pplpod

A medieval king ruled France for 42 years, yet spent much of that reign terrified his body was made of glass, sewing iron rods into his clothing so a stray bump wouldn't shatter him. How did Charles t...

28 Jun 22min

Deep in Madagascar's rainforest, a creature taps bark up to eight times a second with an impossibly long, skeletal middle finger. With rodent-like teeth, a bushy tail, and huge staring eyes, the aye-a...

28 Jun 22min

Years before Edison or the Lumiere brothers had a working prototype, a French inventor shot the world's first moving pictures. Then, days before he was set to unveil his invention to the world, Louis ...

28 Jun 13min

Imagine walking through an ancient Australian forest and hearing a camera shutter, a crying baby, a dingo, and a roaring chainsaw, only to find a single ground-dwelling bird scratching in the dirt. Th...

28 Jun 25min

In 1671, a man in a clergyman's collar smashed the Imperial State Crown flat with a mallet and tried to stuff it down his trousers. Caught red-handed committing high treason, Thomas Blood should have ...

28 Jun 22min

In 1998, a charter pilot flying over the remote South Australian outback looked down and saw a 2.7-kilometer-tall man carved into the earth. It wasn't there a month earlier, no one saw it being made, ...

28 Jun 21min

On the night of May 29, 1832, a 20-year-old French student sat by candlelight, convinced he would die in a duel at dawn. Instead of a will, he furiously scribbled mathematical equations, laying the fo...

28 Jun 22min

He owned no home, paid no rent, and lived out of a single suitcase for over 50 years, relying on a global network of colleagues to feed him, do his laundry, and arrange his travel. Yet Paul Erdos beca...

28 Jun 23min