<p><b><a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/a-trail-gone-cold/">A Trail Gone Cold</a></b>:</p> <p>Iceland is known to the rest of the world as the land of Vikings and volcanos, an island caught between continents at the extremities of the map. Remote and comparatively inhospitable, it was settled only as long ago as the 9th century, and has seen little additional in-migration since. Even today, more than 90 percent [&#8230;]</p>

<p><b><a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/omiword/">Omiword, a Word Game</a></b>:</p> <p>In certain dialects of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the word for &#8216;four&#8217; sounds very similar to the word for &#8216;death&#8217;1. Consequently, the number 4 is considered by many people in East Asian nations to be unlucky. It is not unusual for buildings in that region to skip the number 4 when labeling floors, much [&#8230;]</p>

<p><b><a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/much-ado-about-adenoids/">Much Ado About Adenoids</a></b>:</p> <p>Edmund Lawall must have felt cursed. He’d brought his family to New York in the late 1800s to carry on his father’s business as a pharmacist, but fate—or perhaps the city itself—seemed determined to drive him back out again. Lawall’s health had been in decline since their arrival, and his wife’s kidney disease had worsened, [&#8230;]</p>

<p><b><a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/twenty/">Twenty</a></b>:</p> <p>In 2005, YouTube, reddit, and Facebook were all still wet and screaming infants. Google, working under the motto &#8220;Don&#8217;t Be Evil,&#8221; had just dethroned Yahoo! as the planet&#8217;s most popular Internet search engine (AskJeeves was not available for comment). Nickelback was at the height of its fame. Internet Explorer was the most used web browser, [&#8230;]</p>

<p><b><a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/there-once-was-a-man-called-curley/">There Once Was a Man Called Curley</a></b>:</p> <p>In the village of Bellewstown, about 15 miles north of Dublin, Ireland, they still talk about what Barney Curley did back in 1975. It all happened during a horse race on the Hill of Crockafotha. It was just an amateur jockey race on a lazy summer day in a sleepy, remote town; it wasn’t meant [&#8230;]</p>