The world is a very malleable place. When I read biographies, early lives leap out the most. Leonardo da Vinci was a studio apprentice to Verrocchio at 14. Walt Disney took on a number of jobs, chiefly delivering papers, from 11 years old. Vladimir Nabokov…

Individual merchants likely enforced the standard, from Great Britain to Babylon

Why did the Asian flush evolve? What does this say about alcoholism? What does this have to do with Odysseus?

For the past 18 generations, one family has preserved a 400-year-old recipe showing how sushi once tasted, and it doesn't use raw seafood, but fish aged for three years.