FEATURED STORYNEW14 MIN READ
They Admitted Everything. Here's What Happened Next
Saint Augustine admitted his sins to God and changed Western civilisation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau admitted his failings to the world and invented modern autobiography. Oscar Wilde admitted everything to the man who had destroyed him — and the man burnt the letter without reading it. Confession, it turns out, does not always go as planned
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VIRAL RESEARCH · INSIGHTS
"Scientists have calculated that an average human would need a wingspan of at least 6.7 metres — roughly 22 feet — to generate enough lift to fly. That..."
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They Admitted Everything. Here's What Happened Next
History · 14 MIN READ02
You Would Need Wings the Size of a Bus. The Science of Why Humans Can Never Fly — and What It Reveals About the Most Extraordinary Bodies That Ever Existed.
Science · 12 MIN READ03
He Never Asked for Credit. That's the Whole Point. The Real Story of Keanu Reeves
Human Interest · 11 MIN READLatest Stories
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Human Interest·11 MIN READ
He Never Asked for Credit. That's the Whole Point. The Real Story of Keanu Reeves
The internet has invented a dozen versions of Keanu Reeves — viral stories that are touching but fabricated. The verified truth is more interesting than any of them. And it involves a private foundation he has never put his name on, a house he sold to be closer to his sister, and twelve Harley-Davidsons
Science·14 MIN READ
The Science of Why Volcanoes Don't Explode Immediately — and What That Has to Do With Everything That Eventually Does
Mount St. Helens shook for two months and recorded more than 10,000 earthquakes before it exploded. The pressure had been building for 123 years. The science of why volcanoes don't erupt immediately turns out to be one of the most precise explanations in nature for why nothing that eventually breaks does so without warning.
Science·14 MIN READ
Why the Human Brain Is Wired to Avoid Admitting Mistakes — and What History's Biggest Cover-Ups Reveal About It
In 1957, a psychologist named Leon Festinger proved that human beings will rewrite reality rather than admit they are wrong. History's greatest cover-ups didn't happen because powerful people were uniquely evil. They happened because the human brain was designed to protect itself from a very specific kind of pain
History·16 MIN READ
The Man Who Dies Rich Dies Disgraced: The Forgotten History of the Idea That Wealthy People Should Give It All Away
The idea that the rich have an obligation to give away their wealth is not modern. It is not progressive. It is not radical. It is older than Christianity, older than Rome, and it was articulated most bluntly by the richest man in America in 1889, who wrote that dying wealthy was a disgrace.
History·12 MIN READ
The Acting School in Segregated Atlanta That Said Yes When Everyone Else Said No
In 1960s Atlanta, Walter and Betty Lou Roberts ran the only integrated children's theater in the South. When the Ku Klux Klan blew up a car outside their show, Walter Roberts called intermission and carried on. This is the story that happened before a famous daughter was born.
History·13 MIN READ
She Went to Bed in 1871 and Didn't Open Her Eyes Again for Nine Years
Ellen Sadler was eleven years old when she fell asleep in a cottage in Turville, England, on a Thursday night in March 1871. Doctors came from across the world. The Prince of Wales visited. People paid for locks of her hair. And still, nobody could explain it.
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