70 years ago today, a Swedish housewife in her mid-30s, Astrid Lindgren, sprained her ankle so badly that she was confined to bed and finally put pen to paper transcribing the bedtime stories she’d been telling her 10-year-old daughter Karin for years. Pippi Longstocking, the red-haired, freckled character, became a…

A sleepy hippo taking an underwater nap while being groomed by a school of fish is just the ‘moment of zen’ we needed on Hump Day. The video shows a Nile Hippopotamus waking up and bobbing to the surface for air while enjoying the fish spa treatment. The African Cichlid…

In the continuing saga of NASA’s presence on the Red Planet, they just reported locating the broken rotor blade lost by the stricken Mars helicopter. They say a large portion of the blade has been spotted lying on the dune-like surface, about 50 feet to the west of the small…

While most Americans will think of asparagus as a tasty compliment to a fish dinner, or alternatively as an inedibly, mushy, misery stick to be substituted for potatoes in every occasion, Down Under it is an entirely different situation. The asparagus fern is one of the most serially invasive plants…

Two Russian schoolboys, working as cloakroom attendants when the recent terrorist attack occurred at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, have been hailed as heroes for assisting in the rescue of hundreds of fleeing concertgoers. Islam Khalilov, 15, and Artyom Donskoy, 14 were awarded medals for bravery in a ceremony by Russia’s…

76 years ago today, a mere 11 days after being released from prison, jazz singer Billie Holiday played in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall, NYC. Holiday was supposed to have hesitated when her manager suggested a comeback performance at the famous hall, unsure if audiences would accept…

Oregon is now the new home of the world’s 19th dark sky sanctuary, offering pristine views of the night sky across over 3,800 square miles, making it the largest of its kind. The certification, issued by DarkSky International, involved a years-long effort by federal, state, and local officials, community members,…

Here’s a hypothetical: You want to give away $640 million, but you want to give it away to many different groups. How do you find the groups? How do you process value judgments between charities and non-profit organizations and decide who to uplift and who to ignore? Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie…