 23 moss species recorded on continen…
Farm, fish, mine— and marry the town leader.Sun Haven mixes farming, fishing, mining, and romance. Among its marriage candidates is Lucia, the leader of…
He beat a team, joined it, then faced his old team.In 1934 Red Weiner starred for the Eagles against the Reading Keys. After leaving the Eagles in November, he…
Return to your Jeep. Find a rubber duck.Jeep ducking is the custom of leaving a small rubber duck on someone else's Jeep. It spread after a 2020 gest…
He built a cathedral, then said he had none.Saint Paul's second cathedral opened in Minnesota in 1851, with worship space on the second floor of a shared…
Coat the ship in metal that pushes against gravity.In the 1827 novel A Voyage to the Moon, a fictional anti-gravity metal lifts an airtight craft toward the Moo…
A Pizza Hut–Taco Bell song met an ancient Roman rhetorician.The 2008 Das Racist song has two people repeatedly trying to find each other at a combined Pizza Hut and Taco…
A 1926 TV demonstration. The face was just 9 by 5 cm.At John Logie Baird's public television demonstration in January 1926, viewers saw the live face of his colle…
The bishop studied in Gaming. Not video games.Artur Bubnevych earned a theology degree at an institute in Gaming, Austria. The place name looks like the En…
An early women's-rights speech at a quilting gathering.Nineteenth-century quilting bees in the United States doubled as places to talk and debate. As a teenager, Su…
This ancient temple may have collapsed under its own weight.India's Jethani Temple survives as scattered pillars and sculpture. Scholars consider its unusual, experiment…
A farm store began teaching people how to raise chickens.As cities in the U.S. Northwest allowed more urban chicken keeping, Coastal Farm & Ranch held seminars for su…
Discarded plastic became shelter for street dogs.At 16, Paraguayan activist Diana Vicezar started an animal-welfare group in 2017. Its project built shelters…
Why add night officers? Chicken theft.During the Great Depression, chicken theft became a serious problem in Baltimore County in 1931. Police chief…
A fight over signs temporarily shut four stores.Video Update disputed payment to a company hired to replace store signs after an acquisition. The sign maker…
New York's $1 pizza began near shelters.99 Cent Fresh Pizza opened in 2001 as New York's first dollar-slice shop. Its owner priced slices to serve pe…
A little mountain. One chicken on top.Artist Simeon Barclay made a work with a chicken perched on a small mound of stones. A critic read it as an o…
Six weeks at school. University at sixteen.Irish classical scholar Robert Tyrrell was taught mostly at home by his brothers and spent just six weeks at…
Two NFL players. The same name.Two men named Allen DeGraffenreid played in the NFL in the 1990s. One, born in 1970, was a wide receiver catc…
British novel. Japanese text. Chinese silent film.The 1926 Chinese silent film Lonely Orchid adapted a British novel through a Japanese translation and then a…
Last recorded in 1962. Still being sought.Du Toit's torrent frog was first recorded on Mount Elgon in Kenya in 1934 and last documented in 1962. Later…
The audience picked how the opera would unfold.In a 2015 Danish production of Mozart's Così fan tutte, director Annilese Miskimmon let the audience select b…
He helped care for over a thousand children.Japanese social worker Soda Kaichi and his wife ran an orphanage in Korea under Japanese rule from 1921 to 19…
An architectural landmark changed hands for $10.Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower transferred to new owners in 2023 for a nominal $10. The deal also came with…
A royal birth needed a temporary legal space.The Dutch royal family was in exile in Canada during World War II. To avoid a succession problem, Canada arra…
Recorded in two days. Sampled for decades.French band Cortex recorded Troupeau Bleu on July 15 and 16, 1975. Hip-hop producers later drew on its tracks…
A different character. The same actor again.In the 2024 Doctor Who series, Susan Twist appeared as seemingly unrelated characters across the first six ep…
From a bomb laboratory to a pipe-organ workshop.Charles Fisk worked as an electronics technician at Los Alamos during World War II, initially unaware of the…
