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Cool Finds

A London Music Hall Hid a Long-Forgotten Storeroom Packed With Condiments

Construction workers uncovered the tasty trove while excavating its foundations

For British food scientists, toast color is no longer a matter of personal preference—it's a matter of health.

Why Food Experts Are Warning Not to Burn Your Toast

Is it time to bid brown toast farewell?

This piece of rock might have caught a Neanderthal's eye

New Research

Did Neanderthals Like Pretty Rocks?

An unusual rock in a cave inhabited by Neanderthals in Croatia suggests the hominids may have picked up interesting stones

New Research

Scientists Capture a "Sonic Boom" of Light

A new, ultra-fast camera recorded the phenomenon for the first time

Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michael Basquiat won the 2017 Randolph Caldecott Medal.

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American Librarians Just Chose 2017’s Best Books for Children and Young Adults

Meet the 2017 Newbery, Caldecott and Printz award winners

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The First Non-Browning GMO Apples Slated to Hit Shelves Next Month

The new Arctic apples take weeks (rather than minutes) to turn brown

A reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.

Cool Finds

Ötzi the Iceman's Last Meal Included Goat Bacon

Analysis of the 5,300-year-old mummy's stomach contents shows he ate dry-cured meat from a mountain ibex

Microscope not included.

Cool Finds

This Necklace Contains All of the World’s Languages

Because cultural preservation never goes out of fashion

Paul Robeson, photographed by Alfredo Valente in 1940.

Remembering Paul Robeson, Actor, Sportsman and Leader

Among other things, Robeson transformed one of history’s most famous showtunes into a protest song

Watercolor painting of the Battle of Texel by painter Léon Morel-Fatio.

The Only Time in History When Men on Horseback Captured a Fleet of Ships

A Dutch fleet stuck in the ice. A group of French soldiers sent to capture it. What could go wrong?

Early stage human embryos

Trending Today

Second "Three-Parent" Baby Born. This Time, It's a Girl

The baby was produced through a controversial technique that requires implanting a fertilized nucleus into a donor egg

Central High School, where school integration battles of the Civil Rights Movement played out, is among 39 sites and historical projects to get National Park Service grants.

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New Grants Give Out Millions to Preserve African-American History

A $7.5 million grant program will fund 39 projects in over 20 states

2016 broke temperature records on land and sea, report both NOAA and NASA.

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2016 Was the Hottest Year Ever Recorded

Never in modern memory has the Earth's surface and sea temperature been so high

Edgar Allan Poe as imagined in an 1895 image by Swiss/French printmaker Félix Valloton.

Who Was the Poe Toaster? We Still Have No Idea

In Baltimore, they’re keeping the tradition of visiting Edgar Allan Poe’s grave for his birthday—but without the mystery

An artist's impression of the gas being stripped away from spiral galaxy NGC 4921

New Research

Dark Matter Could Be Destroying Distant Galaxies

The mysterious substance may suck gas from the galaxies—and a gasless galaxy is a dead galaxy

A mug shot of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, taken in prison in 1946.

Iva d'Aquino Toguri Remains the Only U.S. Citizen Convicted of Treason Who Has Ever Been Pardoned

She was an American DJ who served six years in prison for her wartime radio broadcasts from Japan

This aerial view shoes the weird wonder of "fairy circles" in the Namibian desert.

New Research

Dueling Theories on the Cause of “Fairy Circles” Could Both Be Right

New research brings together competing concepts to describe how the mysterious features form

Scimitar-horned oryx being released into their holding pen in Chad last March

Trending Today

Second Group of the Once-Extinct African Oryx to Be Released Into the Wild

Hunting wiped out wild populations of the scimitar-horned creatures, but breeding programs are helping them make a comeback

Synesthesia, or the entangling of the senses, may be much more common than once thought.

New Research

One in Five People May Be Able to "Hear" a Flash of Light

Once thought to be a rare condition, some forms of synesthesia may be fairly common

A 1952 report on a flying saucer sighting in East Germany housed in the CIA's recently released archive suggests that the truth is, perhaps, out there.

Cool Finds

Over 12 Million Pages of CIA Documents Are Now Accessible Online

Coups, clairvoyants, invisible ink

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