Chocolate Road, Ancient Classrooms, Mass Rhino Highway & More!
Before Alexander the Great conquered an empire stretching from Greece to India, he was essentially a teenage student, albeit one whose teacher happened to be Aristotle. Archaeologists working at ancient Mieza in northern Greece have now uncovered more of the enormous 2,400-year-old gymnasium believed to have been built by Alexander’s father, Philip II, for the education of his son and other young Macedonian nobles.
The latest excavations revealed a Didaskaleion, literally a “place of teaching”, complete with stone benches, writing styluses and lavish mosaic-floored banquet rooms. The whole complex also contained a wrestling ground, stadium and a covered 200-metre running track. There isn’t an inscription saying “Aristotle stood here”, so archaeologists are careful not to claim absolute proof, but the location, date and historical descriptions line up remarkably well. Basically, we may now be looking at the rooms where one of history’s greatest philosophers helped educate one of history’s greatest conquerors.
This one completely changes the image I had of ancient North America. Researchers have detected cacao DNA in roughly 1,000-year-old pottery from Etowah in modern-day Georgia, making it the earliest known evidence of cacao east of the Mississippi. Cacao doesn't naturally grow anywhere near Georgia; it thrives thousands of kilometres away in tropical regions further south.
That means the chocolate, or at least the cacao used to make a drink had to travel through some kind of long-distance trade network across the Americas. The pottery came from the Mississippian culture, whose people were building enormous earthen monuments at Etowah at the time. Archaeologists think the cacao may have been consumed during feasting or ceremonial events. So a thousand years ago, long before Amazon Prime and container ships, ingredients, recipes and ideas were already travelling extraordinary distances across the continent.
Imagine being handed responsibility for 2,000 rhinoceroses and being told: right, now find them new homes.
That's basically what conservation organisation African Parks is doing. In 2023 it took control of the world's largest captive southern white rhino population on a South African ranch and launched an extraordinary ten-year mission called Rhino Rewild: relocate the animals into secure protected areas across Africa, creating lots of separate breeding populations rather than leaving one gigantic herd vulnerable in one place.
The logistics are insane. Rhinos have to be located by helicopter, sedated, medically checked, loaded into custom crates and transported by truck or aircraft, sometimes into extraordinarily remote reserves. By this year, more than 700 had already been moved, including animals sent to Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some journeys have involved washed-out bridges, tiny airstrips, storms and teams literally lighting remote runways with vehicle headlights. It might be one of the most ambitious wildlife relocations ever attempted.
Rome has survived invasions, fires, emperors, fascism and approximately two thousand years of chaotic traffic.
Now it's battling...
golf carts.
Tourists have increasingly started exploring Rome aboard electric golf-cart tours, weaving through the city's narrow streets between the Colosseum, Pantheon and Piazza Navona. For visitors, particularly families, older travellers and anyone who's attempted 25,000 steps across Roman cobbles in 30-degree heat I can absolutely see the appeal. But locals and authorities are getting increasingly fed up.
Police intensified inspections after reports suggested that around 90% of roughly 500 golf carts circulating in the city lacked proper authorisation. In one recent sweep, officers checked 131 vehicles and issued around €38,000 in fines. The really funny bit is that Rome has apparently been trying to fix traffic for more than two millennia: Julius Caesar introduced restrictions on daytime carts in ancient Rome too. New vehicles, same Roman problem.
Which of these mammals lays eggs?
A) Koala
B) Otter
C) Platypus
D) Sloth
Answer: C — Platypus.
Platypuses belong to an extremely unusual group of mammals called monotremes.
Unlike almost every other living mammal, monotremes lay eggs.
The only living examples are the platypus and echidnas.
Which animal can naturally regenerate damaged heart muscle?
A) Rabbit
B) Zebrafish
C) Dolphin
D) Chameleon
Answer: B — Zebrafish.
Adult zebrafish have an extraordinary ability to regenerate heart tissue following significant injury.
Instead of forming the kind of permanent scar tissue that causes major problems in injured human hearts, surviving zebrafish heart-muscle cells can proliferate and help rebuild damaged tissue.
That's one reason scientists study them so closely.
If we can understand exactly how zebrafish switch these regenerative mechanisms on...
it could potentially teach us something about repairing damaged human hearts in the future.
Which planet essentially spins on its side?
A) Mars
B) Uranus
C) Saturn
D) Neptune
Answer: B — Uranus.
Uranus' rotational axis is tilted by roughly 98 degrees, meaning the planet effectively rolls around the Sun on its side.
One leading explanation is that something enormous may have collided with Uranus while the Solar System was forming and knocked the entire planet over.
Its bizarre tilt also creates extreme seasons: during parts of its 84-year orbit, one pole can spend years facing the Sun while the other faces darkness.
The Solar System's seventh planet is basically...
rolling around the Sun like a ball.
Lets get it