gnostek1 / 8Ferrofluid on glass, with a neodymium magnet underneath
01Ferrofluid was invented by NASA engineer Steve Papell in 1963 as a rocket fuel concept.
02Each spike is a self-organising structure where magnetic force and surface tension reach exact equilibrium.
03Ferrofluids now seal the rotating shafts of hard drives in virtually every computer ever made.
gnostek1 / 2Plot of Weierstrass function over the interval [ − 2, 2]. Like some other fractals , the function exhibits self-similarity : every zoom (red circle) is similar to the global plot.
01It's defined as an infinite sum of cosines with ever-increasing frequencies and shrinking amplitudes.
02Hermite called it a 'dreadful plague' in an 1893 letter to Stieltjes — mathematicians felt personally wronged.
03Before Weierstrass, the consensus was that continuous functions must be smooth almost everywhere — he ended that.
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01Merckx was punched in the kidney by a fan on Puy-de-Dôme, cracking a bone mid-climb.
02He still finished second overall in 1975, riding the final weeks in documented, measurable pain.
03That punch ended his shot at a record sixth Tour de France title — he never won again.
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01Golden eagle talons exert 750 psi on impact — exceeding the bite force of most large predators.
02Mongol hunters trained golden eagles to take wolves and foxes across the Central Asian steppe.
03The eagle appears on the flags or seals of over a dozen modern nation-states.
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01Cronje initially denied all charges; he confessed only after Indian police played him recordings of his own phone calls.
02One payment was a leather jacket plus $10,000–$15,000 cash to influence a limited-overs match against India in 2000.
03He was banned for life in October 2000 and died in a cargo plane crash in June 2002, aged 32.
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01The joey ejection is a reflex: a muscle contraction expels the baby as the mother accelerates away.
02Quokkas on Rottnest Island were mistaken for giant rats by 17th-century Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh.
03They are now internationally viral as 'selfie animals,' yet biting one carries a AU$150 fine.
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01The scroll Schneemann read contained a real letter from critic Annette Michelson mocking her as merely 'erotic.'
02She performed it at 'An Evening of Erotic Film' in New York, 1975, standing naked on a table.
03The act reframed the vagina as an archive — a place from which critical theory could be formally extracted and cited.
gnostek1 / 5The Wow! signal represented as "6EQUJ5". The original printout with Ehman's handwritten exclamation is preserved by Ohio History Connection .
01Jerry Ehman wrote 'Wow!' in red pen on the Ohio State Big Ear printout on August 15, 1977.
02The signal hit exactly the 1420 MHz hydrogen frequency SETI researchers had predicted aliens would use.
03Forty-seven years of follow-up observations have produced zero repetitions or explanations.
gnostek1 / 11The phrase banana republic was coined in 1904 by American writer O. Henry .
01United Fruit owned Guatemala's only railroad, its telegraph lines, and its Caribbean port.
02In 1954, the CIA overthrew President Árbenz after he tried to redistribute 234,000 acres of UFC land.
03O. Henry coined 'banana republic' in 1904 while hiding in Honduras to escape embezzlement charges.