Category Archives: Fun Facts

The Circus of the Future?

If you are a circus fan who is also concerned about animal welfare, there is good news — Germany’s Circus Roncalli is using holograms in place of real animals. These include twenty-foot-tall elephants, horses and fish(!), all projected with laser technology and seamlessly integrated with live performers. The explanation is (of course) on YouTube as “Holographic

Read More

Season of Frost Flowers

Recently a friend asked me if I knew about frost flowers. No, I’d never heard of them, other than knowing a hard freeze spells the demise of ordinary flowers. Time for some research. According to the National Weather Service website (https://www.weather.gov/lmk/frost_flowers) — Frost flowers are thin layers (perhaps credit card thickness) of ice that are

Read More

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Cockroach?

What is the most dangerous insect? For us humans, it’s the mosquito, hands down. Cockroaches do not really fit into the danger category. Some of the approximately 4600 species do carry allergens, and they can carry sickness-causing bacteria, though there’s little evidence linking them to disease outbreaks. Yet when it comes to invoking sheer terror,

Read More

How To Be Popular

Everyone wants to be popular, right? So what can you do to increase your popularity quotient? Actually, I’ve just found an article that claims your key to popularity is what you don’t do. And as a bonus, not doing these can make you happier as well as more popular! Here is a list of nine

Read More

Who Are the Master Builders?

If you think humans are the most efficient at building cities and other intricate structures, you may have overlooked another species — ants. An abandoned colony of grass-cutter ants was located, and scientists decided to study it in depth. First they filled the empty chambers and passageways with concrete. Then they excavated around the concrete

Read More