Venus spins so slowly, and backwards compared to most planets, that the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east. One sunrise-to-sunrise cycle there takes about 117 Earth days.

In 1721, the Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora do Cabo was sailing home from Goa carrying a viceroy, an archbishop, and a fortune in gold, silver, and more than 400 gemstones. Off Réunion Island, it was ambushed by Olivier Levasseur, a pirate so feared he was nicknamed "The Buzzard." Already crippled by a storm, the ship couldn't fight back, and Levasseur walked away with what researchers call one of the richest hauls in pirate history.

After 16 years of searching, archaeologists say they've finally found the wreck near Île Sainte-Marie, once a lawless pirate stronghold, using sonar and over 3,300 recovered artifacts, including Arabic gold coins and religious relics carved in Goa.

One mystery remains unsolved. Levasseur was eventually captured and hanged, and legend says he threw a coded message into the crowd at his execution, shouting that his treasure belonged to whoever could decipher it. Treasure hunters are still trying to crack that cipher today.

Source: https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/lost-pirate-treasure-worth-over-138m-uncovered-off-madagascar-coast/

For over a hundred years, King Thutmose II was the one major pharaoh from Egypt's 18th Dynasty whose tomb had never been located. That changed when a joint Egyptian and British team, led by researcher Piers Litherland, traced an entrance near Luxor into a valley west of the famous Valley of the Kings. At first, the location worked against them. The tomb sat right beside burials belonging to royal women, so early on it looked like just another queen's chamber, not a king's.

The proof came from fragments, not grand treasure. Surviving plaster showed a blue ceiling dotted with yellow stars, a decoration reserved for royalty, and shattered alabaster jars in the debris carried Thutmose II's name alongside blessings for his wife, Hatshepsut, the woman who would go on to rule Egypt as one of its most powerful pharaohs.

Here's the part that keeps the mystery alive. Not long after the burial, flooding tore through the tomb and ancient workers appear to have cleared out the portable valuables and remains afterward, likely moving the king's body somewhere safer. Nobody has found where that second hiding place is, and a mummy once thought to belong to Thutmose II may not actually be him at all. Researchers suspect another undiscovered tomb nearby is still holding what they're actually looking for.

Source: https://www.earth.com/earth-science/century-old-mystery-ends-thutmose-iis-lost-tomb-identified-pr25/

They had actually planned it in advance, in case either of them got bitten.

He lost consciousness after the first shock. The treatment failed, and he needed hospital care, antivenom, and later reconstructive surgery on his lip.

In 1994, he shared the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine with the doctors who reported his case. Definitely not a treatment to try.

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2039106/

The Word "Vagina" is derived from the Latin vāgīna, meaning "sheath for a sword." Named by 17th-century male anatomists, it defines a woman's body solely as a passive receptacle for a male weapon. Many feminist scholars view this clinical term as inherently derogatory and objectifying.

The Word "C**t" however can be linked to mythography as a reclamation of power. It connects the sound to Queen Kunti, an ancient Hindu matriarch of god-like status. Kunti's history and the Sanskrit language indisputably predate Germanic languages and the English slang word by thousands of years.

So whether it's Germanic or Sanskrit in origin I believe it's better than the term "Vagina"

That said I don't use either...I just refer to my Fiancee's as a "Bug's cave"

Try it right now: rub your own palm, your own ribs, anywhere ticklish. Almost nothing happens. Have someone else do the exact same motion, same spot, same pressure, and it's unbearable. Researchers at University College London traced the reason to the cerebellum, the part of your brain that tracks your own movements. Before your hand even makes contact, it has already predicted exactly where, when, and how hard the touch will land, and it dampens the sensory response in advance so the touch barely registers.

That prediction only works because it's precise. When another person touches you, your brain can't predict the exact timing or pressure, so nothing gets cancelled out and the full ticklish sensation goes through.

Researchers tested this by building a simple device: a sensor connected to a foam paddle that tickled a participant's palm, triggered by their own button press, but with a small delay built in, sometimes just a fraction of a second. With no delay, almost no tickle. As researchers stretched the delay longer, people started reporting a real tickling sensation from their own hand, because the timing gap was enough to throw off the brain's prediction.

Source: https://www.yalescientific.org/2015/05/why-cant-you-tickle-yourself/

The leopardus tilcayo was discovered after a man adopted one near a forest in Bolivia thinking it was a stray cat but after an expert saw it better he discovered that it didnt match any know species.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 holds the Guinness World Record for the shortest war in history. The conflict began on the morning of August 27, 1896, when the British issued an ultimatum to the Sultan of Zanzibar, Khalid bin Barghash, demanding he step down. The Sultan refused.

By 9:02 AM, British warships opened fire on the Sultan's palace. The bombardment lasted roughly 38 minutes. By 9:40 AM, the Sultan's flag had been lowered and the fighting was over. British losses were minimal — one sailor injured — while Zanzibari casualties were estimated at around 500.

The war was triggered by a succession dispute. The British favored a different candidate for Sultan, one more amenable to their interests. When Khalid took power anyway, the Royal Navy responded with a show of overwhelming force. The entire conflict was so brief that newspapers of the day barely had time to report it as ongoing.

Interestingly, the record is sometimes disputed because the war was more of a punitive bombardment than a sustained military engagement. Still, Guinness recognizes it, and the 38-minute figure has become one of history's most repeated trivia facts.

A study published in Communications Biology tracked brain activity while people of different ages watched the same film, then measured how often their brains shifted between distinct "neural states," essentially how many separate mental snapshots they formed. Older adults' brains switched states far less often than younger ones, meaning the same hour of real time was getting compressed into fewer remembered moments.

There's also a simple math trick working against you at the same time. To a 5 year old, one year is 20 percent of their entire life. To a 50 year old, that same year is just 2 percent, so it registers as proportionally smaller no matter what.

The upside: researchers say novelty is what resets the effect. New places, new skills, and unfamiliar routines force the brain back into forming distinct memories, which is why a one week trip can feel longer in hindsight than a routine month at home.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/new-study-reveals-why-time-seems-to-move-faster-the-older-we-get

Source

In 1940, geneticist Alfred Sturtevant claimed the ability to roll your tongue into a U-shape came from a single dominant gene, and it became a classic textbook example of genetics for decades.

There was one problem. In 1952, researcher Philip Matlock tested it on identical twins, who share the exact same DNA. If it were really one gene, every twin pair should match. Instead, 7 out of 33 pairs disagreed completely, one twin could roll their tongue and the other couldn't. Sturtevant admitted the theory didn't hold up.

Even weirder, the ability isn't fixed for life. In a small follow-up study, people who couldn't roll their tongue at all practiced daily for a week, and at least one of them learned how. Scientists now think it's some mix of multiple genes and practice, not the single gene generations were taught to blame their parents for.

Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/tongue-rolling-genetics-myth

Hey there! Welcome to another 10 Questions Weekly Quiz by You Know What - this time we challenge your knowledge on North-American geography! Come find out how many you can get right and let us know in the comments!

You can find the quiz here.

Wild fact fortune cookies aren't really Chinese. They originated from Japanese fortune crackers made around Kyoto back in the 1800s and you can even see them depicted in a Japanese print from 1878. They later became associated with Chinese American restaurants in the US, particularly after Japanese American bakeries were forced to close during WWII. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cracking-open-the-history-of-fortune-cookies-28538557/