We are so used to seeing certain everyday things that we just don’t pay attention to details. But very often the most ingenious ideas or fascinating stories are hidden behind some unremarkable features. Look carefully and you may notice that your favorite items have been designed to do much more than you thought. For example, most people don’t associate takeaway food with fancy dinners. But a takeout container can still be turned into a plate! You just have to unfold it correctly. Yep, sometimes, after we’ve been using something for many years, we find out that it has some other useful features! The small bumps on the F and J keys on your keyboard can help you find the right key without even looking at the keyboard. The tiny plastic disc under the lid of your bottle of soda is actually what keeps your drink fizzy. And the button on the back of a shirt collar is there to hold a tie in place! Here's a list of ordinary things that have always had some amazing hidden features that you probably never knew about.

Sitting on a toilet without any particular goal is quite a popular activity for those who lead a busy life. The privacy of the loo helps distract us from the daily race and allows us to just stare at nothing without being interrupted. But how about learning some interesting facts while sitting on the toilet? Suddenly scalding shower, scary sounds you hear at night, overflowing bowl without a hole to stop the mess, unexpected snake in your home – yes, your toilet has something to do with all this. Well, it’s time to find out more about the thing you probably use more often than anything else!

Have you ever met someone and thought: “Wow, what a buffoon!”? I know I have, and then he became my best friend. First impressions are usually wrong; sometimes we think we’ll vibe with someone and when we get to know them; we RUN. The day you’re born determines your star sign, yet the time you’re born determines your rising star or ascendant. The rising star is your social mask – think of how you act when you are around new people. You adapted these traits from your rising zodiac sign, and they are responsible for the image you put out into the world. If you’d like to know your rising star, there are tests you can do online where you must fill in your date and time of birth.

The first and most important thing any experienced weatherman, survivalist or tornado chaser will tell you is you need to know what you’re dealing with. Without a clear understanding of what exactly a tornado is, every other tip or piece of advice has a good chance to fall flat and do no good after all.

Why do bees make honey? This is ideal food for these creatures, as it's full of nutrients and is a great energy food. When you consider that one bee's wings beat over 11 thousand times per minute, you can guess that it needs a great amount of energy! But an average worker bee produces less than 1 tablespoon of honey in a lifetime. This doesn't sound like a lot, does it? Let's find out more about bees right now!

The next time your Internet connection gets disrupted, you might have to blame it on the sharks. These toothy pals are drawn to the magnetic fields of the underwater streamer cables and sometimes mistake them for a chewy snack. Some scientists think it's because sharks have a thing for electromagnetic fields and get curious. Others believe they just have a thing for anything cable shaped. So, what do companies do to protect their cables from getting eaten?

Have you ever wondered what the button on the top of your baseball cap is for? Or maybe you know the true purpose of the high-heeled shoes? Back in the 10th century, they prevented riders' feet from constantly falling out of the stirrups. And in Ancient Rome, salt was so precious that people even called it white gold. Some things you use, wear, or eat every day, are more interesting than they might seem as they have their own secrets and hidden purposes.

Have you ever wondered why do you sometimes receive ads about things you didn’t type or said to your mobile assistant? For example, you talk to your friend about wanting to buy, say, a bicycle, and after an hour you see tons of bike ads on your smartphone. You talked in person, and you never searched for a bike on the Internet, yet there it is. Is your smartphone secretly listening to you? And if it is, how to deal with that? Your smartphone has its own secret life. It doesn’t like when it’s too cold or too hot, may have disagreements with phones on another operating system, and doesn’t work on the subway. Let’s take a peek at why it does all these things and also find out why can’t phone batteries be removed any longer, why Androids may sometimes not receive texts from iPhones, why are smartphones so similar, and some other interesting facts about smartphones.

This video discusses an island that was first discovered in 1876 but was later removed from all maps. In 2012, the island reappeared on Google Maps, and researchers were able to find it using echolocation devices. However, they were still unable to find any signs of human activity on the island. Some theories suggest that the island is actually a piece of technology created by space civilizations.

What would our life be like without calendars? We wouldn't know when to celebrate birthdays, be able to plan holidays, or even show up for important events. People realized the importance of keeping track of days and months centuries ago. Some ancient calendars followed the cycles of the moon, while others focused on the movements of the sun. Today, we use the modern Gregorian calendar as our primary system. But did you know that alongside this trusty timekeeper, there's a whole bunch of other ancient calendars still kicking around?

What would we look like in the 4th dimension? And what is the fourth dimension, anyway? Well, imagine you wake up and can’t recognize your room. That’s definitely it, but your desk in on the wall, and the dresser is on the ceiling. It’s closed, but you can somehow see every folded t-shirt in it! You wipe your eyes. Nothing changes. This isn’t a dream. Welcome to the 4-dimensional world! Still not clear? Okay, to understand the 4th-dimensional world, we need to look at the others. So, a 0-dimension world is just a point. Now, if you expand it, you get a 1-dimensional world that’s a simple line. It only has one measure, and that’s length. Now we’ll add another line perpendicular to the one we have. We get a flat surface with length and width, like a piece of paper. But the objects of this world have 3 measures: length, width, and height. Then where to put the next perpendicular line to get the 4th dimension?