Forty-five streets renamed. Residents took signs down.In 2024, officials in Tultitlán, Mexico, renamed 45 streets after projects and phrases linked to a former pre…
A doctor lost his books in a fire. His account was lost too.After a fire in Rome in AD 192 destroyed his books and medical tools, the physician Galen wrote about facing…
Texas's highest waterfall holds a flower's wild home.Capote Falls drops up to about 53 metres in dry western Texas. Its damp bank supports Hinckley's columbine, k…
A children's book looked at hardship too.Ye Shengtao's The Scarecrow, published in China in 1923, collected 23 fairy tales. Alongside childhood wonder…
He acted like a game character and found a live audience.After a period of homelessness, Malik Ambersley began public livestreams in 2023 dressed as Miles Morales. He…
An early Chinese pop hit. A critic heard a cat.Li Minghui's 1928 recording of Drizzle became an early Chinese popular-music success. Writer Lu Xun disliked…
A studio spent its last money on a movie. It worked.Founded in Shanghai in 1922, Mingxing Film Company struggled after its early comedies failed to attract audie…
Did island animals walk in on a vanished land bridge?The GAARlandia hypothesis proposes that South America and the Greater Antilles were linked about 33 million y…
Fifty hours of cartoons. Fourteen old films. Repeat.In the early 1980s, Rhode Island station WSTG stayed on the air while its owner sought a buyer by rerunning 5…
Her first reporting assignment was a riot.Bea Hines became the Miami Herald's first Black woman reporter in 1970. On her first day in the role, she was…
Togo's first Winter Olympians trained elsewhere.Togo made its Winter Olympics debut in 2014 with two women athletes. The tropical country has no snow, and ne…
Chaplin visited Shanghai on film before he did in life.A 1922 Chinese comedy imagined Charlie Chaplin visiting Shanghai, with an impersonator playing him. Chaplin h…
A venomous cave crustacean needed a new class name.Cave diver and zoologist Jill Yager discovered a venomous, centipede-like crustacean in a Bahamas underwater…
An Alaska TV newsroom once used home-movie cameras.Anchorage station KIMO once shot its newsfilm on home-movie cameras. It later overhauled its news operation a…
Ballpark massages. About 7,000 by 2006.Sister Rosalind Gefre began offering massages at St. Paul Saints baseball games in Minnesota in 1993. Initial…
A famous house built for her. She left after a year.Aline Barnsdall commissioned Los Angeles's Hollyhock House from Frank Lloyd Wright. Early leaks and flooding…
A deserted Greenland settlement. Then a frozen goat was found.In the 14th century, cleric Ívar Bárðarson reported abandoned farms and roaming livestock in Greenland's West…
No whole dragonfly. Just a fossil wing.An early Eocene fossil from Washington state preserves a single dragonfly hindwing. Researchers used its vein…
A TV romance event sparked 40.7 million hashtag uses.During the Philippine TV event Tamang Panahon, its associated hashtag appeared 40,706,392 times on Twitter in…
She feared childbirth. Then taught 17,000 couples.Facing her first delivery, Flora Hommel worried about childbirth. She studied the Lamaze method in Paris in 1…
They ran out to celebrate. It was only offside.Near the end of the 2024 MLS Cup final, LA Galaxy led 2–1. Bench players and staff mistook a whistle for a Re…
An early landmark of modern Chinese drama was staged by students in Tokyo.In 1907, Chinese students in Tokyo staged Black Slave's Cry to Heaven, an adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, at…
A tornado carried a photograph 353 kilometres away.During the 2011 Hackleburg–Phil Campbell tornado, a photograph was lifted from Phil Campbell, Alabama, and fo…
The American-sounding song was Brazilian. The Brazilian song was American.On his 2004 English-language album, Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso recorded both Feelings and Carioca. The…
Forced from Ohio. Back 22 years later to protect her culture.Wyandot woman Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon was forced from Ohio to Kansas in 1843. She returned near her former…
A painting called ○△□. Or perhaps □△○.Japanese monk-artist Sengai painted only a circle, triangle and square. The work is usually titled by reading…
A landing called Pig's Eye. Then a chapel changed the name.Near today's Saint Paul, Minnesota, a river landing was known as Pig's Eye. After a log chapel dedicated to S…
