Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PENGUINCUBATOR

Did you know... Sir Allen Lane wanted to bring paperback books to the masses—and he thought a vending machine was the perfect way to do it.

 

Sir Allen Lane was the creator of Penguin Books, which is credited with popularizing high-quality mass-market paperbacks. Paperbacks existed prior to Penguin, but they were often poorly made or had trashy subject matter. Lane changed all that: He published classic literature in paperback form and legitimized the paperback. He also offered them at an affordable price (sixpence per book at launch, or about the same as a pack of cigarettes). According to an archived version of Penguin’s website, it all came about after Lane paid a visit to Agatha Christie:

 

“[H]e found himself on a platform at Exeter station searching its bookstall for something to read on his journey back to London, but discovered only popular magazines and reprints of Victorian novels. Appalled by the selection on offer, Lane decided that good quality contemporary fiction should be made available at an attractive price and sold not just in traditional bookshops, but also in railway stations, tobacconists and chain stores.”

 

One of the ways Lane brought books to non-bookstore locations was the “Penguincubator,” a vending machine for his paperbacks that he invented in 1937. (He may have gotten the idea from the German publisher Reclam, which first made book vending machines in the 1910s.) You can see a photo of the machine here.

 

James Bridle writes at Publishing Perspectives that the first Penguincubator was located outside Henderson’s—a bookshop called “The Bomb Shop” due to the fact that it sold radical literature—at 66 Charing Cross Road. This “signaled his intention to take the book beyond the library and the traditional bookstore, into railway stations, chain stores and onto the streets.”

 

Unfortunately, the idea wasn’t exactly a successful one: As one bookseller recounted in The British Book Trade: An Oral History, “it had to be wheeled out and locked at the front of the shop every night, then brought in every morning.  And every morning, apparently, there were letters of complaint shoved under the door: ‘We put a shilling in this machine and no book came out of it.’  It was a complete failure.”

 

While the Penguincubator is no longer around, you can find a Penguin Books Vending Machine in England’s Exeter St Davids Train Station that was installed in 2023 in honor of Lane’s search for a book there all those years ago. According to the city of Exeter, “The machine has proven to be a hit with locals and commuters alike, garnering millions of views thanks to a string of viral social media posts and national press attention that lauded its uniqueness.” And in 2025, the machine “will play host to a curated selection of books from Penguin’s 90 years of publishing success with Exeter City of Literature managing the unique book dispenser’s inventory. Customers can expect to encounter a series of themed books in the machine to celebrate Exeter’s place in the bookish world as one of only 53 UNESCO Cities of Literature.”

 

 

Source: The Penguincubator: The 1937 Vending Machine for Books

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the day - CELSIUS SCALE

Did you know... On Christmas Day 1741, Anders Celsius, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, took the world’s first temperature measurement using degrees Celsius — well, kind of. His scale had one big difference compared to the system we use today: It was backward. Instead of 0 degrees marking the freezing point of water, it instead marked the boiling point, while 100 degrees marked the freezing point. The reason for this arrangement may have been in part to avoid using negative numbers when taking temperature readings. After all, it’s pretty cold in Sweden a majority of the year, and air temperature never gets hot enough to boil water (thank goodness). 

 

Celsius’ scale, then known as the centigrade (or “100-step”) scale, remained this way for the rest of his life, but in 1745 — one year after his death — scientist Carl Linnaeus (of taxonomy fame) ordered a thermometer with the scale adjusted to our modern orientation. Several other scientists also independently reversed the scale. Yet it wasn’t until some two centuries later, in 1948, that the International Bureau of Weights and Measures decided to rename “centigrade” to Celsius, in part to fall in line with the other major temperature scales named after their creators, such as Daniel Fahrenheit and William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin. 

 

Although the Swedish scientist didn’t invent, or even use, the precise scale that now bears his name, his groundbreaking work is still worthy of the accolade. Before Celsius, a couple dozen thermometers were in use throughout the world, and many of them were frustratingly inaccurate and inconsistent (some were based on the melting point of butter, or the internal temperature of certain animals). Celsius’ greatest contribution was devising a system that could accurately capture temperature under a variety of conditions, and his name now graces weather maps around the world (excluding the U.S., of course). 

