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  Original photo by shananies/ iStock One of the original ships of the U.S. Navy is still afloat. Following  congressional passage  of an "Act to provide a Naval Armament" in March 1794, shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys set about designing six frigates that would form the backbone of the United States Navy fleet. Of those six, the USS Constitution has defied the odds to remain in service, making "America's Ship of State" the world’s  oldest commissioned warship still afloat . Launched from Boston Harbor  on October 21, 1797, the Constitution was soon deployed to the Caribbean to engage privateers during the Quasi War with France. A few years later, the 44-gun frigate was instrumental in a military campaign against the state-supported Barbary Pirates of North Africa, resulting in an 1805 treaty with Tripoli. But the Constitution truly proved its worth with an impressive showing against the mighty British navy in the War of 1812. One overwhelming victory over the HMS ...

  Original photo by jo Crebbin/ Shutterstock Snakes are often pictured curled around a tree in a dense jungle or hiding in a desert waiting to strike some unsuspecting prey. But they’re just as capable in the water as they are on land — in fact,  all species of snakes can swim . In North America, a famous example is the cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus), named for the white color on its mouth that goes on full display when the creature is angry. This snake, native to the southeastern U.S., also goes by the name “water moccasin” because of its predilection for estuaries, bays, and rivers.  But even going a step beyond the familiar cottonmouth, some 60 species of marine snakes derived from the cobra family call the ocean their home, and monstrously  large snakes such as anacondas  also spend most of their life in the water. Even snakes that generally have no business in water, such as  the desert-loving rattlesnake , can swim in a pinch. Members of the sub...

  Agatha Christie wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott. M ystery stories require a meticulous structure, and emotions typically don’t drive the plot. This worked out well for Agatha Christie, who liked her public persona to be somewhat guarded, especially after her infamous  1926 disappearance  caused a media ruckus. But Christie found a way to express herself more deeply while still maintaining her privacy: She wrote several semi-autobiographical romance novels under a pen name,  Mary Westmacott . The alias allowed Christie to be emotionally vulnerable — and the books received rave reviews. “The Westmacott [novels] always said things that Agatha couldn’t express any other way,” biographer Laura Thompson wrote in  Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life . These books gave Christie an outlet to explore her fraught relationship with her first husband Archie Christie, reflect honestly (and sometimes harshly) on motherhood, and unearth past trauma. In the ...

  Original photo by Supamotion/ Shutterstock Astronauts can vote absentee from space. As human space exploration has evolved, trips offworld have grown longer and longer. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin  spent less than two hours in orbit ; today, it’s common for astronauts to stay in space for  six months to a year . Because astronauts are spending larger portions of their lives hundreds of miles above us, the voting process has had to adapt. A pivotal moment occurred in September 1996, when NASA astronaut John Blaha went to the Russian space station Mir for a  118-day  stay and completely missed voting in the 1996 presidential election. In response, Texas state Senator  Mike Jackson  proposed legislation to allow astronauts to vote in space. (Notably, many astronauts live in Texas because they train at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.) In 1997, NASA astronaut David Wolf, who was also aboard the Mir, became the first astronaut to successfully vote in space....

  Original photo by marc zakian/ Alamy Stock Photo "Mona Lisa" is not the name of the painting's subject. Not entirely, anyway. The subject of this early 16th-century portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, so famous that it resides in its own  bulletproof glass case  at the Louvre Museum in Paris, is believed to have been  Lisa del Giocondo  (née Gherardini), the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. As was common with other Renaissance works, the "Mona Lisa"  didn't have a formal title  for many years, instead going by names like "A Certain Florentine Lady" or "A Courtesan in a Gauze Veil." The identity of the subject also became something of a mystery, as Leonardo  failed to provide any confirmation  in his papers or in the painting itself. It was a later Renaissance artist, Giorgio Vasari, who provided the first inkling that the sitter was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, in his 1550 book  The Lives of the Most Excellent Pain...

  F amed Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci left behind thousands of pages of notes and diagrams from his many pursuits in math, anatomy, botany, science, engineering, and art — he created more than 200 illustrations with notes on flight alone. Leonardo had groundbreaking ideas on everything from human anatomy to bridge design, and even the writing itself is impressive: Most of it is written from right to left, in a  mirror image  of ordinary European script. He only wrote left to right when someone else needed to read it. He also used his own form of shorthand. Leonardo never directly explained why he wrote this way, but there are a few prevailing theories. It may have been simply practical: The artist was most likely left-handed, and writing left to right could get messy using a pen and ink. He also may have been trying to keep his ideas secret from potential copycats, or even trying to hide his work from the Roman Catholic Church. While Leonardo’s artwork is rich w...

  Original photo by Gergitek Gergi tavan/ Shutterstock The moon can produce a lunar rainbow known as a “moonbow.” The sun is the most reliable way to create the gorgeous light display we call a rainbow, but it’s not the  only  way. After all, the moon illuminates the Earth, too — and rainbows are essentially an  optical illusion  caused when water droplets split light into its ROY G. BIV components. But seeing a “moonbow” isn’t exactly easy. How rare is this nighttime meteorological phenomenon? Well, Aristotle wrote around 350 BCE  in his treatise  Meteorologica  that “it was formerly thought that [rainbows] never appeared by night as a moon rainbow. This opinion was due to the rarity of the occurrence… we have only met with two instances of a moon rainbow in more than fifty years.” So, pretty rare. That’s because for a moonbow to form, you need a  variety of conditions to be Goldilocks-level perfect . First, the moon must be low in the sky, ...