4 Animals With Crazy Abilities

How does a tiger know when its prey is dead? It uses its ultra-sensitive whiskers to detect a pulse, or lack thereof. So says the Sierra Club in rounding up four animals with "superhero" abilities. Those whiskers have sensitive nerve endings, and after a tiger takes down its prey, the...

Want to Tweet at Aliens? Now You Can

As of today, you can fire off a tweet-length message to a far-flung solar system, but you'll need patience—it won't get there for about 18 years, and it will take just as long to receive any extra-terrestrial response. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer explains, a start-up called Lone Signal has...

Pentagon's 'Holy Grail': A Bomb You Can't Blow

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is necessary in Afghanistan and Pakistan to keep people from starving—but it's also a primary ingredient in more than 60% of bombs made by the Taliban. To find a solution to the conundrum, Pentagon scientists are searching for what the Washington Post describes as a "Holy...

Lolo Jones' Jokey Video Sparks a Brawl

Track-star-turned-bobsledder Lolo Jones is doing some speedy damage control after she made a Vine video this week snarking about a measly paycheck of $741.84 from her new sport. "Seven months with bobsled season. The whole season. That's it," she says, reports the Christian Science Monitor . Then, pretending to call...

Kickstarter Users Uncover Huge Scam on ... Kickstarter

They were almost taken for fools. But one almost-unlucky group of Kickstarter users managed to uncover a $120,309 scam on the site, helping to kill the campaign less than an hour before it was set to end—and their money was whisked out of their bank accounts. CNNMoney reports...

Pocahontas Site to Be Preserved for Eternity

A farm field overlooking the York River in Tidewater Virginia is believed to be where Pocahontas interceded with her powerful father Powhatan to rescue English Capt. John Smith from death. But the real story—according to many Virginia Indians, historians, and archaeologists—is that this land was the center of...

Woman Unmasks Burglar: It's Her Grandson

An Albuquerque grandmother thought she recognized a masked burglar who entered her home on Friday morning—and when Pamela Dearinger managed to rip off his bandana, her suspicions were confirmed: It was her grandson, police say. Thomas Clark, 22, came in through the back door while she was watching TV,...

Message in a Bottle Surfaces, 98 Years Later

On June 30, 1915, Selina Pramstaller and Tillie Esper wrote a brief message during a trip to a Michigan amusement park on Harsens Island, sealed it in a bottle, and dropped it in the St. Clair River. Last June, almost exactly 98 years later, diver Dave Leander found it at...

Kim Jong Un Gives Mein Kampf as Birthday Present

On his birthday this year, Kim Jong Un reportedly gave every child in North Korea candy, according to CNBC . So what did he get his top officials? Copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf , the Washington Post reports. The gift was part of a larger effort by Kim to encourage military leaders...

It's Official: Americans Are Dog People

Take that, cat lovers: A new study of Americans and animals has found the majority of Americans prefer dogs. A Public Policy Polling survey found 52% of American voters prefer dogs, while just 21% prefer cats. And if they had to choose between a dog and a cat for President...

Must-See Reality TV in Norway: A 134-Hour Ferry Journey

Norway's idea of reality television is a little different from America's, according to the Wall Street Journal . Hit shows in recent years include: the view from a camera mounted on top of a train on a 7-hour journey; 18 hours of salmon swimming upstream; a 30-hour nonstop interview with a...

Guy Tosses Meat to Bear, Gets Mauled

It's not a good week for tipsy guys : An overly generous—and possibly inebriated—man tossed barbecued meat to a black bear near an Alaska campground. His reward: getting mauled, state troopers say, per the Anchorage Daily News. The man had been at a church picnic at Eklutna Lake when...

'Tipsy' Guy Survives 15th-Floor Fall

A man who fell while trying to climb from a 15th-floor balcony to his own balcony one floor below is somehow not only still alive, but is expected to be on his feet again in about a week. Tom Stilwell, who found himself locked out after a night out with...

Snoozing Bank Worker Mistakenly Transfers $300M

The latest in the annals of office screw-ups: A weary German bank worker was in the process of transferring 62.40 euros when he fell asleep for a (very expensive) "instant," reports the AFP . In his unconscious state he pushed the number 2 key, leading him to instead transfer 222,...

Man Stops Kids Vandalizing House —Now He Might Go To Jail

You see someone smashing a hammer into a house you've been renovating. You call 911 and run inside, where you find four boys, aged between eight and 10, in the middle of some $40,000 worth of vandalism. What do you do? Upstate New York man Jesse Daniels locked the...

