The Bird That Wouldn’t Fly Away In September 2012, Karen Gwillim was driving through the village of Craven, Saskatchewan, when a bird at the roadside caught her eye. It was a double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), the only cormorant species found in Saskatchewan, and it was clearly struggling. Her first thought was an injury. It wasn’t. … Read more
One Detail Decides Everything Every Halloween party has that moment: someone walks in dressed as a bearded lady, and you know instantly whether it works. It’s not the dress. It’s not the wig or the eyeshadow. It’s the chin. That one feature decides whether the costume reads as clever or just confusing, and there are … Read more
Walk onto the third floor of the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, on People’s Square in the Huangpu District, and the floor stops looking like a floor. In its place is a city. Tiny skyscrapers rise in clusters no taller than a soda can. Thin ribbons of pale blue trace the course of the Huangpu River. … Read more
A Pope’s Illegitimate Son Became Pope. It’s Only Happened Once. In the early 900s, a Roman noblewoman reportedly began an affair with a sitting pope. Their son grew up inside the Church and was eventually elected pope himself, taking the name John XI. As far as anyone can tell, it’s the only time in papal … Read more
Fresh Out of Prison, Looking for Management Work Picture scanning the “employment wanted” section of a newspaper and landing on this: a man describing himself as having “participated in the executive-level management of 120 people worldwide in a successful pot smuggling venture with revenues in excess of US$100 million annually.” He calls himself an expert … Read more
A Sandwich Counter With a Secret Room If you walked into Moore’s Delicatessen in Burbank, California, the front of the house looked like any neighborhood deli: a counter, a menu board, the smell of coffee and bread. Head toward the back dining room, though, and the character of the place changed completely. SpongeBob SquarePants held … Read more
HEADLINE: North Korea’s 2013 nuclear map listed Austin as a target, so it threw a party ARTICLE: A Dictator, a Desk, and a Very Strange Map In late March 2013, North Korea’s state media released photographs meant to project strength. Kim Jong Un sat in a military command room, signing an order to keep strategic … Read more
A Teapot, a Cup, and No Reason to Pour Picture a full teapot on a counter, a cup waiting right beside it, basically begging to be filled. Then someone pushes the cup aside, leans down, and blows into the spout as hard as they can. No funnel, no special equipment, nothing but lungs against porcelain. … Read more
A Page From 2008 That Isn’t I went looking for a single day in Neatorama’s archive: May 9, 2008. The blog built its reputation on exactly this kind of date, calling itself “the neat side of the web” and promising the neatest, weirdest, most wonderful stuff from across the internet, every day. Its 2008 archive … Read more
A Golem That Plays Piano Joe Holliday’s stated goal is “to destroy the universe.” He says it casually, standing beside a sculpture called Basil Bisulfate: a tangle of tree roots, animal bones, gorilla fur, and scavenged electrical parts, wired into what he calls a transdimensional golem that reportedly plays piano. In “The Goat and the … Read more