Even above 4,000 metres, a columbine can bloom.Aquilegia moorcroftiana grows across parts of Central Asia and the Himalayas. It is reported as the highest-g…
Critics said his shows were too theatrical. Then his quiet show was too safe.Alexander McQueen had long been criticized for letting runway spectacle overshadow the clothes. At his restra…
About 10,000 notes a year. Each with a red-pencil greeting.American magazine publisher Arthur Motley clipped news about people he knew and mailed it to them with a brie…
A Frank Lloyd Wright house went up. The owner called it a pickle factory.Westhope, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oklahoma, was completed in 1931. As neighbours puzzled over its unusu…
The manuscript grew too long. A subplot became another book.In 1794, British novelist Elizabeth Gunning's manuscript exceeded her four-volume contract for The Packet. Sh…
Roll it flat, fry it, and watch it puff up.Luchi is a Bengali flatbread made with refined wheat flour. Each round is fried in hot oil until it fills wit…
Marmalade, meal names, fish knives. All became class clues in a satire.Jilly Cooper's 1979 book Class satirised British social rank through fictional caricatures. A later food hist…
He qualified for the Olympics. Then chose a law exam.Belgian athlete Philippe Housiaux competed in sprinting and long jump at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He qu…
Just 34 seconds long. It reached number nine in Britain.Jack Black's Steve's Lava Chicken, from A Minecraft Movie, runs about 34 seconds in its original version. In…
Bees crossed into a neighbour's land. A 7th-century text took it seriously.Early medieval Ireland had a legal text on beekeeping called Bechbretha. It discussed hive owners, neighbours…
Where should light hit a curved mirror? Leonardo tried a device.Alhazen's problem asks where light must strike a spherical mirror to travel between two points. The 11th-cent…
The film's rough waves? White fabric and plastic bags.The 2021 film A New Old Play follows a Sichuan opera actor's life. Director Qiu Jiongjiong deliberately used…
Budget cuts threatened a newscast. Students offered their own time.At university station KRWG-TV in New Mexico, the student-produced News22 faced budget cuts in 1997. Students…
The score was recounted: tied. One referee had already gone home.In a 1930 Philippine college basketball championship game, Ateneo appeared to win by one point. A recount mad…
He opposed slavery and secession. Then was drafted by the Confederacy.German-born Dethloff Willrodt moved to Texas and opposed slavery and secession, yet was conscripted into the…
An ant stores food in its swollen abdomen.Some workers of Australia's Camponotus inflatus become living stores of sweet liquid. They stay deep in the n…
Generations of rulers in one painting. A few years later, the kingdom fell.The House of Bijapur, painted around 1680, gathered the dynasty's rulers in one image. The Bijapur sultanate…
A gale sent a tree into the studio. The radio stayed on air.During Oregon's Great Coastal Gale of 2007, a large elm tree crashed into the building housing community radi…
Science Fiction Chronicle became simply Chronicle.Around 2002, the US science-fiction magazine Science Fiction Chronicle shortened its name to Chronicle. One a…
Uncovered heads could seem rude. So priests wore a hat at Mass.In 17th-century China, missionaries adapted Catholic practice to local ideas of respect by using a ceremonial…
A meteorite hit the pavement. A home camera caught the sound.In 2024, a meteorite struck a sidewalk on Prince Edward Island, Canada. A home security camera captured both…
Japan's first female college graduate. Her great-granddaughter wrote the biography.Ōyama Sutematsu graduated from Vassar after studying in the United States in the 19th century. Her great-gran…
About 4,000 tiny newspaper portraits. Sorted into a yearbook for 2008.In 2008, US artist Rutherford Chang collected about 4,000 ink-dot portraits from The Wall Street Journal and…
At some shows, the band asks fans to sit down instead of stand.US band Racing Mount Pleasant tailors its shows to each venue and uses projections synchronized with the musi…
Born to a peasant family, she passed herself off as a nobleman's daughter.In 17th-century Poland, Agnieszka Machówna used her literacy and knowledge of court manners to claim she was…
