Lists and Stories

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  8 Questions About World War I Answered World War I was a war that was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused. Some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds or disease, and as many as 13,000,000 civilians also died. It concluded with the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in 1919. The...
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  8 Unusual Punishments Inflicted on Women Throughout History Throughout history, women have faced punishment that has ranged from mild to extreme. History maintained more rigid rules than we might recognize today for women’s behavior and roles, and a step out of line might call for a cruel punishment to remind women of their positions in society. Women...
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  8 Zoonotic Diseases Animals can bring tremendous joy to our lives, but they can also make us sick. Every year, tens of thousands of people fall ill to diseases transmitted through animal contact. These conditions are known as zoonotic diseases, or zoonoses. Here are some of the most common. list, disease, animals,...
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  800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta On June 15, 1215, rebellious nobles compelled King John of England to sign the Magna Carta. Although it is firmly rooted in the concerns of feudal law, the charter’s treatment of individual rights was revolutionary. The charter and its numerous revisions codified the concept of due process and...
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  9 American Political Scandals Greed and lust—for power as well as for sex—are the essential elements of most political scandals. Other contributing factors often include mendacity, obfuscation, obsession, moral bankruptcy, naïveté, misplaced loyalty or trust, and lapse of good judgment. Frequently, a vigilant investigative...
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  9 Animals That Look Like Leaves Mimicry, in which an organism resembles an unrelated species, is one of the great marvels of evolution. Leaf mimicry is an especially clever form of camouflage. For some animals, looking like a leaf serves as protection from hungry predators. For others, it is a useful way to wait in plain sight...
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  9 Architectural Landmarks in Buenos Aires Imagine a Modernist house causing a scandal in a Classical neighborhood, or a bank designed with flexibility in mind. Learn the stories behind these nine architectural landmarks in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. Earlier versions of the descriptions of these buildings first appeared in 1001...
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  9 Bizarre Myths About Pregnancy Pregnancy is a time of excitement and anticipation, and mothers-to-be are often brimming with questions, many of them, unfortunately, based on myth and superstition. If I drink coffee during my pregnancy, will my baby be born with brown spots? Can looking at a lunar eclipse really cause a deformity...
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  9 Britannica Articles That Explain the Meaning of Life The articles in this list don’t have all the answers. However, they serve as a useful primer on the basics—what we know about the universe and how our species evolved, how we perpetuate ourselves, and how we die, and the logical tools we use to understand our world. You’re just a click away from...
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  9 Buildings Worth Visiting in the Czech Republic The history of the Czech Republic reaches back more than a thousand years, and its capital, Prague, reflects that rich and varied existence. This list describes just nine of the Czech Republic’s innumerably significant buildings. Earlier versions of the descriptions of these buildings first...
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  9 Celestial Omens In the beginnings of science, astronomers studied the motion of the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars. They discovered patterns in the motion of these objects. But since the heavens were the abode of the gods, when something unusual happened in the sky, it seemed to presage something...
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  9 Cemeteries to Die For Though it makes us wince to say so, we are all mortal. We may not have William Shakespeare’s sense of humor about that (as, for example, when he has the fatally wounded Mercutio say “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man”), but we know, intellectually anyhow, that eventually death...
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  9 American Countercultural Books The word counterculture generally refers to any movement that strives to achieve ideals counter to those of mainstream society. During the 1960s and ’70s, people—particularly young people—in many Western countries sought to upend what they saw as outdated and restrictive values. In the United...
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  Diagnosing 9 of Charles Dickens’s Most Famous Characters English novelist Charles Dickens had a knack for expertly portraying the symptoms of medical conditions. He also had a tendency to slip those descriptions into his works in subtle terms, such that historians and physicians have made it something of a hobby to interpret them medically and attempt to...
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  9 Fish Named After Other Animals A recently translated 13th-century bestiary says: “As men learnt little by little about the kinds of fishes they were given names often from their similarity to creatures on land such as frogs, calves, lions, blackbirds, and peacocks.” Indeed, if you scroll through the common names of the known...
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  9 Fun Facts About Sleep On the outside, we look relaxed, peaceful, and unaware. But what really goes on while we sleep? We spend nearly one-third of our lives—approximately 25 years—in a state of sleep, yet we remember little to none of it. When you hit the pillow, your body doesn’t turn off. It begins an intricate cycle...
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  Cold Stones: 9 Gems That Will Make You Feel Like a Peasant You might want to stash the rhinestones. The jewels on this list are going to give the rocks that you’ve got some serious inferiority complexes. Grab a loupe and step inside. But don’t even think about pocketing anything…you will be searched at the end of the tour. And before you start assembling...
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  9 Ghostly Planets Humanity has sent probes to every planet, so we now have a decent idea of what’s in our neighborhood. Even before that, astronomers tracked the movements of the solar system for millennia. Sometimes their eyes (or brains) played tricks. Or did they? What ever happened to the ghost planets, those...
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  9 Historic Buildings in Florence Florence was founded in the 1st century BCE as a Roman military colony. During its long history it has served many other roles, including a brief stint as the national capital of Italy in the 1860s. But the city remains best known as the birthplace of the Renaissance, and most of these nine...
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  9 Historic Places Worth Exploring in Egypt From the last of the Seven Wonders of the World left standing to a presidential gaffe that inspired a huge new project, these are only a few of the incredible historical places worth exploring in Egypt. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn about these pyramids, temples, and houses. Earlier versions...