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How Sparta, the most powerful Greek city-state, collapsed in only 20 years. The Decline and Fall of Sparta | 11:02 toldinstone | 627K subscribers | 82,207 views | Febuary 25, 2026Chapters 0:00 Introduction 0:38 Classical Sparta 1:29 Spartan politics 2:22 Helots 3:24 Population decline 4:37 Hubris 5:25 The Battle of Leuctra 6:42 Messenia liberated 7:35 Enter Macedon 8:08 Attempts at reform 9:08 Irrelevance 9:37 Roman Sparta

...through photosynthesis by phytoplankton, microscopic marine organisms so abundant that a single teaspoon of seawater can contain as many as a million of them. (continuation of overlong headline) The invisible forest Phytoplankton are tiny, individually invisible, and almost unimaginably numerous. A single teaspoon of seawater can hold more than a million microscopic organisms, of which phytoplankton are a large part, although the count rises and falls enormously with season, sunlight and the nutrients in the water. One group stands out. Prochlorococcus, the smallest known photosynthetic organism, is so abundant that, by NOAA’s account, it alone produces up to a fifth...

Iranian suicide/loitering drones (kamikaze UAVs) typically have modest payload capacities, in the range of 30–50 kg for the most common types, with some variants or larger models reaching higher. Key Examples Shahed-136 (most prominent, widely exported/used): ~200 kg total weight, payload ~30–50 kg (commonly cited as ~40 kg warhead). Russian variants (Geran-2) have reached ~90 kg in some modified configurations by reducing fuel/range. Shahed-131 (smaller variant): ~10–20 kg payload. Other types like Ababil series or Hadid-110: Often 30–40 kg. Larger systems (e.g., Arash series): Up to ~225–260 kg in some reports, but these are less common for pure "suicide drone"...

Explanation: In this recent HiRISE view from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the little green dot indicated on the surface of the big Red Planet is the Perseverance Mars rover. Recorded on June 13, the car-sized, six-wheeled robot was imaged a day before completing a Martian marathon, traveling a total distance of 26.218 miles (42.195 kilometers) since it began exploring the surface of Mars. That equivalent marathon distance was achieved by Perseverance on its mission sol (Martian day) 1,890, after about 5 Earth years and 4 Earth months of driving. Perseverance is continuing to hunt for biosignatures. In the HiRISE image,...

A United Airlines jet nearly smashed into a drone as it was landing on the Newark runway Friday, officials said. The crew narrowly avoided the unmanned aircraft during its descent around 4:20 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. “We almost hit a drone,” the pilot can be heard saying in air traffic control audio verified by CNN. The circular and three-foot-wide device was only “about 100 feet below us.” Another pilot flying into Newark on a separate plane also reported seeing the drone at roughly 2,000 feet, additional audio shows. The United Airlines Boeing 737 was carrying 106 passengers...

The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued a red flag warning Friday morning as emergency workers continued to battle one of the state’s largest wildfires in its history. The red flag warning, issued when critical fire warnings are occurring or imminent, was to be in place through midnight Saturday. “This is the FIRST Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning issued in NWS Salt Lake City history. This is an exceptionally rare event,” the federal agency said in its warning. A map of the area under the warning covered much of central and southwest Utah, with an area of...

In 1995, remarkable contents of a 17th-century shipwreck began to be discovered by divers of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group off Salcombe Bay. The finds consist of over 400 gold coins of the Sa'dian Sharifs of Morocco in addition to ingots, jewellery as well as other items including Dutch pewter and pottery subsequently acquired by the British Museum. Although the ship has not survived, the divers discovered remnants of wood, rope and lead that were parts of its infrastructure. The finds from this shipwreck are significant for several reasons: the gold is clearly a bullion hoard and the number...

The orbits of long-period comets suggest a star passed by our Sun and caused some havoc we're still seeing. Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, is a very famous long-period comet. Image Credit: ESO/E. Slawik ================================================================= The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light-years away. This has not always been the case, as all stars in the galaxies move about. Observations suggest that just 2.5 million years ago, there was a star that passed very close to the Solar System, and this passage might still have consequences we can see today. Data from the ESA Gaia...