 

There was once such a thing as a decimal time.
Today’s second is derived from a sexagesimal system created by the ancient Babylonians, who defined the time unit as one-sixtieth of a minute. Fast-forward to the tail end of the 18th century, and the French Revolution was in a metric frenzy. In 1795, France adopted the gram for weight, the meter for distance, and centigrade (later renamed Celsius) for temperature. However, some of France’s decimal ideas didn’t quite stand the test of, er, time. By national decree in 1793, the French First Republic attempted to create a decimal system for time. This split the day into 10 hours, with each hour lasting 100 minutes, and each minute lasting 100 seconds (and so on). Because there are 86,400 normal seconds in a day, the decimal second was around 13% shorter. Although it was easy to convert among seconds, minutes, and hours, France’s decimal time proved unpopular — after all, many people had perfectly good clocks with 24 hours on them — and the idea was abolished two years later. Since then, a couple of other temporal decimal proposals have been put forward, including watchmaker Swatch’s attempt to redefine the day as 1,000 “.beats” (yes, the period was included) in 1998 in response to the internet’s growing popularity. However, ancient Babylon’s perception of time is likely too ingrained in human culture to change any time soon.

 

 

Source: The Celsius scale was originally backward.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SHIPWRECKS

Did you know... These are the five deepest shipwrecks ever discovered, including the USS ‘Samuel B. Roberts,’ which went to the depths of the Philippine Trench during the Second World War.

 

In October 1944, during the Battle off Samar—one of four major actions during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II’s Pacific theatre—the USS Samuel B. Roberts found itself in dire straits. 

 

The destroyer escort had only a fraction of the guns and torpedoes carried by the naval warships it accompanied. It stood no chance against the Imperial Japanese naval force, which was desperate to fight off a U.S. invasion of the Philippines at Leyte Gulf. After firing every round of ammunition, smoke shell, and illumination round on board to provide a protective smoke screen for the destroyers, the Sammy B was sunk by a Japanese battleship and disappeared into the depths of the Philippine Trench, dragging around 90 of its 224 crew members with it.

 

Nearly 80 years later, American adventurer Victor Vescovo piloted his deep-sea submersible Limiting Factor in the Philippine Trench and managed to locate the wreck of the Sammy B. The ship, which had broken in two during its long descent to the seafloor, confirmed details about the Battle off Samar that had previously been known only from eyewitness accounts, such as punctures in the stern showing exactly where Japanese shells had fatally struck. 

 

The vessel’s final stand “was just an extraordinary act of heroism,” Vescovo told the BBC following the 2022 discovery. “Those men—on both sides—were fighting to the death.”

 

Under Pressure
Equally impressive is the depth at which the Sammy B settled. It lies at a staggering 22,621 feet—or 4.28 miles—below sea level, where the temperature remains around 32°F and the pressure rises to 5 tons per square inch.

 

 

Located in one of the deepest sections of one of the deepest trenches in the world, it should come as little surprise that the Sammy B currently holds the title of the deepest shipwreck ever discovered. It broke the record held by the USS Johnston, a U.S. naval destroyer that sank during the same battle as the Sammy B and in the same deep-sea trench. An expedition team led by Microsoft co-founder and explorer Paul Allen discovered the wreck in 2019, and another expedition led by Vescovo confirmed its identity in 2021.

 

While the Sammy B remains No. 1 for the time being, it’s possible that other shipwrecks from the Second World War reached even greater depths after going under, including the still-unlocated escort carrier USS Gambier Bay and destroyer USS Hoel.

 

5 of the Deepest Shipwrecks Ever Found
Warships aren’t the only thing that have come to rest at incredible ocean depths. A list of the five deepest wrecks ever found also includes passenger and merchant ships, and all were sunk during World War II.

