Cool Finds

Competitive Tree Climbing Is a Thing

It’s on, arborists

A robot serves a customer at a restaurant in northeast China in 2012

Dining in the Future: Predictions for Restaurant Eating in 2040

Eateries may include more tech and fewer humans on staff

Here Are the Winners of Getty Images’ First-Ever Instagram Grant

The photographers come from Bangladesh, Brazil and Russia

Colorado Once Lost Pikes Peak to Texas in a Bet

A friendly wager raised the stakes to a whole new elevation.

Amsterdam Has a Museum for Microbes

Micropia is devoted to the world of the unseen

Visit the Giant Galápagos Tortoises Using Google Street View

The 15-sided camera of the Street View Trekker followed migration routes for the giant reptiles

A plate from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium

Meet the 17th Century Female Entomologist Who Illustrated Butterfly Life Cycles

Maria Sibylla Merian’s work fought superstition and societal norms

Meet the Bear Who Earned the Rank of Corporal in the Polish Army

He had a penchant for cigarettes, booze and arm wrestling

Sweden Has a Hotel for Sourdough Starters

Boarding bread is the new doggy day care.

NASA Has Specific Rules For Naming Its Spacecraft

From Project Mercury to Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Liverpool, England Has a Mysterious Network of Tunnels

Historians know who built them, but they don’t know why

There Are About 600,000 Dahlias on These Van Gogh Themed Floats

The colorful floats can be covered in up to one million dahlias apiece.

A juvenile crocodile in a Cape York peninsula river, the region where researchers recently looked for wild rice species

To Find New Rice Species, Scientists Head to Remote Tropical Swamps

A remote peninsula in northern Australia beckons a rice research expedition

Tour This Japanese City from the Viewpoint of a Cat

New “cat street view” shows Hiroshima Prefecture’s Onomichi through the eyes of its fluffiest residents

The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse

People Have Always Been Obsessed with the End of the World

Since ancient times, art and fiction love to play in the fertile ground of the apocalypse, but it hasn't always been healthy

This concept drawing shows a swarm of "Gremlin" drones.

The U.S. Military Named Their Swarming Drones After This Fairy Tale

These "Gremlins" take their cue from WWII fighter pilots' lucky charms

The World’s Rarest Silk Is Made of Clam Spit

Only one person in the world is thought to be able to dive for, spin and create rare "sea silk"

A detail of "Lewis and Clark at Three Forks" by Edgar Samuel Paxson, mural in lobby of Montana House of Representatives

How to Reconstruct Lewis and Clark's Journey: Follow the Mercury-laden Latrine Pits

One campsite has been identified using the signatures left by men who took mercury-laced purgative pills to treat constipation and other ills

This Indonesian Volcano Erupts Electric-Blue Streams Of Molten Sulfur

Glowing blue rivers illuminate Java’s Blue Fire Crater.

Archaeologists Had a Huge Reenactment Party to Verify Ancient Pit Oven

A prehistoric-style barbecue helped feed 200 guests — and prove archaeologists’ hypothetis

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