Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
Women Who Shaped History
Look through historical photos of groups and events, and you see a uniform similarity. There are a lot of men, usually of the same race. But every once in a while, a woman is somewhere in the frame. Sometimes they are unidentified. But we know one thing for sure — they were all trailblazers. Someone
How Does Seaweed Reproduce?
Seaweed is a plant, right? And many plants depend on pollination for reproduction. So how is seaweed able to reproduce? The trail does lead to the process familiar to many land plants. First, scientists discovered in 2016 that zooplankton can pollinate seagrass in the Caribbean. Now scientists have found a small, bug-like crustacean called Idotea balthica that can pollinate
Living On The Moon Might Not Be So Bad
Other than our home planet, conditions in the Solar System can get pretty extreme. Take our own moon — daytime temperatures can climb to 260 degrees Fahrenheit, while nighttime temps can dip to -280 F. And yet… On July 16, 2022, a team of scientists announced they’ve found pits and caves on the moon that have
Why Hot Weather Is So Hard On Us
Are you getting tired of the hot weather? It’s been pretty relentless; On July 6 The New York Times reported about 70 million people in the U.S. were under heat advisories or warnings. I’m sure you’ve seen the cautions about dehydration, heat exhaustion, and so forth. But you can be sitting in the shade with your glass of
How Often Do Our Bodies Replace Themselves?
We know that our bodies contain trillions of cells, and are constantly replacing old cells with new. Does that mean that all of our cells are replaced periodically? In other words, do we end up with a new body every few years? According to the article “Does the Human Body Replace Itself Every 7 Years?”
What Can We See From Space?
Some of you reading this are young enough to get a realistic chance to travel into space sometime in the future. When you look down on Earth, what do you expect to see? Yes, there will be oceans and continents, and even large lakes, but will there be any signs of human handiwork? This question
The Underground Railroad’s Southern Branch
Every student learns about how escaping slaves received assistance while fleeing north, to the point where this informal system became known as the “Underground Railroad”; anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 fugitives ran to the north this way. But what is recently coming to light is how approximately 3,000 to 10,000 also escaped south to Mexico
There Was a Real Ferdinand the Bull
In 1938, Walt Disney released a cartoon entitled Ferdinand the Bull, about a passive bovine who only wanted to sit and smell flowers. When he is mistaken for a feisty animal after being stung by a bee and taken to the bullring, he refuses to fight and is ultimately returned to the countryside. This film
Can 99% of Earth’s Population Be In Sunlight at the Same Time?
We know that summer produces the longest days. But for one day, can 99% of the Earth’s population be in sunlight, at least for a moment? That was the premise of an article published on TimeandDate.com — “Fact Check: 99% of the World’s Population Gets Sunlight at the Same Moment on July 8” by Konstantin
The Cost of Change
People simply don’t like change. When I was in the publishing business, the company I had just joined had the opportunity to expand. There was a casket-supply company close by whose business was (if you’ll pardon the expression) dying, so we had a chance to move into their location. Yet some neighbors were very vocally