 

Ship: USS Samuel B. Roberts

Depth: 22,621 feet

Location: Philippine Trench

Date of Sinking: October 25, 1944

 

Ship: USS Johnston

Depth: 21,180 feet

Location: Philippine Trench

Date of Sinking: October 25, 1944, during the Battle off Samar

 

Ship: SS Rio Grande

Depth: 18,904 feet

Location: Southern Atlantic Ocean near Brazil

Date of Sinking: January 4, 1944

 

Ship: USS Indianapolis

Depth: 18,044 feet

Location: Philippine Sea

Date of Sinking: July 30, 1945

 

Ship: SS City of Cairo

Depth: Roughly 17,000 feet

Location: Southern Atlantic Ocean near St. Helena

Date of Sinking: November 6, 1942

 

Source: What Is the Deepest Shipwreck Ever Found?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - RADIUM

Did you know... Radium is, quite famously, not good for you. Its effects on the body are deleterious, not that anyone realized this when Marie Curie discovered the alkaline earth metal in 1898 — a scientific breakthrough that led to her winning the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Before long, the dangerously false belief that radium had health benefits began to spread: It was added to everything from toothpaste and hair gel to food and drinks, with glow-in-the-dark paints made from radium still sold into the 1970s. It was marketed as being good for any “common ailment,” with radioactive water sold in small jars that shops claimed would “aid nature” and act as a natural “vitalizer.”

 

Of course, none of this was true — exposure to even a small amount of radium can eventually prove fatal. Curie had no way of knowing this at the time, just as she didn’t have the slightest inkling that her notebooks would remain radioactive for more than 1,500 years after her death. She was known to store such elements out in the open and even walk around her lab with them in her pockets, as she enjoyed how they “looked like faint, fairy lights.”

 

Marie Curie also won a second Nobel Prize.
Marie Curie wasn’t just the first woman to win a Nobel Prize — she was also the first person to win two and remains the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. Her first award came eight years before her Nobel Prize in chemistry, when she and her husband Pierre Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for their work in radioactivity. More than two decades later, their daughter Irène Joliot-Curie won the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with her husband Frédéric Joliot for synthesizing new radioactive elements.

 

 

Source: Radium was added to food and drinks because it was thought to have health benefits.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - FINGERNAILS

Did you know... The human body contains a panoply of biological wonders. The human eye can detect around 1 million colors, and the nose can discern a trillion distinct scents. The brain is the most complex form of consciousness in the animal kingdom, and it takes the coordination of 200 muscles just to move our bipedal bodies around. Amid all these incredible capabilities, our nails get little scientific attention. Yet they are a rarity in nature — in fact, only primates have them, thanks to the evolution of their dexterous fingers. 

 

Embedded in your nails are other tiny mysteries, including the light-colored half-moon shape at the bottom of the nail plate. Though few of us stop to think about the purpose of this mark, its existence is a vital part of our nails and also serves as an indicator of our overall health. Here’s a closer look at this curious feature of our fingernails.

 

The Scientific Name Is Latin for “Little Moon”

The crescent-shaped mark at the base of the nail is known scientifically as the lunula, which is Latin for “little moon.” Although it has its own specific name, the lunula is only the visible part of a larger structure known as the nail matrix. That structure is one of the four major parts of the fingernail, along with the nail plate, nail bed, and the skin surrounding the nail (including the cuticle). Arguably, the matrix, which contains nerves, lymph, and blood vessels, is the most important of the four as it produces the cells that eventually harden into nail plates. 

 

Although the lunula can be many colors (more on that later), it typically appears white because it’s made of layers of newly formed cells that haven’t fully hardened and become transparent yet. (The rest of the nail is a pinkish color because the transparent plate allows the blood underneath to show through.) Sometimes lunulae will be easily visible and other times they can be obscured — usually because they’re hidden under the cuticle, though in some cases an obscured lunula could be a sign of a medical condition such as diabetes or heart disease.

 

The Color Can Be an Indicator of Health
The lunula, and the fingernail more generally, is a remarkable glimpse into our overall health. Typically, a healthy person will have white lunulae, but if the area is a different color it could be indicative of a potentially serious health condition. According to Healthline, the lunula can appear in various colors including blue, brown, black, red, and yellow, and can be an indicator of diabetes (pale blue), heart failure (red), renal failure (brown), or other serious conditions. This is why doctors will often examine your nails when you go in for an annual physical. 

 

It’s a Visible Part of Nail Growth

The nail matrix serves another important function: regenerating the nail. Although it may not seem like it, our nails are always growing. They grow out from the base of the nail at a rate of roughly 1 nanometer (one-billionth of a meter) every second, which averages to about 3.47 millimeters per month. (If you’ve ever noticed that you tend to trim your fingernails more frequently than your toenails, that’s because a toe’s nail matrix produces only 1.62 millimeters of nail per month on average.)

