Sunday 1 July 2012

Interestingness - June Roundup

I'm fascinated by all kinds of things. Some stories that caught my eye this past month that you may have missed:

Dinosaur farts and burps may have had a huge impact in warming the Earth. British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus. By scaling up the digestive wind of horses, they estimate that the total population of dinosaurs, produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually. They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago. Full story here.

Portrait mistaken for 18th-century lady is early painting of transvestite. National Portrait Gallery in London buys portrait of celebrated diplomat, soldier and cross-dresser Chevalier d'Eon. Full story here.

Build your own paper-craft beasties from Heironymous Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delights'. A Japanese site called The Glue2 Chronicles show you how. See here.

A helpful infographic showing the difference between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. The difference between Jimmy Carr's ill-considered if legal savings compared to Vodafone UK. See here.

What if Leonardo Da Vinci had designed the Large Hadron Collider? Some clever artwork by Dr Sergio ittolin, an actual researcher at CERN. See here.

Who's afraid of Greater Luxembourg? A fascinating feature on the rise and fall of europe's most bijou country. Full story here.

The Gnome Experiment. Scientists are measuring the force of gravity at different part of the world. Using a gnome. They really are! Full story here.

Eight of the weirdest conspiracy theory websites you'll ever visit. Antichrist aliens, messages from angels, 7th dimensional light beings, star children and reincarnated knights ... it's all here.

500 new fairy stories discovered in Germany. Collection of fairytales gathered by historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth had been locked away in an archive in Regensburg for over 150 years. Full story here.


More soon.


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