All Stories

Lisa Levy, the contest's 2017 winner, said she was completely stunned by her win.

beauty

The Miss Subways Pageant Charted the Highs and Lows of 20th-Century Feminism in New York

From a 1940s beauty queen to a 2017 performance artist.

Barney Smith with his toilet seat art in San Antonio.

museums and collections

96-Year-Old Barney Smith Is Giving Up His Toilet Seat Museum

Wanted: A worthy buyer to take care of over 1,300 hand-decorated seats.

King Ferdinand I of Aragon had colorectal cancer.

renaissance

Italian Renaissance Aristocrats Were Susceptible to Cancer, Too

Mummified evidence that cancer might not be a disease of the modern world.

Five of the seven black cats are still reportedly missing. Police are on the case.

halloween

The Mysterious Disappearance of 7 Black Cats From a Pair of English Villages

Coincidence? Observational bias? Or something more sinister?

Kathy Pennington's mosaic-laden salt block, "Pigs Fly," took home second place in the "Forgery" category.

auctions

2017's Best Salt Lick Art

Rainbows, pig mosaics, and strange shapes galore.

A DA40, drawn by a DA40.

aviation

Some Pilots Are Using Their Flight Paths to Draw in the Sky

It has to be some of the largest artwork ever created.

An inside view of the Colosseum. The top levels will soon be accessible to tourists.

fleeting wonders

Soon You Will Be Able to Tour the Colosseum's Nosebleed Seats

For the first time in 40 years, the arena's fourth and fifth levels will be open to the public.

The detailed image of the storm used by scientists, from the book Seikai.

auroras

Japanese Scientists Turn Literary Detectives to Study a 1770 Magnetic Storm

They think it might have been the largest ever seen.

Lend a hand.

shipwrecks

Found: A Giant Bronze Arm From the Antikythera Shipwreck

The world's most intriguing shipwreck keeps giving up more secrets.

The newly discovered orchid.

flowers

Found: An Orchid With Large Flowers and a Scent Like Champagne

What a beaut!

Have you seen his bones?

santa claus

Have Turkish Archaeologists Found the Final Resting Place of Saint Nick?

A tomb in Myra adds to confusion over relics of the beloved icon.

Jeremy Bentham's head is usually not on display, to prevent further deterioration.

philosophy

Jeremy Bentham's Head Is Coming Out of Its Box and Under the Microscope

Scientists want to know if the forward-thinking philosopher had autism.

The common spreadwing, one of the dragonflies included in the study.

hunting

Scientists Have Dug Through Dragonfly Droppings to Figure Out What They Eat

Wait, no one knew exactly what dragonflies eat?

Held over two days in southern Italy, Camp Hobbit I in 1977 attracted far-right youth from across the country.

tolkien

How 'Hobbit Camps' Rebirthed Italian Fascism

From 1977, crowds of militant youth gathered to discuss Tolkien and totalitarianism.

Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho, where Basque arborglyphs have been found.

sheep

The Mysterious Tree Carvings of America's Basque Sheepherders

Arborglyphs document a lonely life out West.

Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe after a victory for their major league team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1949.

baseball

1,400 Baby Chicks and the Integration of Professional Baseball

In 1946 in Nashua, New Hampshire, catcher Roy Campanella made history in more ways than one.

An adaptation of Banksy's "Flower Bomber," this depicts a librarian in protest, throwing Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale.

activism

The Radical Reference Librarians Who Use Info to Challenge Authority

An unshushable social movement is afoot.

An image from Pouria Khojastehpay's series Dustwound.

apocalypse

How to Build an Unsettlingly Real Apocalyptic Landscape

One artist’s stark, brutalist, dystopian vision of the future.