A lily hangs like a lantern. Its shape shields what is inside.Lilium lophophorum grows at 2,500–4,500 metres in western China. Its flower nods downward, with petal tips dr…
Cotton-tree flowers kept drifting in. They were not in the script.While the Hong Kong film Papa was being shot, cotton trees were in bloom. Director Philip Yung said the falli…
Only 34 seconds to go. The band's laptop was not ready.At a BBC Radio 1 show in Halifax in November 2024, British band South Arcade found its click-track laptop was…
He painted his own credit card. The bank suggested cancelling it.British artist Babak Ganjei exhibited an oil painting of his Barclaycard in London in 2018 and tried to sell…
A palace to project imperial power. Annexation came months after it was finished.Seokjojeon in Seoul's Deoksugung Palace was a Western-style building intended to display the Korean Empire's…
The paint was meant to sag for months. Years later, it was still sticky.British artist Alexis Harding uses paints with incompatible properties so gravity can shift a painting's surf…
Pre-production began with no director. The lead actor stepped forward.The 1924 Polish Yiddish silent film Tkies-kaf entered pre-production without a director. Lead actor Zygmunt T…
For a golf anime, the lead actor brought a club to the studio.Voice actor Rika Hayashi took her first starring role in the 2024 golf anime Tonbo!. Early in recording, she…
Green-white-orange or orange-white-green? The flags were mixed up.Ireland's and Côte d'Ivoire's flags use the same three colours in reverse order. At a 2013 bonfire in Belfast…
Her supporters wanted her to leave Guy. She crowned Guy king anyway.In 1186, nobles backing Sibylla's claim to Jerusalem's throne required her to set aside her husband Guy. She…
The equals sign appeared in 1557. Its next printed use came 61 years later.Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde introduced = in a 1557 book, choosing two parallel lines to represent equa…
BBC One turned down the drama. Years later, it became a BBC One hit.Jed Mercurio pitched Line of Duty to BBC One in 2011 but was directed to BBC Two, where it began in 2012. Aft…
An injury changed the pair. The new partners won a world title.Hikaru Mori and Megu Uyama won synchronized trampoline gold at the 2018 World Championships. They had trained…
A commuter said station stairs seemed to lead nowhere.A 2006 letter about Singapore's Eunos station questioned stairs at its south exit. The operator said they wer…
Its head dates to the 8th century. Its body to the 13th.At Akishinodera temple in Nara, the statue commonly called Gigeiten has an eighth-century dry-lacquer head fi…
A backward K means a called strikeout. Even the Hall of Fame cannot name its inventor.Baseball writer Henry Chadwick used K for strikeouts in 1859. But a National Baseball Hall of Fame reference…
The actor knew sign language. Her character was a beginner.Actor Chung Suet Ying had learned sign language for family reasons before appearing in the Hong Kong film The…
From the race grid to leading her own team.Misato Haga became interested in motorsport after watching races as a teenager in Japan. She worked as a race…
The gaming creator is called Pocky. The name came from his dog.Japanese creator Pocky named his channel after a dog he had since fourth grade. He launched the current chann…
The wood reached Japan in the 8th century. Oda Nobunaga cut a piece from it.The agarwood known as Ranjatai is kept at the Shōsōin in Nara and arrived in Japan in the eighth century. Wit…
A parrot digs deep into a tree. It is looking for moth larvae.In New Zealand, kākā parrots sometimes scar the trunk and branches of the tree Nothofagus menziesii while sea…
The director dubbed the actor's lines. The actor asked for a role in his next feature.Jean-Paul Belmondo could not dub his lines for Godard's short film Charlotte and Her Boyfriend because he was…
Tooth pain halted the session. The singer went for emergency treatment.My Chemical Romance was recording a demo of Vampires Will Never Hurt You in 2002 when singer Gerard Way's too…
A private game beta leaked. The official release came early.Terraria launched on Steam for Windows on May 16, 2011, earlier than its creators had planned. A beta from a…
