Strange. True. Today.
The unusual, unexpected, bizarre, funny, fascinating, and occasionally inexplicable stories happening around the world.
Worth a Look
Stories getting attention now
On Aug. 30, 1992, astronomers detected 1992 QB1, the first confirmed object found orbiting beyond Pluto and Neptune. The faint, roughly 100-mile-wide body helped establish the existence of the Kuiper Belt, a distant region now known to contain more than 2,000 objects.
Researchers in the United States used a nanoparticle delivery system to suppress a protein that prevents support cells from becoming neurons. In mice modeling Alzheimer’s disease, the treatment was linked to improved nesting, maze performance, memory and spatial learning—but human treatment remains distant.
A study of rock art in Australia’s Awunbarna region documents enormous images of Rainbow Serpents and other powerful beings made during or after European colonization. Researchers suggest the paintings helped reinforce Aboriginal traditions, connections to country and community authority during a period of rapid change.
Fresh From the Feed
Shawn Ryan crossed more than 1,000 kilometers of French roads and Alpine passes on a home-built electric cargo bike powered partly by solar panels. Battery overheating forced him to use grid electricity twice, ending his eligibility for the event’s solar-only competition, but he is now planning a redesigned bike for a possible France-to-China journey in 2028.
Fordite, also called Detroit agate, is made from layers of automotive paint that harden on equipment inside car-painting facilities. Although existing pieces are still sold, changes in factory processes mean new supplies are no longer being produced in the same way.
A 324-million-year-old fossil from Texas, once classified as an ancient crustacean, has been identified as an early insect with six conventional legs and 18 additional aquatic appendages. Researchers say it preserves evidence of a transitional phase between life in water and life on land.
President Donald Trump unexpectedly called into a NASA briefing after the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched, praising the mission and its team. The call came despite several earlier administration proposals to cancel or sharply reduce funding for the observatory.
Chinese authorities say 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries remain missing in China after flash floods struck the Nepal-Tibet border. Fifteen Britons are included in that figure, while the overall number of missing British nationals across both sides of the border has reached 48.
A 1.4-million-year-old trail near Kenya’s Lake Turkana appears to preserve the movements of eight Paranthropus boisei individuals. The tracks suggest some members of this extinct human relative may have stood up to 1.8 meters tall and weighed about 75 kilograms.
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, says a newly announced energy agreement with Donald Trump will preserve her country’s ownership of its oil while generating more than $209 billion in revenue. Critics call the reported transfer of control over 65 billion barrels a major surrender of national resources.
Physicists from Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Wien have derived an exact mathematical description of a theoretical spacetime structure that may either disperse or collapse into a microscopic black hole after a very small energy change.
Ontario has responded to the U.S. government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario by unveiling a two-story sign declaring the lake’s traditional name will remain. Donald Trump then posted a video depicting himself replacing a Lake Ontario sign with one reading “Lake America.”
A gravity-based study suggests the interior beneath Mars’s southern hemisphere could be 200 to 400 degrees Celsius hotter than the north and may be partially molten. The finding may help explain differences in Martian magnetism, seismic behavior, terrain and ancient water history.
The Crown Prosecution Service is examining evidence concerning 12 former police officers involved in undercover operations targeting political groups. The review follows an investigation into officer Mark Kennedy, whose deception of activists and former partners helped expose the scale of the spycops scandal.
A reexamination of six royal mummies from Dahshur found skeletal changes consistent with repeated archery and weapon use. Several of the women also had healed fractures and other injuries, offering evidence of physically demanding lives in Egypt’s Middle Kingdom.
