The koala bear is not a bear, the raccoon dog is neither a raccoon nor a dog, and the horned toad is no toad at all. So is a red panda actually a panda? Yes! We call it a red panda to distinguish it from the giant panda,...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/The-Many-Names-of-the-Red-Panda/You've heard about boys joining the army in the Civil War who were so young that they weren't given weapons but played a drum instead. Perhaps you saw the 1963 Disney TV movie Johnny Shiloh. The film was fi...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/The-Real-Johnny-Shiloh-Civil-War-Drummer-Boy/Yesterday, French artist and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot died at the age of 91. Her passing prompted this X post: Brigitte Bardot’s death means there are now just three people mentioned in @billyjoel&rs...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/Only-3-People-Mentioned-in-We-Didnt-Start-the-Fire-Are-Still-Alive/Mary Berry is an English chef and food writer who's been on British TV for many years, including as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. Here she smoothly raps about anything and everything, thanks to the magi...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/Swedemason-Returns-with-Berry-Bars/Ice is slippery. We all know that and take precautions when we have to walk across even a small amount, but when we put on ice skates, something magical happens. While ice skating uses many of the same skills and techniq...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/28/The-Weird-Physics-That-Enable-Us-to-Skate-on-Ice/The McMansion arose in the 1980s and took over the suburban landscape: huge custom-built houses on too-small lots that defied design rules and contained all the dream elements of the family within. A new trend in archite...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/28/The-Architectural-Abomination-of-2025-The-McModern/Every year since 1966, the residents of Gävle, Sweden, erect a giant yule goat made of straw to celebrate the season. The Gävle Goat has proven to be a huge tourist draw, and an entire festival grew up around i...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/28/The-Sad-Fate-of-the-2025-Gvle-Goat/Every year, Barry Petchesky (previously at Neatorama) sifts through the records of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's database of emergency room visits, looking for cases of foreign objects stuck in body orifi...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/27/The-Annual-Roundup-of-Items-Stuck-in-Body-Orifices-for-2025/It's common enough to get a couple fortune cookies delivered with the bill at the end of a meal at a Chinese restaurant. But TAO Asian Bistro goes much, much further. Its iconic fortune cookie is a complete dessert cours...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/27/The-15-Largest-Desserts-Served-in-Restaurants/Earlier this year, New York City banned cell phones in classrooms through high school. The results are mostly positive. Teachers report that students are more likely to get to class on time. The downside is that they rea...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/27/Is-Reading-an-Analog-Clock-an-Outdated-Skill/In 2023, millions of fans went to stadiums to see Taylor Swift's Eras tour. Most of the fans were young ladies, many of them too young to drive to concerts. Tickets were very expensive, and often out of reach for entire...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/27/A-Parking-Lot-Full-of-Swiftie-Dads/Lucky for us, modern commercial food production is governed by laws on food safety and regulations ensuring fair trade practices. For the most part. But it wasn't always so, and some iconic brands have sad or cutthroat o...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/26/A-Dozen-Perfectly-Normal-Foods-with-Shady-Origins/In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced us to the Borg, a collective of cyborgs that work together as one unit to capture and assimilate the universe's beings and technology for their own purpose...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/26/The-Horrifying-Philosophy-of-the-Borg/Exotic, amazing, and totally untrue tales from faraway lands come through many paths. Locals like to troll visitors with scary stories, like that of the snipe or drop bear. Returning travelers like to impress people by b...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/26/The-Truth-Behind-the-Man-Eating-Tree-of-Madagascar/Christopher B. Buck, Ph.D., is a virologist with the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory of Cellular Oncology. Science News reports that he has lately experimented on himself and his brother by br...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/26/Virologist-Makes-a-Beer-Thats-Also-a-Vaccine/The headstone for the grave of Joan Wytte in Cornwall, UK, is quite intriguing. Her birth date, death date, and burial date are in three different centuries! And the last line is quite sad- "no longer abused." Who was Jo...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/Died-in-1813-But-Buried-in-1998/Chesty is a bulldog who serves as the official mascot of the United States Marine Corps. He's named for Lt. Gen. Lewis "Chesty" Puller (1898-1971).* This particular bulldog is the sixteenth to bear the title of Chesty wh...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-the-Marine-Corps-Mascot/Oxford's Mathematical Institute reports about the development of shapes that can physically exist only in zero gravity. These "soft shapes" lack corners and are partially available as biological tissues. But recreating t...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/This-Shape-Can-Exist-Only-in-Zero-Gravity/Barry's Borderpoints is a website featuring photos and maps of national borderpoints visited by Barry Arnold, the Vice President of the International Border Research Group--an organization of border enthusiasts.Arnold's...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/This-House-in-Slovenia-Is-Surrounded-on-Three-Sides-by-Italy/In the 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone, the McCallister family experiences a nighttime power outage. As a result, their alarm clocks don't go off and the family wakes up only when the airport shuttle van arrives...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/Statistically-How-Likely-Is-the-McCallister-Oversleep/You know what Christmas needs? More chaos and destruction! In this bizarre animated sequence the Grinch gets lost on his way to Whoville and somehow ends up in the United States. Instead of correcting his mistake, he ins...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/25/The-Grinch-Confronts-Christmas-in-America/Embed from Getty ImagesThe Rockettes are currently performing in the annual Christmas Spectacular show at Radio City Music Hall, just like they did when you were a kid. Christmas is their busiest season, when they perf...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/The-Rockettes-Are-Still-Kicking-After-100-Years/Yukon Cornelius, the great mountain man of the frozen north and a hero of the 1964 classic Christmas film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is a larger than life figure who taps into hidden universal forces to perform migh...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/Yukon-Cornelius-on-Hoth/YouTuber Jonas Wolf and his friends adapt modern songs for the choral styles of the Renaissance and early Baroque period of Western European music. Past recordings include "Let It Be" by The Beatles and "Last Christmas"...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/If-Stayin-Alive-Had-Been-Written-in-the-Sixteenth-Century/Like most states, Illinois allows residents to choose combinations of letters and numbers to reflect custom messages on their car license plates. But, the state warns, applicants must follow certain standards of decency...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/Rejected-Custom-License-Plates/Will my shipment arrive before Christmas? I have proceeded through the five stages of grief and reached acceptance: it will arrive at my home on the 27th.But Flo & Joan, the musical comedy duo from the UK, are not wo...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/The-Parcel-Delivery-Song/An article at The Takeout explains why pancakes from a diner taste so much better than homemade pancakes. It's because they have specialized equipment and lots of experience. Restaurants cannot afford to have their panca...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/Diner-Pancakes-vs-Homemade-Pancakes/In Britain, you are considered an adult when you turn 18. In America, that's true for only some things, like voting and signing contracts. You can drive at 16 (or younger in some states), but you can't buy alcohol or tob...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/24/The-Difference-Between-Adulthood-in-the-US-and-Britain/We've been following the adventures of Jonathan Stanley (redditor kakalacky_guy, previously at Neatorama) and his family for years, by way of his humorous Christmas cards. Here is a his card for 2025, titled “The G...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/23/Family-Christmas-Card-Shenanigans-Return-for-the-Twelfth-Year/John C. Worsley is the master of goofy musical Star Trek videos, and always has something special for Christmas (previously at Neatorama). For 2025, he's focused on Jeffrey Combs for the supercut "Here Come...
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/23/The-2025-iStar-Treki-Christmas-Supercut-Starring-Jeffrey-Combs/