The first US Congress met there. Later, the building sold for $425.New York's original Federal Hall hosted the first US Congress and George Washington's 1789 inauguration. Afte…
Male chimaeras have a head clasp. They can tuck it away.Male chimaeras, a group of cartilaginous fish, have a tooth-bearing structure on top of the head. It helps gr…
Born in the U.S.A. became the first commercial CD made in the US.Bruce Springsteen's 1984 album was the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial re…
A Tokyo silversmith travelled to the US. A Lakota family welcomed him as kin.Goro Takahashi travelled through the United States to learn silversmithing. In 1979, while spending time at P…
He found the cake bland. He published its recipe anyway.American chef James Beard considered red velvet cake bland and uninteresting. Even so, he included a recipe f…
An early Amazon film disappeared. Decades later, it surfaced in Prague.The Brazilian silent film Amazonas, o Maior Rio do Mundo was presumed lost in 1931. In 2023, a digital copy a…
No scientific record for decades. The South African rabbit was found again.Scientists recorded no riverine rabbits from 1947 to 1979, and the species was thought extinct. It was later…
That green Windows XP hill was only briefly so bare.The Bliss wallpaper was photographed in California in 1996 after vineyards had been cleared following a phyll…
They could have invited musicians to the capital. Instead, they travelled for four years.From 1981 to 1985, Gustavo Santaolalla travelled across Argentina with León Gieco to document folk music. Gie…
A Google account was shut down. A Google game version was cancelled—then restored.In February 2021, Re-Logic said its Google account had been suspended without an explanation and cancelled th…
A church built in 1861 still has 54 rifle loopholes.St Bride's Church in Mauku, New Zealand, was enclosed by a stockade and used as a military outpost during the…
A discarded garden cutting can take root outside the garden.Phedimus spurius is native to areas including Georgia, northern Iran and northeastern Turkey. It has spread f…
The Hangover hung in a Paris club. Van Gogh wondered if it was finished.Toulouse-Lautrec's painting of Suzanne Valadon was among the works permanently displayed at Le Mirliton night…
A guide-dog program could not take him. So he trained his own dog.John Boyer was born blind and lost his hearing before age ten. After college, he trained his own guide dog be…
This tram had too many riders. In 1954, buses replaced it.The Okoshi tram line in Ichinomiya, Japan, was entirely single-track and could not carry growing numbers of p…
A film about Poles and German rule was shown abroad before Warsaw.In 1908, producer Mordka Towbin made Pruska kultura, about conflicts between Poles and German authorities. Ce…
One dolphin learned to tail-walk. Wild neighbours copied her.Billie saw captive dolphins tail-walking while recovering from a rescue near Australia's Port River. Back in…
Viewers imagined them as a couple. The writers took notice.The 2022 Doctor Who specials explored a possible romance between the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz. Producers sai…
A corner kick went straight past him. His team still won the league.Czech goalkeeper Radim Novák conceded a goal directly from a corner in the opening match of the 2011–12 secon…
A satire embarrassed the archbishop. He ordered all 500 copies burned.Laurence Sterne published A Political Romance under his own name in 1759, satirising a dispute inside the chu…
A 1358 peace deal offered England roughly a quarter of France.During the Hundred Years' War, the First Treaty of London provided for about a quarter of French territory to…
AI predicts the next frame. The scenery and inventory may change.Released in 2024, Oasis is an unofficial Minecraft-like experiment driven by AI. It generates the next image…
He became a successful actor. His high-school diploma came at 34.Jeremy Allen White studied ballet, jazz and tap dance as a child before pursuing acting. He often missed afte…
Correct answers, almost no steps. The mystery lasted about a decade.An account called Cleo posted 39 answers to difficult integrals on a mathematics forum between 2013 and 2015,…
He threw away one of two drives. It held a Bitcoin private key.In 2013, James Howells in Wales discarded a hard drive after mistaking it for another. It held the private ke…
