To avoid persecution by Stalin, the poet Anna Akhmatova burnt her writings and instead taught a circle of friends the words of her poem Requiem off by heart. By going ‘pre-Gutenberg’ she ensured its survival, writes Martin Puchner.

When Anna Akhmatova began working on her long poem Requiem sometime in the 1930s, she knew that she would not be allowed to publish it. Stalin was keeping a tight grip on the printing presses, and he would not endorse a poem that grappled (more…)

Quick! Try naming five words that start with the letter L. Lollipop, lazy, long, Labrador, like, language… and the list goes on and on. Now, try naming five words that start with the letter X. Xylophone, X-ray…not so easy, right? For another challenge, see if you can guess the one letter that isn’t in any U.S. state name.

Still racking your brain for more words that start with an X? You might want to stop because the Oxford English Dictionary only lists (more…)

The VII festival of innovation projects Sikorsky Challenge will take place at the National Technical University of Ukraine ‘Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute’ (KPI) in the Ukraine’s capital city on October 9-12.

Sikorsky Challenge is seen as one of the most important annual events in the realm of innovation in Ukraine. It brings together not only the developers of projects covering many fields of science and technology but also representatives of large investment business.

The purpose of this event is to identify the (more…)

Researchers at Sydney’s Macquarie University have discovered that sharks can recognise jazz music.

In a paper published in Animal Cognition, the researchers, led by Catarina Vila Pouca, trained juvenile Port Jackson sharks to swim over to where jazz was playing, to receive food. It has been thought that sharks have learned to associate the sound of a boat engine with food, because food is often thrown from tourist boats to attract sharks to cage-diving expeditions – the study shows that they can (more…)

Do you know what the first food ever microwaved was? Or who the first person to win two Nobel prizes was? Read on for the answers to these and 48 other amazing firsts.

First woman to fly solo over the Atlantic

You probably slept through your last flight over the Atlantic ocean. (Unless you’re a pilot and then we sincerely hope you didn’t.) But less than a century ago, flying was a dangerous, risky sport. And on May 21, 1932, Amelia Earhart earned (more…)