smart & curious
The world’s largest volcano is hard to see!
A new study has established that the Hawaiian volcano Pūhāhonu is the largest in the world. But it’s absurdly short, rising only 170 feet above sea level—which makes it a dwarf compared to its towering neighbour Mauna Loa. Turns out that most of it is hiding underwater, where it stretches across 171 miles in length and is 56 miles wide. According to the study, Pūhāhonu is so massive that it is causing the Earth's crust to sink. (CNN)
The latest wacky pandemic gizmo…
Is this hand sanitiser pump that would make Spiderman jealous. The Pumpix is good for 100 pumps and super easy to use. Too bad it’s as ugly as sin. (Gizmodo)
A list of intriguing things
- An ambitious project in the Netherlands—backed by Coca Cola and Carlsberg beer, no less—will use plants to create plastic bottles that will degrade within a year!
- Companies are making up a new pandemic-friendly measure of their performance: EBITDAC.
- A Toronto startup is using drones to plant trees with super speed. The machines will plant 40,000 saplings a month, and hit 1 billion by 2028.
- Britain has a smelly cheese problem. Sales of its homemade Stilton have crashed by 30% due to the pandemic, and cheesemakers are warning that it may soon be wiped out. Even Prince Charles has rushed to its rescue, sharing his own recipe for Cheesy Baked Eggs on Insta.
- Did you know that ancient Egyptians were the first to diagnose pregnancy and predict the gender of a foetus? No, well you need to read this fascinating thread on how they used wheat barley grains—with surprising success! Below is one of the images of child delivery. (h/t surimana16)