New York sent aid with one condition: give it out regardless of race.A fire destroyed nearly 500 buildings in Savannah, Georgia, in 1820. New York City sent relief money on the c…
The lizard could eat the cockroach. At night, the cockroach drinks its tears.In the Amazon, researchers observed cockroaches feeding on tears from anole lizards, their natural predators.…
Dragon Ball Super ended. Fans across Latin America watched together.Public screenings of the 2018 Dragon Ball Super finale drew crowds across Latin America, including stadiums t…
His family name was Carlsen. A teacher wrote Carlson; he kept it.American football player Wes Carlson grew up with the family name Carlsen. A primary-school teacher misspelle…
It sprawls across its neighbours. So a grower hangs it through a pot's base.In cultivation, the Mexican cactus Mammillaria matudae tends to grow beyond its pot and over other plants. Ca…
A car park covered an old church site. Builders found about 190 burials below.After New York's Spring Street Presbyterian Church closed, a car park was built over its burial vaults. Const…
Two arms walk along the seabed. Six more help disguise the body.Off Indonesia, researchers observed coconut octopuses moving on two curled arms while using the other six as…
Almost no budget. One hotel room. Seven days of recording.My Chemical Romance recorded and produced its 2002 debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your…
He borrowed a college star's identity. After one NFL game, he vanished.In 1923, a man claiming to be a celebrated Princeton player joined a St. Louis team and was later sold to Gre…
To stop cars blocking his restaurant, he planted a fake fire hydrant.New York restaurateur P. J. Moriarty placed a theatrical prop hydrant outside his restaurant in 1955 to deter…
A monument to a defeated 1933 coup was removed one night in 2018.Bangkok's Constitution Defense Monument honored those who resisted a royalist rebellion in 1933. It later bec…
Near the seabed, two squid meet. The male grips on belly-up.A remotely operated vehicle filmed mating behaviour in the deep-sea squid Pholidoteuthis adami. The male face…
A spider bite appeared on an actor's face. Editors removed it from the scene.For the television episode Future Days of The Last of Us, a spider bite on Kaitlyn Dever's face was digitally…
A college sent him away for refusing shoes. He walked north barefoot anyway.New Zealand conservationist Stephen King was expelled from Bible College after six months because he refused…
Evening riders were disappearing. The company pointed at TV.A transit company in Worcester, Massachusetts, cut off-peak service on 22 of 33 routes in 1952. It claimed pe…
Occupiers considered recruiting a chief. Then they saw the flag on his chest.Japan occupied the Gilbert Islands, now part of Kiribati, during World War II. According to a 1944 magazine a…
Both the goat and the flower matter. Protecting one may threaten the other.Aquilegia paui grows only in a small mountain area of northeastern Spain. Local ibex eat its leaves, stems an…
In Windsor, Canada, pizza toppings start with a different cut.Windsor-style pizza spreads shredded pepperoni across the pie so its flavour reaches every bite and grease do…
He beat a legendary runner. The next morning, he brought him flowers.Finnish runner Frej Liewendahl ended Paavo Nurmi's long winning streak in a 1,000-metre race in the 1920s. Th…
Tomakomai appointed a tourism ambassador. He was a racehorse.Hokko Tarumae won Japan's 2014 Best Dirt Horse award. The Tomakomai Tourism Association then appointed the th…
In 1586, a wife wrote to her dead husband. The letter surfaced in 1998.A pregnant woman in Joseon-era Korea wrote to her deceased husband, Yi Ŭngt'ae, grieving and worrying about t…
That big sunflower 'flower'? It's many tiny flowers together.The round head of a sunflower is an inflorescence: numerous small florets clustered so tightly that they look…
Her only album made little noise in 1982. Decades later, listeners found it.Takako Mamiya released just one album, Love Trip. It attracted little mainstream attention at first, but the…
He wanted to make a video mystery game. The budget made him learn programming.British composer Tim Follin built the live-action mystery game Contradiction on a budget of about £6,000. He…
