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We haven’t thought about pole-vaulting in ages, not since we accidentally flipped on the track and field competition on TV during a long-ago summer Olympics, or maybe it was during junior high school gymnastics… At any rate, pole vaulting is a rather ridiculous-looking sport that we’ve never considered practicing, and are less likely to consider [...]

One of the most iconic images of modern history is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary: on June 5th, 1989 an unknown man faced down a row of tanks on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where months of protest had finally ceased when the military removed protesters from the public plaza by force. Nobody ever discovered who [...]

Some 113 years ago today, the first modern Olympic games kicked off in Athens. Roughly 250 athletes participated, and the city selection process was, well, not a process so much as an announcement. Every Olympic Games since then, though, bids have become more competitive, presentations fancier and flashier, visual campaigns more elaborate and audacious.
Just witness [...]

Freelance mascot and sports writer Onesie here, back for 2009’s first edition of Listicles’ sports column Sporty Saturdays. As 2008 reminded us, an entire year’s most lasting memories tend to be crammed into its last quarter (elections, financial crises, shoe-throwing incidents). Meanwhile, the summer Olympics in Beijing already seem light years away, but took [...]

From our backwards-looking year-end perspective, 2008 looks like it was all elections, Olympics, financial crises and Jokers. Although the scientific community flew under the radar while entertainment, politics, and the economy fused into one giant, indistinguishable headline-multiplying beast, some important things were discovered by our test tube-toting, lab-coated friends this year.
Incapable of figuring them all [...]

One of the big year-end lists comes to us today from the rulers of all things online, Google, who released the findings of their annual search tabulations on their Google Zeitgeist 2008 site. The whole Googlegeist site is full of fascinating findings (like that New Zealanders are really into the new hadron collider or that [...]