The Appalachian Mountains aren’t the world’s largest mountains.
And though they stretch from Canada to Alabama, they aren’t even the world’s longest (that honor goes to the mid-ocean ridge, a chain 40,389 miles long).
The brothers behind your favorite frozen waffles took a while to iron out the details of their signature product.
Working in their parents’ basement in San Jose, California, in the early 1930s, Frank, Anthony, and Sam Dorsa first whipped up their own brand of mayonnaise.
Humans have a few biological advantages compared to other species. The most obvious is our big brains, which have empowered us to become the dominant species on Earth.
But another feature that is often overlooked is our chins — yes, we’re the only animals on Earth with true chins.
By all accounts, Baber’s call was much like millions made from cellphones every day — except that the renowned British climber was standing on the summit of Mount Everest.
But no country in South America — or the world, for that matter — compares to Colombia. With around 1,900 bird species within its borders, the country hosts nearly 20% of all avian species in the world, which is more than any other nation.
Our seas are home to the world’s longest mountain chain, its deepest trenches, and other impressive natural structures that boggle the mind.
The ocean is even home to its own underwater lakes and rivers. When seawater seeps up from the seafloor, it mixes with the salt layers above and creates a depression in the seabed, where this heavy, dense, and briny mixture rests.
Pumpkin itself is native to North America and was first cultivated around 5500 BCE.
The winter squash was almost certainly introduced to European settlers by the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts, who helped the newly arrived colonists at Plymouth survive their first winter.
In October 1705, the Connecticut settlement of Colchester was facing an early winter.
While New England was known for its cold snaps, this one was unusually premature and severe, with temperatures so low that nearby waterways froze.
Foods tend to get their names from their appearance or ingredients, though not all are so clear-cut.
Take, for instance, the egg cream, a beverage that has delighted the taste buds of New Yorkers (and other diner patrons) since the 1890s. But if you’ve never sipped on the cool, fizzy drink known for its chocolate flavor and foamy top, you should know: There are no eggs or cream in a traditional egg cream drink.
On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail of how “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
These are common risks to avoid during Thanksgiving:
Watermeal, aka various species of the genus Wolffia, is an aquatic plant that thrives in slow-moving ponds, marshes, and lakes; to the naked eye, clusters of watermeal can resemble a floating raft of algae.
Under a microscope, it’s easier to see just how tiny individual watermeal plants are — they measure around 1/42 of an inch long and 1/85 of an inch wide, or about the size of a candy sprinkle. In fact, watermeal is so small that about 5,000 individual plants can fit inside a thimble.
But before the ingenious founding father became the first U.S. postmaster, there was another important mail manager: a tavern owner by the name of Richard Fairbanks.
About 136 years before Franklin’s post office management, Fairbanks’ tavern became the first post office in the United States.
One little-known aspect of smell is how it fluctuates throughout the day.
According to research conducted by Brown University and published in the journal Chemical Senses in 2017, our sense of smell is somewhat regulated by our circadian rhythm, the internal biological process that regulates a human’s wake-sleep cycle. (If you’ve ever traveled across the ocean, the resulting jet lag is a disruption of this rhythm.)
But fermented beverages have played a vital role in human culture for perhaps almost as long as society has existed, providing nutrients, enjoyment, and often a safer alternative to drinking water before the advent of modern sanitation.
Scholars disagree over exactly when beer was first introduced — although the earliest hard evidence for barley beer comes from 5,400-year-old Sumerian vessels that were still sticky with beer when archaeologists found them.
That is, except for a little something called “gravitational time dilation.” First explored in Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the idea is almost confusingly simple — the farther away you are from a massive object (e.g., a planet), the faster time travels.
The more massive the object, the slower time travels, which is why things get very wonky around supermassive black holes like the one at the center of our galaxy.
Not for everyone, though. Roughly 12% of people dream entirely in black and white, making their nightly visions much like watching an old movie.
That comparison isn’t a coincidence, either. The number used to be much higher: In the 1940s, 75% of Americans reported seeing color in their dreams only rarely or never, and some researchers believe that black-and-white television is part of the reason why.
Both growing up on Long Island, New York, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became friends in seventh grade, back in 1963. Originally, they set their sights on being a doctor (Greenfield) and an artist (Cohen).
But once they reached their 20s — a rejected medical school applicant and a potter who dropped out of college — they decided to enter the food industry instead. The duo came close to becoming bagel makers, but realized that producing ice cream was cheaper (bagel-making equipment can be pretty pricey).
Well, the word itself (coined by Australian scientists in 1964) gives a clue. “Ichor” is the name for the fluid that forms the blood of the gods in Greek mythology, while “petros” in Greek means “stone” — which is one of the places this sweet-smelling chemistry happens.
When rain hits porous soil and rocks after a long dry spell, small bacteria called actinobacteria (primarily Streptomyces species) release earthy-smelling organic compounds known as geosmin (a type of alcohol) into the air and into our nostrils.
But one animal stands out among the rest of these impressive travelers: the little-known and criminally underrated bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica).
Preferring summers in Alaska and winters in Australia or New Zealand, these large, noisy sandpipers make an epic voyage twice a year.
While it’s not the longest migration in the world overall, the bar-tailed godwit flies between its two travel destinations nonstop in a journey that can last 11 days or perhaps even longer.