A diner lobster became a musical joke. An animal-rights group gave it a prize.The 2018 Saturday Night Live sketch Diner Lobster turns a customer's order into an elaborate musical number.…
A medieval bishop went to Rome. His complaint: she kept the raid spoils.Alice ruled Latakia and Jabala on the coast of present-day Syria and appears to have pursued her own military…
Its white flowers appear above ground. Its seed capsules develop below.Common starlily is a small wildflower of western North America, only about 5 to 10 centimetres tall. Its flor…
The composer paced around his home, repeating the same phrase in new rhythms.For the 2024 anime theme Shikairo Days, composer Yūki Waga said he walked around his home repeating its signa…
He trained to become a teacher. Then he chose to pave streets.Born in Minsk, in present-day Belarus, in 1862, Shmuel Hurvits trained as a teacher but left the field becaus…
A TV station faced a tax bill. Its staff held up inside the studio.In 1977, WHCT in Connecticut disputed a $77,000 tax bill on its studio building. Station officials refused en…
Two suffrage campaigners entered a school. They liked the room too much to burn it.In April 1913, two windows at an old school in Birmingham, England, were forced open, but no fire was set. A…
An elm leaf has a zigzag cut. A tiny larva made it while eating.The elm zigzag sawfly is native to China and Japan. Early in its growth, its larva eats a distinctive zigzag…
Someone found an old EP in a charity shop. The band reunited two decades later.British band Panchiko split up around 2000. After a copy of their early EP was discovered in a charity shop a…
A pastor watched a movie. Then he asked to buy the theater.After watching a film at New York's 175th Street Theatre in 1969, Reverend Ike was taken with the building an…
Viewers emailed a TV newscast. The anchor read them live on air.In the 1990s, Indiana station WSJV introduced a 5 p.m. newscast that invited audience feedback by phone and e…
It began as a temporary ballroom. Then it was moved and became a museum.London's Rotunda was built in 1814 for royal celebrations as a temporary ballroom. After the festivities, it…
A desert plant glows red. The color is mostly not from its flowers.Desert paintbrush in the western United States appears to have vivid red or orange flowers. Much of that colo…
Frank Ocean sang on stage. Brad Pitt acted out a phone call nearby.At a US music festival in 2017, Frank Ocean performed Close to You while actor Brad Pitt, seated offstage, ac…
She wrote Punjabi advice columns. Then she advised a British food chain.Kailash Puri wrote about cooking, family life and sexual questions in Punjabi-language magazines. After movin…
He translated the Odyssey. His preface took a swipe at a critic.Early English translator George Chapman angrily answered a rumour that he had worked from a Latin version rat…
A sample from Pompeii went to a scientist. It turned out to be glass, not stone.Eighteenth-century naturalist Johann Jacob Ferber supplied mosaic samples from Pompeii to researcher Torbern…
A lily grows on one Japanese island. Its name has two possible origins.Lilium nobilissimum is native only to Kuchinoshima in Japan's Kagoshima Prefecture, where it grows on cliffs.…
Scrat was meant to die early. The trailer changed his fate.The acorn-chasing Scrat was initially set to be killed in the opening of Ice Age. Audiences responded well to…
He played one pro game that season. A writer still named him All-Pro.Obe Wenig played just one game for the Rock Island Independents in 1920. Sportswriter Bruce Copeland neverthe…
A poet wrote that immortality could be learned. He reportedly avoided the topic with the emperor.Tang-era Daoist poet Wu Yun wrote a treatise titled Immortality Can Be Learned. Two traditional histories say…
A Seoul building opened as apartments. Then it changed jobs repeatedly.Completed in 1937 under Japanese rule, Chungjeong Apartment became a hotel in 1940, then a restaurant selling…
A scorpion fossil is hundreds of millions of years old. Its shape looks strikingly familiar.The extinct scorpion genus Eoscorpius lived from the Early Carboniferous into the Early Permian. Its fossils…
She unveiled a virtual persona. The screen was an old CRT television.At her final Dempagumi.inc appearance in April 2022, Japanese performer Nagi Nemoto revealed her VTuber perso…