Fear of spiders may trace back to scorpions
Psychologists find that spider fear can run in families, that spiders alone rarely cause it, and that scorpions may help explain why it is so common.
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Ten hanged at Lancaster in 1612 on a child's testimony
A refused request for pins led to the 1612 Pendle witch trials in England. The Guardian says a nine-year-old's evidence helped send ten people to the gallows.
Egypt's Mamluk rulers began as purchased slaves
Egypt's Mamluk sultans ruled from 1250 to 1517 after being bought as boys, freed and trained as cavalry. Having no family ties bound them to their masters.
Conwy axe mould: why two halves count as treasure
A coroner in Wales ruled that the two halves of a 3,400-year-old axe mould are separate items, so both count as treasure under the Treasure Act.
An ion thruster pushes with the force of a sheet of paper
An ion engine uses so little xenon at a time that its thrust is tiny. Yet NASA's Deep Space 1 fired for 678 days and gained 4.3 km/s.
Britain's 1911 Act made workers, employers and state pay
The National Insurance Act 1911 took a weekly levy from British wage-earners, employers and the state to fund sick pay and free doctor visits.
Volcanic ash stopped all four engines on two airliners
British Airways in 1982 and KLM in 1989 lost every engine in volcanic ash. The Met Office now forecasts ash in finer detail to keep more airspace open.
Crossword setters keep grids symmetrical by convention
Turn a standard crossword upside down and the black squares match. The habit dates to 1913, and it helps checkers and setters. Few grids break it.
Scientists logged a 58-foot rogue wave off Vancouver Island
A buoy measured a wave three times taller than its neighbours off British Columbia in 2020. Researchers still cannot say for certain what builds one.
Nitrate film burns underwater, so its reels get their own vaults
Nitrate film resembles guncotton and burns even underwater. US venues keep the reels in fireproof rooms, and a new Los Angeles vault meets NFPA 40 rules.
Underground fungi trade phosphorus for plant sugar
Plants pay arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in sugars and fats. In return the fungi can supply up to 80 percent of a plant's phosphorus, reports show.
Is a farm without soil or sun worth its power bill?
Vertical farms grow lettuce and basil under LEDs with up to 95% less water, but the power bill makes crops such as potatoes hard to grow at a profit.
Inside a UK Amazon warehouse, scanners counted down each pick
A BBC visit to Amazon's Hemel Hempstead site found handheld scanners timing each pick. The New York Times found minute-by-minute tracking at a New York site.
A fight director turns Shakespeare's "they fight" into a story
Shakespeare often writes only that characters fight, so the fight director finds the story and sets every move so that both actors stay safe.
Apollo's computer landed on the Moon with 72 kilobytes
Apollo's guidance computer held 72 kilobytes, so engineers cut software, rolled mission phases in and out, and still landed Apollo 11 through the alarms.
Dick Fosbury turned his back on the bar and won Olympic gold
Foam landing mats let jumpers fall on their backs, and Fosbury's 1968 win in Mexico City showed the sport a style that nearly every jumper now uses.
Five layers of Kapton shield Webb's instruments from the Sun
The coated layers reflect the Sun's heat back into space so the instruments can cool to minus 233C. Tensioning all five took two days in January 2022.
Raised ground can defeat a UK home's damp-proof course
A damp-proof course repels ground water that climbs a wall by capillary action. Soil or rubble piled against the wall can bridge it and let damp in.
Diplomats in Berlin wrote the rules for seizing Africa
At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, European diplomats set the terms of colonisation with no African present, then settled many borders in later deals.
On an induction hob, the pan makes the heat, not the glass
An induction hob generates heat in the pan itself and needs a magnetic pan. In a Which? test it boiled water in 4.81 minutes against gas's 9.69.
Rome's Praetorian Guard protected emperors and killed them
Guards stabbed Caligula, and the Guard eliminated Pertinax. In 193 AD Septimius Severus disbanded it and rebuilt it with his own men.
Cas9 follows a guide RNA to one spot and cuts the DNA there
Bacteria evolved Cas9 to shred viral DNA. In 2012 Doudna and Charpentier swapped its RNA guide so it cuts any chosen gene.
Past the Sagittarius dust sits a black hole of 4.3 million Suns
Stars orbiting Sagittarius A* point to a black hole of 4.3 million Suns. A 2026 proposal asks whether dark matter could explain the same orbits.
North Korea ranks people by what their grandparents did
North Korea's songbun system grades each person by family background and loyalty, and shapes where they live, study and work, a UN panel and researchers say.