Britain has 450,000 listed buildings, 20,000 scheduled ancient monuments, twenty-six World Heritage Sites, 1,624 registered parks and gardens (that is, gardens and parks of historic significance), 600...
Before the shift house was pronounced hoose (it still is in Scotland), mode was pronounced mood, and home rhymed with gloom, which is why Domesday Book is pronounced and sometimes called Doomsday. (Th...
As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?
A few months earlier, when a state official named Bud Dwyer was similarly accused of corruption, he called a press conference, pulled out a gun and, as cameras rolled, blew his brains out. This led to...
Thoreau was an idiot.
Velleity, which describes a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action.
The average asteroid actually will be about one and a half million kilometres from its nearest neighbour.
Slubberdegullion,
Report in The Economist as much as 97 per cent of the world’s plant and animal species may still await discovery. Of
Put an end to is an expression to which one might usefully do just that. Make it ‘stop’.
Properispomenon.
Of all the disciplines in science, paleoanthropology boasts perhaps the largest share of egos,
And all children everywhere go through a phase in which they become oddly fascinated with the idea of gone and all gone.
Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. Turn to her straightaway.
When Daniel Boone is uneasy, you know it’s time to watch your step.
Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there...
Though you tell yourself it’s preposterous, you can’t quite shake the feeling that you are being watched. You order yourself to be serene (it’s just a woods for goodness sake), but really you are jump...
They determined, for instance, that a rusting object doesn’t lose weight, as everyone had long assumed, but gains weight – an extraordinary discovery.
There are many other tree museums in the world – including the fine United States National Arboretum in Washington, DC
The woods were full of peril — rattlesnakes and water moccasins and nests of copperheads; bobcats, bears, coyotes, wolves, and wild boar; loony hillbillies destabilized by gross quantities of impure c...