 

Nails grow from the nail matrix (which includes the lunula), where special cells create multiple layers of keratin, the same protein that makes up hair. The typical nail has roughly 196 layers of these cells. So the lunula is essentially the visible portion of the growth zone, where new cells are actively produced right before your eyes.

 

Source: Why Do We Have Half-Moons on Our Fingernails?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TRADEMARKED SMELLS?

Did you know... When we think about trademarks, it’s usually with regard to the logos and catchy slogans of our favorite brands, or maybe even iconic sounds such as the NBC chimes or the deep rumble of the THX logo. But trademarks extend beyond what we see and hear — they can even include what we smell. In fact, a specific scent can become so closely tied to a brand that it earns legal protection.

 

This may sound strange, since smells are invisible, hard to describe, and intensely subjective. But in the right circumstances, a scent can trigger memories, emotions, and brand loyalty just as powerfully, or even more so, than a logo or jingle. Companies that understand the emotional punch of scent are increasingly looking to protect their olfactory signatures, known as smell marks.

 

Getting a scent trademarked, however, is a rare and complicated feat. As of 2023, there were only 15 officially registered scent trademarks in the United States, for products ranging from dental wax to shoe polish. Compare that to the millions of visual logos and sound marks and you can start to see just how unusual and special this form of brand protection really is. Here’s a look at how it works, which companies have pulled it off, and why scent might be branding’s next big frontier.

 

Trademarking a Scent Is an Uphill Battle
In the United States, trademarks are managed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and the rules for scent trademarks are notoriously strict. First, the scent must be nonfunctional, which means the smell cannot be part of what makes the product useful. If a fragrance is an essential feature of the product — think the scent of a perfume or air freshener — it can’t be trademarked because it plays a fundamental role in the product’s usefulness.

 

Second, the scent has to be distinctive. It must trigger immediate brand recognition, much like seeing the Nike Swoosh or hearing Intel’s startup jingle. The average pleasant smell is not enough; it must be unique and unmistakably associated with one particular company.

 

Finally, the scent has to be describable in words. Applicants are required to submit a clear, detailed description of the smell they want to trademark. As anyone who’s ever tried to capture a scent in words can attest, this can prove to be incredibly difficult —  and describing this invisible experience in a way that satisfies legal standards is even more challenging. These hurdles mean most companies don’t even attempt to trademark their signature scents.

 

Smell Marks Can Help Cement a Brand’s Identity

The tiny handful of successful scent trademarks showcases the power of this type of brand affiliation. Hasbro’s Play-Doh is one of the most famous examples: The company trademarked the smell of its modeling compound, describing the scent as “a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.” It’s an incredibly specific description, but anyone who’s played with Play-Doh can likely recall the scent instantly, demonstrating the strength of our olfactory memory.

 

Another case comes from Verizon Wireless, which trademarked a custom “flowery musk scent” used inside its stores. This smell is part of an intentional strategy to shape customer experience, adding an invisible but memorable layer to retail visits. The smell isn’t just pleasant — it quietly signals to your brain that you’re in a Verizon store before you even glance at a logo or phone display.

 

Perhaps one of the quirkiest smell marks comes from the world of bowling. Storm Products trademarked the scent of its bowling balls, producing models that smell like grape, cinnamon, and other unexpected aromas. It’s an unusual marketing tactic, but it works — bowlers can quickly associate the fruity smell with Storm’s high-performance gear.

 

Scent Is Tied to Memory — And Emotion

Our sense of smell is one of the most primal and emotional senses we have. It’s directly wired into the limbic system, the part of the brain that handles memory and emotional responses. A scent can instantly transport you back to your grandmother’s kitchen, a particular summer vacation, or your first car.

 

Brands understand how powerful our sense of smell can be. Scent can forge a deep, subconscious connection with consumers that can prove even more enduring than a visual symbol or catchy tune. Hotels pump signature scents into lobbies, elevators, and hallways to create a sense of relaxation and familiarity. Luxury car makers scent their showrooms subtly with leather and wood notes to enhance perceptions of craftsmanship and elegance. And amusement parks infuse the air with playful, nostalgic aromas — such as cotton candy or popcorn — to draw visitors deeper into the childlike magic of their world.

