Fire Up the SelectaVision, It’s Movie Night
Streaming has made DVDs and VHS tapes virtually obsolete. Those were about the only two home video formats that were ever successful – unlike these many other also-rans.
Science & Tech
The Biggest Video Game Flops of All Time
Not everything the video game world put out was a success on the level of Atari, Nintendo, or PlayStation. Here are some of the biggest video game failures ever.
Warning: This Article is Full of Rabies
Let’s demystify a scary thing with knowledge and give you the real facts about rabies.
The Myth-Stories of Spring
You think you know how spring works, but you don’t. Here are some myths about the science of spring, throughly debunked.
Plants Gone Wild!
Plants, trees, flowers, and fruits: They can behave very strangely, all in the name of survival.
Hobbies: Costly, Hard, and Tough to Find
Those who participate in the most popular hobbies seek out these things the most.
The Science of Fall
Nothing looks or feels quite like fall — and here’s the science behind why that is.
5 Notable Hispanic-American Inventors to Celebrate This Hispanic Heritage Month
By Brian Boone September 15 to October 15 marks National Hispanic Heritage Month. It’s a way to honor and elevate the contributions of U.S. citizens and residents with a Hispanic or Latin American background. Here then are some Hispanic and Latine inventors and scientists who changed the world with their creations and developments. ALEJANDRO ZAFFARONI […]
An Earth Day Origin Story
Good news: This entire article is 100 percent planet-friendly! Here’s how we got a holiday celebrating the environment and arguing for its preservation. SILENT SPRING Author and biologist Rachel Carson won a National Book Award for The Sea Around Us, one of three 1950s bestsellers about the ocean. As the years wore on, she observed continually […]
Busting the Myths About Sacagawea
In May 1804— 218 years ago this month — Sacagawea departed with the expedition headed by William Clark and Meriweather Lewis, a great trek to explore the Louisiana Purchase, which would become the western United States. Those are the facts — here are some other well-known things about Sacagawea that just aren’t true, no matter […]
Billionaires…in…SPAAAAAAACE!
In July 2021, Amazon founder and multibillionaire Jeff Bezos launched himself into space. What’s more surprising about this? He’s hardly the first non-government-agency-affiliated person to reach the edge of the cosmos. Here’s a brief history of private spaceflight. 1961: Just four years after the Soviet Union launched two Sputnik satellites, the first manmade objects to […]
They Put a Man on the Moon (And His Name Was Neil Armstrong)
Neil Armstrong will never fall out of the history books — in July 1969, the astronaut became the first human being to ever step foot on the moon. Here are some little-known facts about the man and his work, which are also the subjects of a new book from Portable Press. Neil Armstrong got into […]
Here Comes the Sun
…and a bunch of fun facts about that glowing yellow orb in the sky. The sun’s temperature On average, the sun burns at about 10,000° Fahrenheit. But that’s just on the surface. The sun’s core The central core of the sun serves as a furnace, creating heat, light, and energy by constantly fusing hydrogen and […]
Not-So-Famous Firsts in Robot History
In his 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots, Czech writer Karel Capek coined the word robot, jumping off of the Czech word robota, which means “forced labor.” Here are some interesting robot firsts. First movie robot: A female robot named Maria is a main character in the 1927 silent science-fiction film Metropolis. That marks the first […]
The History of Teeth Coloring, All Laid Out in Black and White
Here’s a brief history of how people sought to change the shade of their chompers — and “white” wasn’t always the desired effect. GOAT MILK, SAGE, AND SUNFLOWERS Because the general wear-and-tear on teeth for the common man before the age of modern dentistry (or even toothbrushes and toothpaste), white teeth in Ancient Rome were […]
Big News Stories About Bigfoot
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Yeti — whatever you want to call the (probably) mythical hairy forest beast, the big guy is an undeniable newsmaker. Oh deer, a Bigfoot! A woman from Tensed, Idaho (unnamed in news reports) was driving on U.S. Highway 95 in Latah County in March 2017 when she saw something strange along the […]
Tool Name Origins
Here’s how all the stuff in your garage, shed, and on the truck got their names. CHISEL Along with the gentle or aggressive tapping of a hammer, a chisel is used to chip away into very hard surfaces like stone or bricks. In a very slow, even indirect way, chisel cuts into stone, so it […]
Weird Facts About the Moon Landing
Summer of 2019 marks 50 years in the past that humans did the most futuristic thing possible: We put a man on the Moon. Here are some quirky facts about that time Apollo 11 made its moonshot. Who Needs You Anyway, Moon? While John F. Kennedy embodied the hope and optimism of the early ‘60s […]
