Spain's 1697 cession to France began Hispaniola's split
Spain ceded western Hispaniola to France in 1697, and it became Haiti. The Dominican Republic later broke away from Haiti, not Spain, in 1844.
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Explainer.
Every explainer in the edition.
Two tricks bats use to leave a packed cave without crashing
Thousands of bats leave a cave at once and almost never collide. Tracking studies show they spread out and switch to short, quiet, high-pitched calls.
Carl Sagan's committee raced to choose Earth's sounds
Carl Sagan's committee had six weeks to choose the sounds, images and music that speak for Earth on Voyager's Golden Record.
A pumped-hydro plant stores height, not water
A pumped-hydro plant stores energy as water lifted to a high reservoir, then lets it fall through turbines to give the power back when demand peaks.
Cryptic setters build most clues to work two ways at once
A typical cryptic crossword clue is a straight definition and a wordplay puzzle folded into the same sentence, each pointing at the same answer.
Europe's broadcasters borrowed Sanremo and built Eurovision
Eurovision began in 1955 as a plan by the new European Broadcasting Union. Its first contest, in Lugano in 1956, was an early live international broadcast.
Spotify pays rights holders by their share of a stream pool
Spotify pools its monthly subscription and ad revenue, keeps close to a third, and splits the rest by streaming share, so no play has a fixed price.
British law entitles staff to every penny of a service charge
British law bans an employer from keeping any part of a card or cash tip, including a service charge added to the bill before a worker sees it.
Desalination boils or filters the salt out of seawater
A desalination plant strips salt from seawater by boiling it or forcing it through a membrane, leaving drinkable water and a salty waste called brine.
A Dublin team's computer search proved Sudoku's 17-clue floor
In 2012, a University College Dublin team's exhaustive computer search proved no 16-clue Sudoku grid has a single, unique solution.
A warehouse robot's job is carrying, not picking
A warehouse robot spends its shift moving pallets, totes, and shelves under a routing system, while a person still handles most single items.
A chameleon rearranges skin crystals to shift colour
A chameleon shifts colour by rearranging crystals in its skin, not by mixing pigment, and the switch is mostly about signalling, not hiding.
Enem: the exam that decides who gets into university in Brazil
Brazil's Enem replaced universities' separate entrance tests with one national exam that almost every public university now uses to admit students.
What a blue plaque costs in England, and who decides
A blue plaque has cost about £1,000 to make and install, but no national body sets that fee. Each scheme runs its own rules and its own price.
A planarian cut into pieces grows back its head
A planarian flatworm rebuilds a whole head from a scrap of body, using stem cells that can make any tissue and a chemical signal that says which end is which.
Coral polyps build reefs from the skeletons they leave behind
A coral reef is limestone laid down by tiny animals. Each polyp builds a skeleton from calcium carbonate, and the skeleton stays in the reef after it dies.
A Broadway show earns back its investors, one week at a time
A Broadway show recoups its backers only once weekly earnings beat its running costs, a bar few recent musicals have cleared.
A hot, dry pan turns a steak's crust into flavour
Dry heat pushes a steak's surface past 150°C, where amino acids and sugars react and rebuild themselves into thousands of new flavour compounds.
No decoding of the Voynich manuscript has survived scrutiny
Three researchers have separately announced they cracked the Voynich manuscript's code since 2017. None produced a translation other experts accept.
A researcher unlocked an encrypted laptop in about five minutes
A 2020 demonstration called Thunderspy unlocked encrypted Windows and Linux laptops in minutes. A separate flaw breaks the security chip in Macs.
Rachel Carson's book set off the US fight that banned DDT
Silent Spring exposed DDT's toll on wildlife in 1962. It took a decade of research, lawsuits and a new federal agency to get the chemical banned.
A surgeon still controls the surgical robots used on patients
A surgeon drives the surgical robots used on patients today, from an NHS console to the labs training robots to work with less help.
Seven in ten adults may feel like a fraud at least once
Imposter syndrome is the belief that your success is undeserved. It is not a diagnosis, and research suggests around 70% of adults feel it at some point.
Most who fled US slavery began the Underground Railroad alone
The Underground Railroad was no one system. Most freedom seekers set out alone. Where help existed, it came from Black communities, churches and river crews.