 

We All Smell Things Differently

Despite the benefits of smell in marketing a product or experience, trademarking a scent remains an elusive achievement. We all have a different “smellscape,” meaning each of us perceives smells differently. These differences have a range of causes, from our genetics, cultural backgrounds, or even what we’ve eaten recently. And since it can be difficult to describe the specifics of an aroma, our descriptions are often vague and subjective.

 

Even beyond the obstacles of our individual perceptions, brands must demonstrate that consumers have come to associate a particular smell with their goods and nothing else. This often requires expensive consumer studies and focused marketing efforts that drag on for years, sometimes decades. Play-Doh has been in business since 1956 — imprinting its unmistakable smell on the memories of multiple generations — but the iconic scent wasn’t officially trademarked until 2018.

 

While scent trademarks clearly remain difficult to attain, for brands willing to invest the time and money, the payoff — legal protection for one of the most enduring aspects of their identity — can be well worth all the hassle.

 

 

Source: Is It Possible To Trademark a Smell?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SWISS ARMY KNIFE

Did you know... The tool favored by MacGyver has a multi-pronged history.

 

Anyone with a deep love for gadgets is familiar with a Swiss Army knife. The multipurpose pocket tool appears able to tackle any task, from sawing through rope to uncorking a bottle of champagne to trimming your eyebrows. It even became a metaphor for a person or device that can seemingly do it all. But is it really from Switzerland? And was it ever really deployed in the Swiss Army?

 

The Origins of the Swiss Army Knife
In the 1800s, the Swiss Army had a problem. The military observed a need for a small, portable tool that could serve a number of different purposes in the field, from maintaining a rifle to opening rations. Carrying a cumbersome tool set was impractical. Ideally, they needed an all-in-one tool that would be unobtrusive. But no one in Switzerland had the resources to craft one.

 

The idea itself wasn’t new. Multipurpose tools had been in existence for decades and even received a mention in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, which described a knife that doubled as a corkscrew and tweezers. Later, in 1880, a man named John Holler marketed an outlandish knife design with over 100 uses, with arms that extended out to deploy cigar cutters or mini-shovels.

 

Holler’s knife, which was made in Germany, was never intended to be useful, exactly. It was meant to grab attention and solidify his company’s reputation for fine cutlery. According to Smithsonian, elaborate knives like these were more about demonstrating culters’ skill. They would go on “tour,” appearing at festivals, fairs, and other public gatherings—but deploying them on the field was impossible.

 

Aside from practicality, outsourcing the knife to another country rubbed some Swiss the wrong way. Swiss knifemaker Karl Elsener believed they should keep their knife business domestic. Elsener manufactured surgical knives at his factory in Ibach-Schwyz; crafting a multi-pronged tool was well within his capability. His multipurpose knife was delivered to the Swiss army in 1891.

 

There was room for improvement. “It had a large blade, a can opener, a screwdriver and a reamer all on one side,” Elsener’s great-grandson, Carl, told The New York Times in 1991. “On the other side was nothing. It was very strong but a little heavy so my great-grandfather decided to make a more elegant knife for officers which had a corkscrew and a second blade.” This second, improved knife was given to the Swiss Army in 1897.

 

But there was still the problem of meeting production demands. Elsener got around those limitations by forming a group, the Association of Swiss Master Cutlers, that permitted other knifemakers to share in filling military orders. Elsener and another company, Wenger, would later split production duties for many years.

 

The Swiss Army Moniker
Elsener’s company was dubbed Victorinox—a blend of his mother Victoria’s name and inox, another name for the stainless steel used to make the tool. But Elsener didn’t call it a “Swiss Army Knife”—he dubbed it the Original Swiss Officer’s and Sports Knife.

 

The knife came by its more familiar name leading up to World War II, when American soldiers who couldn’t pronounce German took to calling it a “Swiss Army Knife.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first printed use of the term in English in 1935.

 

Like a lot of wartime tools, foods, and accessories, returning veterans brought plenty of Swiss Army knives back with them. They subsequently wound up in utility drawers and in the pockets of Boy Scouts. The knife was also fairly easily identifiable by the symbol on its body—a white cross on a red shield. Civilian models sported a red handle so they would be more visible in the snow.

