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64 illustrations
For decades, scientists dismissed roughly 98 percent of human DNA as "junk." It didn't code for proteins, so they assumed it served no purpose —...
Look at your hands for a moment. Spread your fingers wide. In the earliest weeks of your development in the womb, those fingers didn't exist...
By the time Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony — arguably the most celebrated piece of music in Western history — he was completely...
In George MacDonald's *The Princess and the Goblin*, young Princess Irene receives a mysterious gift from her great-great-grandmother — a ball of invisible thread tied...
In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was foolish. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he pointed the...
In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. His operas had failed. Creditors circled. Four years earlier, a stroke had paralyzed...
In 1869, a young German medical student named Paul Langerhans peered through his microscope and noticed something peculiar — tiny clusters of cells scattered throughout...
Every autumn, millions of Monarch butterflies rise from fields across North America and fly up to 3,000 miles south to a cluster of oyamel fir...
A few years back, I had the privilege of attending a local charity event where a talented artist was showcasing her work. As I walked around, one painting caught my eye—it was a breathtaking landscape. The colors danced across the...
For over a century, the human appendix was medicine's favorite example of purposelessness — a shriveled, worm-shaped pouch dangling off the large intestine with apparently...
In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, a convict named Jean Valjean stumbles to the door of Bishop Myriel after nineteen years in prison. The Bishop feeds...
Johann Sebastian Bach composed over a thousand works in his lifetime — cantatas, fugues, concertos, and oratorios that would shape Western music for centuries. He...
In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Fellowship of the Ring*, young Frodo Baggins sits in the shadows with Gandalf, overwhelmed by the weight of the Ring he's...
In George MacDonald's *The Princess and the Goblin*, young Princess Irene discovers her mysterious great-great-grandmother living in a hidden tower room. The grandmother gives Irene...
For nearly three decades, Johann Sebastian Bach served as the music director at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. He composed cantatas for Sunday services, trained...
In *The Fellowship of the Ring*, there is a moment deep beneath the mountains where Frodo Baggins confesses to Gandalf what many of us have...