HowStuffWorks Newsletter
Michelle Konstantinovsky is a San Francisco-based journalist who's written on everything from the Beagle Brigade and border walls to cricket farms and TV scheduling for HowStuffWorks. She earned her master's degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and she's written on health and wellness topics for outlets including Cosmopolitan, O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue and more. Michelle loves music, manatees and terrible teen movies from the early 2000s.
Just what is it that makes us unable to look away from da Vinci's Mona Lisa?
Today Americans mostly celebrate it as the start of summer. But the annual May holiday has a significant history that's worthy of acknowledgment.
A Texas man caught an alligator gar estimated to be over 300 pounds in May 2022. The alligator gar is sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" and, while it may look threatening, it's harmless to anything larger than itself.
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Lady Day, as her fans called her, had a captivating vocal style. But it's the way she poured her life into her songs that made her so memorable. Here are five songs you should know.
March 8, International Women's Day, has been celebrated around the world for more than a century. This year's theme is "Break the Bias."
This historic holiday (held the Thursday before Ash Wednesday) celebrates the day in 1824 when women decided they simply wouldn't take it anymore.
More people are opting for cremation over traditional burials and in some states they can choose a water cremation.
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Floating in a sensory deprivation tank is a form of restricted environmental stimulation therapy. Studies have shown it can be good for your mind and body.
The famed New York City dance troupe has been kicking its way into our hearts since the early 1930s. But they didn't get their start in the Big Apple.
We tallied up how much dough it costs the big guy to give every kid in the world toys. And it's way more than we expected.
The price of the average American Thanksgiving increased about 14 percent over last year. Why so much? Blame the supply chain crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, of course.
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Every year, the city of Santa Fe collectively shouts "Burn him!" and sets fire to Zozobra, the enemy of all that is good.
It's been 101 years since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Why did it take so long for women to get the right to vote in the United States?
How did the Greek goddess Lamia, once said to be a queen of Libya, become a child-murdering monster feared for her malevolent nature?
On July 20, 2021, Wally Funk will blast off. Her trip to space has been delayed since 1961, when the 'Mercury 13' Woman in Space Program was cancelled.
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Manatees are so gentle and sweet they'll break your heart, but in 2021, there have been more manatee deaths than in any year in previously recorded history. Why are these gentle giants dying in such unprecedented numbers?
The lyre is a small U-shaped harp that has appeared all over the world, from the ancient Greco-Roman culture, to India, Africa and beyond. Do people still play this ancient stringed instrument?
Nearly every living cell is made of DNA, and every chromosome contains exactly one molecule of DNA. But not all cells are made of the same number of chromosomes.
A fertilized egg travels through the fallopian tube, implants in the uterus and nine months later, a bouncing baby is born. But what happens if the egg implants and begins to grow somewhere other than the uterus?
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Muir was personally involved in the creation of Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon national parks and earned the title of "Father of Our National Park System."
In our modern vernacular, the phrase "that's just semantics" has somehow become shorthand to insinuate the speaker has argued something trivial or unimportant. But what does it really mean?
Ubiquitous in the 1970s, the papasan chair has a colorful history.
The dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore is the largest masonry dome ever built and still defines the city of Florence over 500 years later.
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Primary colors are the blocks from which all other colors are built. But there's a lot more to know about them than the basic red, yellow and blue we learned about in kindergarten.
Cultures all over the world have treasured turquoise for its color and rarity for thousands of years — from Native American jewelry and Aztec and Mesoamerican art to King Tutankhamun's death mask.
