It’s fall- you know what that means. (Monarch butterflies migrating to Southern California, Mexico, and Florida)

Terrible idea. Cats are natural predators and will hunt rabbits.

Hummingbirds' metabolisms are so fast that they have to go into a hibernation-like state called torpor just to sleep through the night. Otherwise, they would starve to death in their sleep.

Humans are the only animals with a chin.

Places where it’s illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they’re moose hunting

CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, has its own Starbucks. For security reasons, baristas do not take customer names.

Harriet Tubman was born while John Adams was alive and died when Ronald Reagan was alive. Adams: 1735-1826 Tubman: 1822-1913 Reagan: 1911-2004 When Adams was born, Hydrogen had yet to be identified. When Ronald died, he could’ve been listening to Hoobastank.

You are trying to fit an image into your banner photo. We are learning to draw perspective from our first edition series, “How to be an Artist.”

The flute is older than the wheel. A flute fashioned from the bone of a vulture was discovered in a cave in Germany and thought to be 35,000 years old, making it tens of thousands of years older than the wheel. Don’t reinvent the woodwinds.

We're struggling to do anything but watch this video of the newly discovered bumpy snailfish today.

Enjoy the first round of the 2025 WNBA playoffs today, everyone.

The corpse flower reminding us that it only blooms every 7-10 years

Through the 1990s, John P. O'Neill worked in the FBI's counterterrorism division. After years of sounding the alarm about the threat of organizations like al-Qaeda, on August 22, 2001, he retired from the FBI to start a new job: chief of security at the World Trade Center. 🧵⬇️

Laughter that comes from tickling is called gargalesis, and aside from primates, the only animal known to experience it is the rat. You’re laughing. You’re a rat getting tickled and you’re laughing.

We are once again thinking about the names of inventions in the 18th-century British textile industry: - The flying shuttle (1733) - The spinning Jenny (1764) - The water frame (1767) - The spinning mule (1775-1779)

In case you don’t have enough keeping you up at night, the adult African goliath beetle is the size of the Diet Coke can you’re drinking right now.

Every child in the Netherlands starts school on their fourth birthday. Since there are continually new students in the class, veteran students help welcome the newbies and teach them the rules. And we think that’s adorable.

Hip hop is 52 years old. At a back-to-school party in the Bronx in 1973, Jamaican-American deejay Kool Herc introduced the technique of playing the same album on two turntables and extending the drum section, which became known as the breakbeat. 🧵⬇️

Wishing everyone a very "Noon-Rest-by-Van-Gogh" day off today.

The 'S' in Harry S. Truman does not stand for anything. His parents could not agree on a middle name at birth, so they gave him the middle initial 'S.' Become ungovernable.

Life's too short not to overthrow the Persian Empire. ⚔️ Summer, 330 BCE

Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. in late August 2005. It claimed nearly 1,400 lives and is ranked as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Two decades later, the lingering effects of Katrina continue to influence the economy and culture of the Gulf Coast.

In 1908, Australia chose an emu and a kangaroo for its coat of arms to represent a nation moving forward because it was thought that neither animal could move backward. Science has since determined that emus and kangaroos can, in fact, move backward. So…

On August 27, 1883, the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa, erupted in an explosion that propelled ash 50 miles high and was heard 2,200 miles away. To this day, the eruption is considered the loudest modern sound ever heard. So, just how loud was it?

Yes we already updated their bios to 'engaged.'

While we love a vintage-inspired 8-carat diamond set in 18k yellow gold, these are still some of our favorite rings. 🧵⬇️

The original site for Chicago was unremarkable: a small settlement at the mouth of the Chicago River near the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Its location at the end of the Great Lake system, however, proved ideal as the country expanded westward in the 19th century.

Texas is launching a $750 million effort to fight the screwworm, an invasive species that devastates livestock. Screwworm maggots are serious pests that attack livestock, deer, and other animals, including humans. And yes, that’s their actual name. 🧵⬇️

Please don’t be upset, but Philadelphia Cream Cheese was never made in Philadelphia. When it was first created in 1872, the spread’s home state of New York had a reputation for making chalky cheeses, while Pennsylvania dairy farms had a reputation for making creamy cheeses.

Virgo, in astronomy, is the zodiacal constellation lying in the southern sky between Leo and Libra. The constellation’s brightest star, Spica, is Latin for “head of grain,” and is also called Alpha Virginis, which somehow makes a lot of sense.

We don’t usually hop on style trends but…

My therapist (first edition Encyclopædia Britannica entry titled "Moral Philosophy", 1768) said this to me, and it hit me like a brick: "Good and ill are often blended, and wonderfully complicated one with the other."

Plague is an infectious disease caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterium transmitted from rodents to humans through flea bites. In humans, it has three forms: - bubonic - pneumonic - septicemic All three can be treated with antibiotics. 🧵⬇️

Eucalyptus leaves contain toxins that are dangerous to baby koalas. Mama koalas feed their babies microbe-rich poop instead to help them develop immunity. This post is educational, not instructive.

August 20 is World Mosquito Day. It was established in honor of British doctor Sir Ronald Ross, who in 1897 discovered that female mosquitoes transmit the malarial parasite between humans. Ross received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work in 1902.

New moon just dropped. science.nasa.gov/blogs/webb/2...

There are more than 5,500 species of lizards, so we could've made this much longer.

If there is nothing in it to absorb the energy, the waves bounce around inside, which can damage the microwave. If you do this for less than 5 minutes, you should be OK, but check for smoke and let the microwave cool down before seeing if it still works. Fire tweet, BTW.

Eau de beaver’s derrière Castoreum is a substance beavers use to mark their territory. It is secreted from a gland near their rear end. Due to its vanilla aroma, for centuries, castoreum has been added to perfumes and foods. The FDA requires it to be labeled “natural flavoring.”

For all our back-to-school lovers out there, we present: the humble pencil. Our favorite writing tool first came onto the scene in 1565 when German-Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner described a writing instrument in which graphite was inserted into a wooden holder. 🧵⬇️

A circulation system goes through a sequence of stages as it intensifies. The storm begins as a tropical disturbance, and depending on how fast wind speeds reach, it is classified as a tropical depression, a tropical storm, or a tropical cyclone/hurricane.

On July 1, 2025, NASA reported the discovery of a new comet, called 3I/ATLAS. It is only the third known object outside our solar system ever to be observed. THIS IS REALLY COOL. Here’s why: 🧵⬇️

On August 15, 1947, India became free after two centuries of British rule. Independence was achieved by a collective effort that was extraordinary in scale and intensity.

How dangerous are volcanoes at every stage? Active (has erupted in the last 10k years) DANGEROUS Erupting (active volcano erupting) V DANGEROUS Dormant (active volcano with potential to erupt again) STILL DANGEROUS Extinct (has not erupted in over 10k years) YOU’RE GOOD

It remains unclear whether Trump and Putin ever met before the former became president. However, the two leaders met officially six times during Trump’s first term. The August 2025 summit in Alaska will mark their first encounter during Trump’s second term as president.

Deadliest recorded wildfires in history

On the night of August 12, the sky in the Northern Hemisphere will be lit up by the Perseid meteor shower. The earliest recorded observations of the Perseids were made by Chinese astronomers in 36 CE, so if you catch the show, consider yourself part of star-gazing history. 🧵⬇️

The Life of a Showgirl

Thank you for your email! We are out of the office because we just found out that Emma Stone and Emperor Hirohito were alive at the same time. We look forward to connecting once we recover from this fact. Best, Encyclopaedia Britannica

One horse can produce up to 15 horsepower.