In the 1960s, the Stanford historian Peter Laslett did a careful study of British marriage records and found that at no time in the recorded past did people regularly marry at very early ages. Between...
In the United States, frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Frozen pepperoni pizza, on the other hand, is regulated by the Department of Agriculture.
In the time of Dickens, almost all ironwork was green, light blue, or dull gray.
In the winter of 18077, thirteen like-minded souls in London got together at the Freemasons Tavern at Long Acre, in Covent Garden, to form a dining club to be called the Geological Society. The idea w...
In the years that followed there erupted a dispute that would run and run, between Allan Sandage, heir to Hubble at Mount Wilson, and Gérard de Vaucouleurs, a French-born astronomer based at the Unive...
Indeed, if not told to live -- if not given some kind of active instruction from another cell -- cells automatically kill themselves. Cells need a lot of reassurance.
Indeed, if you look around you on a bus or in a park or cafe or any crowded place, most of the people you see are very probably relatives. When someone boasts to you that he is descended from William...
Indeed, it has been suggested that there isn’t a single bit of any of us – not so much as a stray molecule – that was part of us nine years ago.
Indeed, it has been suggested that there isn’t a single bit of any of us – not so much as a stray molecule8 – that was part of us nine years ago. It may not feel like it, but at the cellular level we...
Iowa, to be on the safe side, outlawed conversations in any language other than English in schools, at church, or even over the telephone. When people protested that they would have to give up church...
Ironing was another massive and dauntingly separate task. Irons cooled quickly, so a hot iron had to be used with speed and then exchanged with a freshly heated one. Generally, there would be one on t...
Is that dog shit on the bottom of your shoe?’I sat up a fraction. ‘What?’‘Is that dog shit on the bottom of your shoe?’‘I don’t know, the lab report’s not back yet,’ I replied drily.‘I’m serious, is t...
Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected cheque in the post, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafi...
It cannot be said too often: all life is one. That is, and I suspect will forever prove to be, the most profound true statement there is.
It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike – that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, a...
It is a challenge to believe that there was ever a time that airline food was exciting, when stewardesses were happy to see you, when flying was such an occasion that you wore your finest clothes. I
It is an intoxicating experience to taste Coca-Cola as if for the first time and to be conveyed to the very brink of orgasm by white bread. Makes all the discomfort worthwhile, if you ask me.
It is extraordinary to think that before he settled in London and became celebrated as a playwright, history provides just four recorded glimpses of Shakespeare—at his baptism, his wedding, and the tw...
It is mildly disconcerting to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history—the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and writing and science and all the rest—has...
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no around around it. There is...
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