 

While the knives may seem like a gimmick, they’ve proven surprisingly useful. In 1990, a physician named Charles Plotkin was on a plane when a passenger began choking. Plotkin used another passenger’s Swiss Army knife to cut a hole in the man’s neck, permitting air passage. (Plotkin should have been carrying a specialized Swiss Army Knife that came with a tracheotomy blade.)

 

Victorinox estimates roughly 500 million Swiss Army knives have been manufactured since 1891. That includes non-terrestrial sales: NASA has issued Swiss Army knives to astronauts since the 1970s. You never know when you might need a fish scaler, even in outer space.

 

Source: Why Is It Called a “Swiss Army Knife”?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MICKEYS

Did you know.... Animal-based names are surprisingly common when it comes to units of measurement. In addition to horsepower (which usually measures the output of engines or motors) and hogsheads (today mostly used for alcohol), there’s also the mickey — a semi-official means of measuring the speed of a computer mouse. Named after a certain Disney character who’s probably the world’s most famous rodent, it’s specifically used to describe the smallest measurable movement the device can take. In real terms, that equals 1/200 of an inch, or 0.1 millimeter. Both the sensitivity (mickeys per inch) and speed (mickeys per second) of a computer mouse are measured this way by computer scientists.

 

Had the original name for the device stuck, it’s unlikely this measurement system would have come about. The mouse was briefly known as a “bug” when it was invented at the Stanford Research Institute to make computers more user-friendly, though that seems to have been a working title that no one was especially fond of. (That version of the device was also extremely primitive compared to the mice of today — it even had a wooden shell.) As for how the mouse got its current name, no one can quite remember, except that that’s what it looked like.

 

A lot of people didn’t think the mouse would take off.
In perhaps one of the most infamous articles ever published about computers, the San Francisco Examiner’s John C. Dvorak wrote in 1984, “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse.’ There is no evidence that people want to use these things.” Written as a review of Apple’s landmark personal computer, which had launched earlier that year, Dvorak’s not-so-prescient article wasn’t exactly a hot take at the time. The relatively small number of people who used computers regularly back then were just fine using the keyboard for everything, and Dvorak was hardly alone in asserting that he didn’t want to use a mouse. His predictive abilities didn’t seem to improve with time, alas, as he also wrote that Apple should “pull the plug” on the iPhone prior to its 2007 release.

 

Source: The speed of a computer mouse is measured in “mickeys,” named after Mickey Mouse.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DRAGONFLIES

Did you know... On a statistical level, some of the world’s most fearsome predators aren’t actually that fearsome. Wolves succeed in about only 20% of their attempts to catch prey, whereas lions enjoy a success rate of around 30% when working as a pack. Those numbers, though respectable, pale in comparison to the success rate of the mighty dragonfly, which catches about 95% of the prey it pursues — making it the world’s most successful hunter.

 

These insects do all their hunting in midair, of course, making the feat even more impressive; they mainly prey on small insects such as mosquitoes, flies, or butterflies. Scientists attribute this prowess to dragonflies’ nearly 360-degree field of vision, their individually controlled wings, and their brains’ unique ability to coordinate these instantaneous actions.

 

Other surprisingly adept hunters include the harbor porpoise, whose success rate hovers at around 90% (allowing them to chow down on more than 500 small fish per hour), and African wild dogs, which capture their prey more than 60% of the time — though they often lose them to larger predators such as lions and hyenas.

 

One dragonfly species’ migration has been called “the most extraordinary journey in nature.”
The more you learn about dragonflies, the more astonished you’ll be by these tiny creatures. Consider the globe skimmer, for instance, which more than lives up to its name: The “winged wanderer,” as it’s often referred to, completes the longest migration of any insect, an 11,000-mile journey between India and Africa that Discover Magazine called “the most extraordinary journey in nature” — in part because it takes several generations to complete, meaning no single dragonfly can complete it itself.

 

At just a few centimeters long, globe skimmers can fly for 90 hours straight — albeit with a fair bit of assistance from wind, which is why the journey can only be undertaken at certain times of year. To keep their energy up, they eat small insects and aerial plankton. Their exact route has yet to be plotted, however, because globe skimmers are literally too small for any existing tracking devices.

 

Source: Dragonflies are the world’s most successful hunters.