What would it look like to go around Earth at the speed of light? As you kicked off your speedy journey, everything around you would get blurred. The landscape would transform into a streak of dazzling lights, like a cosmic fireworks show on fast-forward. The world would appear distorted, with buildings and landmarks merging into streaks of brilliance as you zipped pasWhat would it look like to go around Earth at the speed of light? As you kicked off your speedy journey, everything around you would get blurred. The landscape would transform into a streak of dazzling lights, like a cosmic fireworks show on fast-forward. The world would appear distorted, with buildings and landmarks merging into streaks of brilliance as you zipped past them. Let's see what it feels like.t them. Let's see what it feels like.

There're so many questions that arise daily and you might have googled at least one of them. Why do glass items come out sparkling from the dishwasher? Do fish have necks? And why won't rain always make the ground wet? In this video you'll find 14 cool facts you'll want to share with your friends. For example, why are number plates of different colors? If you take a look at different cars around the world, you'll notice that plate colors vary: some are yellow, some are white. What does it depend on? It turns out, it's connected with vehicle registration systems.

For many of us, the seasons tell us a lot — like what holiday is coming up or what delicious seasonal food there might be at the local grocery store. But what if there were no seasons, or only one season all year round? Well, humans probably wouldn’t have met up with other humans much, and settlements would be scattered. If humans couldn’t put their brains together, there are a lot of inventions that we wouldn’t have today. We may never have learned to use tools. We may never have basic technology!

Who doesn’t love video games? Some play them for hours, others for days, while others cannot even see their life without them. Every year, developers make games better. However, no matter how cool and realistic graphics they have, there are a lot of differences between video games and real life. Is your game character seriously injured? Drink the potion and everything is okay! Just caught a cold in real life – you have to sit at home and drink medications for a whole week. At speed, you get away from the police chase, the cops will never catch you! In life: “Here's a $100 fine for you. Don't break the speed limit anymore.” “Okay, I won’t. Sorry.” One of the saddest thing is that you can go through your favorite mission again. Unfortunately, the best moments of life are only stored in our memory.

Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Shortly after a heavy storm, the sky over South Dakota in the US was still overcast. Locals finally went outside and saw that the sky had an intense dark green hue, and they'd never seen anything like that before. People said that it looked like something straight up from science fiction or even a horror movie. So… What happened there? Was it caused by humans or by nature? Let's find out.

Imagine you just wake up one day and there's no electricity, no internet, no money, and no work or school. Nothing you're used to! You're not even in your own home, because you’ve magically transported to the Stone Age. What could possibly happen next? Of course, your first reaction would be shock, but we'll move past that. First, let's look around. This is your cave where you live with your family. You have your own sleeping area that’s covered with animal skin. However, you might also live in a primitive hut supported by mammoth tusks and ribs, with an animal skin over it as protection from the rain. And if you're wondering where the Stone Age people did their business, don't be surprised to find out it was basically anywhere outdoors.

A giant asteroid is flying towards Earth, and humanity sends a team of the bravest and the smartest to save us from an impact. This is a classic movie plot, but how likely is it to happen in real life? To figure out the risk, scientists from different organizations have to study the positions and paths of the asteroids that come close to our planet, especially those that are at least 0.6 miles wide. And the good news is that none of these asteroids will probably hit us for at least the next 1,000 years.

Have you ever dreamt of moving to another planet? Let's see if their conditions are good enough for humans. The Sun on Mercury would appear almost three times as large as it does on Earth, and sunlight would be almost seven times brighter. The atmosphere on Venus is so thick that it leads to the planet warming up non-stop. Unlike Venus, Mars has seasons due to the planet's tilt on its axis. Maybe we should keep looking on other planets.

Have you ever noticed that you need to pull the window blind up, not down, to close it, in exit rows on most planes? It's designed so to help people quickly leave the plane in case of an emergency. Speaking of emergencies, turbulence isn't one of them as it's perfectly normal. But if you're still afraid of it, think of your plane as a napkin inside a pot of jelly. If you tap the jelly, the napkin will not fall anywhere.

Pilots are real professionals that can handle pretty much anything. But there are some things they don't like to see, not to risk the safety of the flight. First we got thunderstorms - and they’re like the bullies of the sky. They can throw lightning, hail, and crazy winds at your plane. Next up - icing. Let's see what else gives them the creeps.

Starting a whirlpool is much easier than you think, and you probably do it every day. You've just washed the dishes, and you pull the plug out of the drain hole. Do you see how the water forms a funnel, and all the pieces of food get into its center? But it's a completely different thing when a whirlpool catches you in the open sea. You need to know some basic survival tips to get out of it alive.

Do you like spooky bedtime stories about mythical creatures? Well, some people believe those aren't so unreal after all. In German folklore, there's this crazy creature called an Alp, it's like a vampire mixed with an incubus. And did you know that according to Irish legend, every family has their very own banshee? Let's meet these and other scary creatures.

What species did humans evolve from? And how many species of early humans were there? Okay, here's some useful information. Humans belong to the only group of hominins. Hominins are part of hominids — you know, like gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and we humans. Back in time, there were multiple hominin species, but all of them magically disappeared, except for humans. Have you heard about the Neanderthals? Nobody else knew about them until 1829, when one Dutch naturalist, went digging around in some caves in Germany. Neanderthals used to live there, and he found out that they were very sophisticated – unlike what most people believe. For example, they made something similar to blankets to stay warm in the cold winter. Neanderthals were the first artists as well! Let's find out more about them and other hominin species.