On Independence Days of yore, old-timey crowds were dazzled by a mere sprinkle or two of off-white lights. Later generations oohed-and-aahed at more colorful displays, as chemical combos were developed that could light up the sky in Technicolor.

The march of progress in pyrotechnics didn’t stop there, though. Today, patterned fireworks that burst into smiley faces, the ringed planet Saturn, hearts, stars and other shapes are the state-of-the-art in the field. Read More

Giant hogweed might sound like something out of Harry Potter, but it’s straight out of New York. This noxious weed has spread across the state, threatening humans with sap that causes severe burns, blistering, permanent scarring and even blindness. Read More

What do you get when you cross a human finger with a paper’s edge? Try: an obscene amount of pain. Why do such little cuts hurt so much?

It turns out that fingers and paper pair perfectly to produce a potent witch’s brew of pain, with each ingredient bringing something special to the mix. Read More

Elizabeth Taylor will be remembered for many things — her passionate performances in films, fondness for expensive jewelry, multiple marriages and, of course, those famous violet eyes. Read More

What’s a forensic investigator’s worst nightmare? Hint: It’s a whole lot cuter than whatever you were imagining.

A crime in a zoo’s koala cage would probably confound the efforts of even the best detectives. Why? Because koalas, doll-sized marsupials that climb trees with babies on their backs, have fingerprints that are almost identical to human ones. Not even careful analysis under a microscope can easily distinguish the loopy, whirling ridges on koalas’ fingers from our own. Read More

By utilizing the same plants that African tribesmen use to poison their arrows, the furry fury known as the African crested rat can incapacitate and even kill predators many times its size, researchers have found.

“This is the first mammal that is borrowing a deadly poison from a plant and slathering it on itself without dying,” said study researcher Jonathan Kingdon, of Oxford University in England. “This is an extraordinary thing to have evolved.” Read More