For fiften years, the popular website Futility Closet has collected arresting curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics. It's like Uncle John's bathroom reader, but intellectual.
Started in 2005 by editorial manager and publishing journalist Greg Ross, it's an online wunderkammer of trivia, quotations, mathematical curiosities, chess problems, and other diversions such as pipe-smoking robots, clairvoyant pennies, zoo jailbreaks, literary cannibals, corned beef in space, revolving squirrels, disappearing Scottish lighthouse keepers, reincarnated pussycats, dueling Churchills, horse spectacles, onrushing molasses, joyous dogs, soul-stirring Frenchmen, runaway balloons, U-turning communists, manful hummingbirds, recalcitrant Ws, intractable biplanes, vengeful whales, hairless trombonists, abusive New Zealanders, unreconstituted cannibals, mysterious blimps, thrice-conscripted Koreans, imaginary golf courses, irate Thackerays, plus the obscure words, odd inventions, puzzles and paradoxes. It is simply one of the most interesting websites on the internet.
Hours, days, even weeks of reading and listening pleaure awaits you (shhhh ... you might even learn something!)
