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Biology, geology, deep ocean, evolution, and natural-world facts. Cross-domain wonder pieces.
101 articles · Curiosities
On October 29, 1969, UCLA student Charley Kline tried to type LOGIN to a computer at Stanford. The receiving system crashed after two letters, leaving LO as the first message ever sent across what became the internet.
In 1994, a New South Wales park ranger abseiled into a hidden canyon outside Sydney and found a grove of conifers last seen in the fossil record 90 million years ago. The Wollemi pine's wild location remains undisclosed — and for biological reasons that have nothing to do with theatre.
Tardigrades survive boiling, near-absolute-zero cold and the vacuum of space by curling into a desiccated 'tun' and vitrifying their cellular interior with disordered proteins and sugars that take over water's structural jobs. Fossil evidence suggests the trick is at least 250 million years old.
Greenland sharks are the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth, with some individuals dated to the 1600s. New research reveals how they keep their retinas working for four centuries even as a copepod parasite chews at their corneas.
Pando, a single male quaking aspen in Utah's Fishlake National Forest, spans 106 acres as roughly 47,000 genetically identical trunks connected by one root system — and unchecked mule deer browsing is now eating the next generation before it can grow.
