An Organ That Came Back On July 7, 2009, Mark Wattson, 35, from Lower Stratton near Swindon, Wiltshire, went to Great Western Hospital to have his appendix removed. It’s about as routine as surgery gets: a short pouch attached to the large intestine, cut out, patient home within a day or two. Surgeons told him … Read more
Leave the Mask On. Seriously. Picture a speed-dating event in New York City where the person across from you might be dressed as a character from Attack on Titan, and nobody considers that strange. That is the exact premise of Otaku Speed Dating. The only formal requirements are being at least 18 and being an … Read more
A Different Kind of Co-pilot Picture a microlight aircraft cruising low over the hills of the Cantal region in southern France, with a skein of geese flying alongside it, matching its speed, holding formation, wingtip to wingtip. Not fleeing. Actually flying with it, the way birds fly with each other. That is Christian Moullec’s working … Read more
The Slice That Cheats You, or Doesn’t Picture a pizza that wasn’t cut through its true center. Someone makes three straight cuts through a single point set off to one side, spaced evenly, turning the pie into six wedges. Two people split it by taking alternating wedges, three apiece. Whoever ends up with the wedge … Read more
The Plane That Landed Itself On February 2, 1970, a U.S. Air Force F-106 Delta Dart touched down in a snow-covered wheat field near Big Sandy, Montana. Gear up, engine still running, the airframe largely intact. There was no pilot inside. No autopilot had been engaged. Nobody on the ground had guided it in. A … Read more
The Most Profitable Joke You Never Heard Of During the making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney ran a program with a simple premise: if you came up with a comedic gag that made it into the film, you got paid five dollars, not as a bonus, but as a direct purchase … Read more
It Just Left, With the Dumpster Vandalism earlier in 2013 pushed the owners of Edelweiss, a German restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to install security cameras over the back alley. On Tuesday night, July 30, 2013, those cameras caught something nobody expected to review the next morning. A bear walked up to the restaurant’s dumpster, … Read more
A Question That Really Didn’t Need This Much Setup Picture the set of Good Morning America: bright studio lights, a co-host nodding along like the topic matters, a chyron running across the bottom of the screen. The guest is introduced as a “millennial lifestyle expert.” Her name is Chelsea Krost. The question waiting for her, … Read more
The Trap You Didn’t Set Picture a small blog about cooking, science, or local history. Running for years, it has accumulated thousands of reader comments. Somewhere in that archive, a visitor once posted a link to a news article. That URL was later bought by a company running pirated content. The blog owner never saw … Read more
Excuse Me, That’s the Art At Art Southampton in July 2016, a sculpture sat waiting for the VIP preview at Nova’s Ark Project in Bridgehampton, New York. It depicted a large, overflowing trash can beside a sculpted raccoon, brightly colored rubbish spilling over the rim, priced at $8,000. Its actual title was “Keep America Great … Read more