gnostek1 / 3Figure 1. The arrangement of hydrogen atoms (black circles) about oxygen atoms (open circles) in ice. Two hydrogen atoms (bottom ones) are close to the central oxygen atom while two of them (top ones) are far and closer to the two other…
01Spin ice is made from dysprosium titanate, a crystal cooled to within a fraction of absolute zero.
02Magnetic monopoles — lone north or south poles — were predicted by Dirac in 1931 but never found in free nature.
03In spin ice, these quasi-monopoles move through the lattice like real particles, obeying Coulomb's magnetic law.
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01Sixty thousand residents were forcibly removed beginning in 1966; the last families were expelled by 1982.
02The cleared land stayed mostly vacant for over 30 years — developers refused to build on what they called cursed ground.
03A District Six Museum opened in 1994 in a former Methodist church using residents' embroidered memory maps as primary exhibits.
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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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01Brancheau had 16 years at SeaWorld and was considered its most accomplished trainer at the time of her death.
02OSHA fined SeaWorld $75,000 and banned trainers from entering the water with orcas — a rule SeaWorld fought in court for years.
03Internal documents showed SeaWorld knew Tilikum had been involved in two prior deaths before Brancheau entered his pool.
gnostek1 / 3A cannibal feast on Tanna , Vanuatu, c. 1885–1889
01The term 'long pig' originates from Polynesian and Melanesian cannibalistic practice, not European invention.
02Missionary accounts from Fiji in the 1840s record the phrase being used matter-of-factly by islanders.
03The smell comparison is attributed to survivors and perpetrators alike, across geographically unconnected cultures.
gnostek1 / 4Gelert by Charles Burton Barber (1884)
01Llywelyn drove his sword through Gelert before seeing the wolf's carcass hidden beneath the cradle.
02The village of Beddgelert, Wales, is named for the hound; a grave monument still stands there.
03The legend is likely an 18th-century tourist invention planted by an innkeeper named David Pritchard.
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01Anzaldúa wrote 'Borderlands/La Frontera' in English, Spanish, Nahuatl, and Tex-Mex within a single paragraph — the code-switching was the argument.
02She grew up harvesting crops in South Texas, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants who preceded the US border.
03Anzaldúa died in 2004 of diabetes complications — a disease she had written about as inseparable from colonial dispossession.
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01Carthage's inner wall, the Byrsa circuit, reportedly housed 300 elephant stalls and barracks for 20,000 infantry within its structure.
02After the Third Punic War in 146 BCE, Rome demolished every course of the walls and salted the surrounding ground.
03The destruction was so thorough that the precise line of Carthage's outer wall remains disputed among archaeologists today.
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01At least 100 of the 144 dead were women and children; 29 Apache children were sold into slavery in Mexico.
02The attack was planned openly in Tucson; organizer William Oury recruited participants the week before.
03President Grant called it murder and demanded prosecution — the jury still took only nineteen minutes to acquit.