Today is National No Homework Day. For many years in the US, every day was a no homework day - but then Sputnik happened. Plus: this weekend in North Carolina, it's the Smithfield Ham and Yam Festival. 

How the Cold War Space Race Led to U.S. Students Doing Tons of Homework (History.com)

Ham and Yam Festival 

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In Rambouillet, France, a startup is developing street lights that are bioluminescent - they’re powered by bacteria that glow. Plus: around this time in 1965, a woman sees a car selling for "1,395 bananas" and shows up at the dealership with actual fruit. 

French Town to Light its Streets With Bacteria Luminescence That Needs No Electricity (Good News Network)

Car sold for 1395 bananas (Weird Universe)

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For International Firefighters Day, it's the story of Molly Williams, an enslaved Black woman who became the first known woman firefighter, and the first Black firefighter, in the United States. Plus: on the anniversary of Rhode Island declaring independence, a visit to one of the state's most unusual attractions. 

Molly Williams, a black woman and a slave, fought fires years before the FDNY was formed was a pioneer for fellow female smoke-eaters (New York Daily News)

Little Known Black History Fact: Molly Williams (Black America Web)

Big Blue Bug In Rhode Island Just Might Be The Strangest Roadside Attraction Yet (Only in Rhode Island)

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There’s evidence that people in the Stone Age took plaquettes, limestone representations of animals, put them near the fire and watched as the light created a kind of animation. Pretty high-tech stuff for 14,000 years ago. Plus: an enterprising young raccoon in Germany takes advantage of the rules.

Stone Age people may have gathered at night to watch animated “fireside art” (Ars Technica)

A wild raccoon moved into a German zoo and the keepers can't kick him out (Chicago Tribune)

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Today in 2007, the king of grass court tennis, Roger Federer, played an exhibition match against his rival, clay court great Rafael Nadal. Not their only matchup, but for this one, the court was half grass and half clay, making it a so-called "battle of the surfaces." Plus: today in 1929, the birth of Link Wray, a guitarist so wild that his instrumental classic "Rumble" was once banned for fear that the song - which, again, had no words - might spur listeners into juvenile delinquency! 

Nadal wins 'clay-grass' thriller (BBC)

Guitarist Link Wray Dies (Rolling Stone)

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This week we're replaying some of our favorite episodes about time. In this episode from November 2019, we look at November 1883, when railroads across the United States adopted a uniform system of time, more or less getting all of us in sync with each other. But what was time like before then? Plus: Japan has had cat cafes, hedgehog cafes and bunny cafes. Now there's a minipig cafe!

Time! (Library of Congress)

Standard Time Zones In U.S. Mark 100 Years (New York Times)

The Adoption of Standard TimeIan R. Bartky (Technology and Culture)

Mipig Harajuku: We visit the new micro pig cafe in Tokyo (Sora News)

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This week we're replaying some of our favorite episodes about time. In this episode from September 2020, we look at Tahoe Timescape, a project to take photographs over one thousand years. Plus: New York City is where King Kong ran wild in the movies, but a new statue could help rebuild the relationship between NYC and big apes.

Artist tries 1,000-year time lapse photo of Lake Tahoe (US News & World Report)

Photos: King Nyani, the Largest Bronze Gorilla Statue Arrives in NYC (Untapped New York)

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This week we're replaying some of our favorite episodes about time. In this episode from December 2020, we look at a study that found something interesting happens when we’re trying not to reveal something: our perception of time slows down. Plus: MIT physicists design a model for a super-accurate atomic clock that even accounts for quantum physics.

New psychology research confirms that time slows down when you are concealing something (PsyPost)

New type of atomic clock keeps time even more precisely (MIT News)

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This week we're replaying some of our favorite episodes about time. In this episode from March 2020, we look at the places on Earth where time is at its weirdest, the North and South Poles. Plus: it may be time to pay a visit to the World’s Largest Buffalo Monument!

Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole (Scientific American)

World’s Largest Buffalo Monument (Discover Jamestown)

Geographic South Pole Marker photo by Eli Duke via Flickr/Creative Commons

This week we're replaying some of our favorite episodes about time. In this episode from December 2019, we look at the time Samoa skipped a day on the calendar because of International Date Line and some trading partners. Plus: why break your back shoveling snow when you can design a radio-controlled  snowplow to do the work for you?

Samoa to skip Friday, lose December 30th 2011 forever (Christian Science Monitor)

Guy Creates The Ultimate Alternative To Shoveling Your Own Snow (Digg)

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