A visual look at where your tax dollars go.

Surprise! “You have a brain tumor the size of a golf ball.”

What should you do? If you’re truely someone who likes to have fun, you have a Name My Tumor contest.

And the grand prize? You can take the little fellow home in a jar of formaldehyde.

The Old Car Manual Project.

Measuring the speed of light with Chocolate Chips.

Children’s literature has its roots deeply planted in conservative moral teaching, and its goal is socialization and, often, conformity to prevailing ideology. Yet one has only to look at many of the exquisite books shown here-from John Amos Comenius’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus of 1658 to those of Beatrix Potter, Arthur Rackham, and Dr. Seuss in the present century-to know that the other great function of children’s books involves the stimulation and liberation of the imagination. Surely, more than any other form of literature and art, illustrated children’s books can be said to respond to the fundamental duality of purpose ascribed to the arts of the Western world: to teach and to delight-docere et delectare.

Pop-Up and Movable Books (History, Timeline, Tour)

The books given to children are meant to mold or train the young mind to the values of their elders. For this reason, children’s literature is often more reflective of the adult society than of the intended readers.

Children’s Literature Publishers

The promise of space became reality with Sputnik. A few years later the much more visible Echo balloon was launched. The newspapers would give instructions on when and where to look for the new manmade moons that passed overhead. I remember going out in the back yard with my father and seeing the satellites smoothly and silently pass by overhead.
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As one began to read, books catered to the expected future. You Will Go to the Moon described in first-grade words how it would be to visit a moon base.

Children’s Space Books
Dreams of Space
Popping Into Space
International Association of Astronomical Artists
NovaSpace

I too remember being in the yard at night with my Dad watching Echo silently fly over.

My cousin had a book that became one of my favorites – You Will Go to the Moon. Go Dog Go is another one of my favorites. These books made reading fun.

A smattering of some of the most famous illustrators of the last 125 years.

This series is a delicate mixture of pathos and surrealism as expressed, at least in part, by Andre Breton:
‘Surrealism rests upon believing in the higher reality of certain forms of associations, up to then neglected, in the almighty power of dreams, in thought’s free play.’

Man skydives with turbine engines strapped to his feet.

Ever wonder what foods the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the new world? How Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip…and why? Welcome to the Food Timeline.

Einkorn became widely distributed throughout the Near East, Transcaucasia, the Mediterranean region, southwestern Europe, and the Balkans, and was one of the first cereals cultivated for food.

Almonds were being collected from the wild by the inhabitants of Franchthi Cave by 10,000 BC, and in Turkey, Syria and Palestine by that time or soon afterwards.

For the past two weeks, Dr Wainwright has been examining some of the billions of mysterious particles which fell in a series of “red rains” over the south-west Indian state of Kerala between July and September 2001.
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It has been proposed the particles that have the rain its colour are life forms from outer space – and if that is true, it raises the possibility that life arrived on this planet in the same way and life on any other planet is likely to be related to us.
The theory is supported in a new report by Indian physicist Godfrey Louis, who has been working on the red dirt and its possible origins for five years.
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Amazingly, according to Dr Louis, they seem to be able to split and replicate, despite apparently containing no DNA – the chemical reproductive code which is common to all life on Earth.

Update: Popular Science