A 300-Year-Old Mystery Sits Below Lake Michigan

There's a 40-foot long, 18-foot wide object buried below Lake Michigan, and Steve Libert really hopes it's a 17th-century ship. Libert has been searching for a ship called the Griffin for three decades now. In 2001, he discovered a blackened timber slab near Poverty Island which may have been part...

Wild Discovery: an Extra Body Part

You've got a body part you've never heard of—and neither had anyone else, until now. Scientists have discovered a sixth layer in the eye's cornea, which was previously believed to have just five layers. The new layer, which researcher Harminder Dua has dubbed Dua's layer, is only 15 microns...

Hey, Dad: You're Worth $23,344

While most fathers may consider themselves priceless, it turns out you can attach a dollar-value to Dad. And sorry, guys, it's lower than Mom's. Insure.com crunched the numbers associated with the tasks involved in daddy-duty, and came up with a figure of $23,344 a year. Bloomberg explains that...

Psychic Must Pay $7M Over Very Bad Prediction

A psychic peering into the lives of a Houston couple a few years ago should have seen a future filled with riches. Instead, she labeled them as mass murderers—falsely, as it turns out—and now a judge has ordered her to pay them $7 million for defamation, reports the...

Meet Warren Buffett's Righthand Woman, Age 28

Prepare to feel inadequate. Tracy Britt is 28 years old. She grew up on a farm in Kansas. And she's one of Warren Buffett's top lieutenants. Four years after she was hired fresh out of Harvard Business School to be Buffett's financial assistant, she is now the chairman of four...

Famed 1913 Shipwreck Unearthed in Lake Superior

Jerry Eliason describes it as "the most satisfying find of my shipwreck-hunting career"—but the sunken ship he speaks of slumbers not in the depths of the Atlantic or Pacific, but off the shores of Marquette, Michigan. The Duluth News Tribune reports on the fascinating coda to the story of...

China Plots Own Panama Canal— in Nicaragua

The Panama Canal could soon have a rival to the northwest. Nicaragua is itching to get started on a new route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, one that would measure 130 miles and take as long as 11 years and $40 billion to dig. And just as the US...

'Lost City' Uncovered in Cambodia

Deep in the Cambodian jungle, Australian archaeologists have made a major discovery: a 1,200-year-old lost city, NPR reports. They made their find using laser sensors known as Lidar, which outlined the city, called Mahendraparvata. "With this instrument—bang—all of a sudden we saw an immediate picture of an...

Scientists Unravel Mystery of Albino Gorilla

Snowflake, the only known albino gorilla who was also the star attraction at the Barcelona Zoo until his death in 2003, owed his white coloring to a genetic mutation—but that's not the whole story. The eye-catching primate was a result of inbreeding, say Spanish researchers, who sequenced his genome...

The World's Last Telegram Will Be Sent Next Month

We're not sure if it's more surprising to learn that the last telegram in the world will be sent next month... or that people are still sending telegrams somewhere. They are, though: 5,000 telegrams are still sent every day in India. But that's all coming to an end on...

'Escape Tunnel' Found Under Concentration Camp

Archaeologists think they've found the first evidence of prisoners trying to dig their way out of a Nazi death camp. The find comes after more than a decade of excavations at the Sobibor camp in Poland; Nazis leveled the place after its prisoners revolted in 1943, LiveScience explains. In the...

Nazi Commander Found Living in Minnesota

The AP has uncovered evidence that the commander of a Nazi SS unit has been living for decades in Minnesota, having lied about his wartime experience to immigration officials. Michael Karkoc, 94, led a unit accused of burning Ukrainian villages and slaughtering the civilians within, including women and children. And...

Elena Kagan Ruling Cites ... Tommy Tutone Song

The Supreme Court ruled today that truckers at the Port of Los Angeles can't be forced to affix "How Am I Driving?" placards on their trucks, reports the LA Times . The decision is getting more attention than you might expect, however, thanks to Elena Kagan's sense of humor and apparent...

Snapchat's Biggest Fans: Teens and ... Bankers?

It's the happening social media app that swept through high schools across the country, and now it's coming for … Wall Street? Yes, financiers are going absolutely nuts for Snapchat, the service that lets you send photos, with messages attached, that will self-destruct soon after they arrive, sources tell New...

NJ Man Sets House on Fire Trying to Kill Bedbugs

Bedbugs are creepy and gross, but it may not be such a great idea to try and kill them using a space heater, a hair dryer, and a heat gun. That's a lesson one New Jersey homeowner learned the hard way—after his methods caused a house fire, reports the...