As children, many people took a beloved pet into the garden and buried it. Perhaps they erected a small cross made from Popsicle sticks over the grave. However, not all pets have had to make do with such modest, if heartfelt, memorials. Some monuments put up to ensure that an animal or group of animals

Sometimes, being dead isn’t so restful. In the recent past, this could mean wild dogs digging up your remains, as often happened in the early 1900s of Australia. Or maybe it entailed ghouls dressed in men’s clothing taking shovels to your brand-new burial plot. Many people in the past distrusted cemeteries because they attracted the

Many groups and organizations practice some type of hazing as an initiation rite. Military units, gangs, and sports teams are just a few of the groups known to have inflicted hazing rituals on their prospective members. However, it is university fraternities that are most often associated with hazing. Usually, hazing consists of a couple pranks

According to the idea of the “butterfly effect,” even the smallest causes can have large, unforeseen consequences. The term itself came courtesy of MIT meteorology professor Edward Lorenz. He used a computer program to simulate weather patterns with a dozen variables over long periods of time. Lorenz noticed that just rounding off one variable from

A common motif in art of the Middle Ages is that of the Wheel of Fate. A spoked wheel is shown with a king sitting at the top. As the wheel turns, the king is toppled from his place and shown as a beggar crushed by the turn of fate. Of course, the other side

Everyone likes to receive a gift every now and again, especially if it’s from someone we love. With the exception of cats bringing dead prey that we probably aren’t going to eat, animals aren’t exactly known for their gift-giving skills. But as we will see here, it appears that many animals are fond of giving

When it comes to making discoveries, the public has a huge advantage over professionals—they are everywhere. Every day, people work and play outside in every imaginable environment. Tourists and hikers explore difficult corners of the world, and homeowners dig more trenches than archaeologists. The latter make the headlines more often. But ordinary civilians frequently stumble

Eat your vegetables. Sleep eight hours a day. Exercise. There are so many truisms about staying healthy that we sometimes don’t use due diligence in determining if the advice given to us is even true. Then there are the old wives’ tales, passed down from one generation to the next, that often disregard the difference