When we think of animals that will destroy us, rend us limb from limb, and leave us in a bloody mess, we usually thing of the huge and horrifying. Which means we forget about the real threats: the tiny, the cute, the gorgeous. The animals at which we ooh and aaah over, but are deadly, […]
Continue readingMartin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, humanitarian, activist, and leader of the African American civil rights movement born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. King is a prominent figure in American history and iconic for his words and actions in promoting civil rights within the United States and in many other countries. […]
Continue readingPirates! They weren’t all Johnny Depp-swaying, dainty and witty denizens of the sea. Though they’ve been with us from the ancient world to the present wave of Somalian ship hijackings, most pirates were a 17th-century phenomenon whose short careers ended bloodily, leaving behind rumors of their fearsome beards as much as of their actual material […]
Continue readingThe idea of the earth tearing itself apart is terrifying enough, but the devastation that earthquakes cause is only intensified by the huge waves that can follow a massive seismic disturbance in the ocean bed. Often, coastal inhabitants have just minutes to flee to higher ground, and any delay can cause shocking casualties. In the […]
Continue readingBefore everyone had a cell phone and the capacity to record video on the fly, a police beat down was, by sheer chance, caught on tape in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991. Public fury about racism and police brutality erupted when a portion of the video showing several LAPD officers Tasering, kicking, stomping and […]
Continue reading“In the theatre there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time- in the cinema, only one,” as quoted by Orson Welles, the prolific director of the most studied film of all time, Citizen Kane. Within the last century cinema has grown from pioneering silent films into orchestrated musicals, “spaghetti westerns” and has taken us […]
Continue readingThose who ask the difficult questions, like “Why are we here?”, “From where do we derive morals?” and “What does it all really mean, when you get right down to it?” have given humanity amazing philosophical insights and ethical guidance. Unfortunately, thinking too much about these issues can sometimes also lead to the brains of […]
Continue readingThe cliché goes that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but some photographs eschew any such numeric limitation and go on talking to us forever; certain photo portraits have that rare power. Far more than pictorial representations of celebrated or instantly recognizable figures, they capture so much more, seeming to encapsulate not simply the […]
Continue readingThe Digital Millennium Copyright ACT (DMCA) is one of the best-known and most-controversial pieces of legislation passed in recent years. It has had a greater impact on the Web than virtually any other piece of legislation and is largely responsible for much of the Web we see today. One of the critical elements of the […]
Continue readingWhen you run experiments, there’s inherently an element of the unknown. After all, we’re trying to figure out things we don’t know. And sometimes, things go wrong. FATALLY WRONG! Here are some of the most interesting, most intriguing, and sometimes most horrific, experimental deaths we’ve ever heard of. 15. Those magnificent men and their flying […]
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