Samal escaped China to her native Kazakhstan in 2018. It was there that she, amid bouts of sobbing, described night-shifts at a Xinjiang province detention center, removing intestines from corpses. Many bodies were still warm. Many bore the marks of torture. ---SNIP--- The reports of Falun Gong and Uyghurs remarkably corroborate the other. Separated by religion, ethnicity, language, and geography, they attest to identical evidence of forced organ harvesting. Testimony from surgeons, prison guards, and international investigators provide further substantiation. Chinese medical journals revealed that many were executed on the operating table.

Ever since SpaceX announced that Starlink had partnered with T-Mobile to support direct cell phone to satellite communication, it seemed only a matter of time before SpaceX challenged existing carriers like AT&T and Verizon directly in the consumer cell phone service market. Directly from the President of SpaceX - President Gwynne Shotwell told investors during a recent IPO roadshow that SpaceX could build its own terrestrial mobile network Now an analysist is speculating that SpaceX could acquire T-Mobile instead of building it's on terrestrial network of cell towers. https://www.investors.com/news/technology/spacex-stock-spcx-elon-musk-acquire-tmobile-wireless-firm/ If this turns out to be true, it would be a...

Five human heads wrapped in plastic were found gruesomely stashed in a freezer at a Russian medical center — with the troubling discovery reportedly tied to a body parts operation on the black-market. The severed remains were allegedly stolen from hospital morgues before turning up tightly wrapped in polyethylene in a grim underground room at a Moscow anatomy training center on Suzdalskaya Street Friday, the US Sun reported. Harrowing footage captured officers peeling back the plastic wrapping to shockingly uncover the heads. Authorities said the body parts were snatched from area morgues before being used as medical training specimens to...

The Iranian and Egyptian soccer federations have urged FIFA to strip any “Pride Match” displays and rainbow symbols from Friday’s World Cup match in Seattle. The contest, slated for June 26 at Lumen Field, is scheduled during the city’s Pride weekend and has been referred to as the “Pride Match.” While FIFA confirmed to the New York Times that rainbow flags remain permitted at all World Cup matches this summer, its president, Gianni Infantino, has previously distanced the governing body from the event’s promotional themes. He insisted there would be no official “Pride Match” at the tournament in an interview...

Explanation: In a cosmic vista you can never see, the Milky Way arcs through the night above Seoul, South Korea. Remarkably, this urban night skyscape reveals our galaxy's faintly luminous central region and dark obscuring dust clouds in spite of the brilliant city lights. To overcome the extreme light pollution of the metropolitan area and record faint cosmic details, an infrared filter was used to capture the night scene in a single exposure. While the filter transmits predominately infrared light, it still passes some visible light to give the scene a natural appearance. The view is from Seoul's Ttukseom Hangang...

In Part 1 (link below), I argued that the House of Representatives was designed to grow. For most of American history, it did. Then, in 1929, Congress froze the House at 435 seats. It has remained there ever since. Part 2 asks a different question: If the House is supposed to grow, how large should it be? At first, I thought the answer might have something to do with human nature. Maybe there was something buried deep in our DNA — some limit on how many people we can know, trust, manage, or represent. I was wrong. The deeper I...

80 years before Lexington and Concord, before the founding fathers were even children, Americans used events in the mother country to engineer a little remembered revolution that transformed the colonies and helped to define the nation we know today. Forgotten Revolution: The 1689 Boston Revolt | 16:32 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered 1.64M subscribers | 4,480 views | June 26, 2026

For more than 500 years, historians have debated the mysteries hidden within this famous Renaissance painting. A remarkable glass rhombicuboctahedron, an unidentified young man, and a strange inscription have led some researchers to question whether Leonardo da Vinci may have played a role in its creation. One of Leonardo da Vinci's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries | 8:34 Secessio | 11.9K subscribers | 79,939 views | June 12, 2026

The algae in the Reflecting Pool has been almost completely removed despite liberal activists' best efforts to impede the removal of algae and destroy the pool's renovations. Greenwater Services was contracted in April by the Department of the Interior for the "procurement and installation of a fully integrated Nano Bubble Filtration System designed to replace the existing, failing filtration infrastructure at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool." But the company has come under fire from left-wing media outlets, who claim a conflict of interest because a part-owner of the company is a GOP donor, and that the company has a lack...

Zombie-esque squirrels covered in oozing, wart-like tumors have been invading backyards across the United States and the reason behind the deformities is likely caused by the species’ version of herpes, according to experts. The grotesque-looking gray squirrels have been increasingly photographed this summer in US states, including Florida, North Carolina, and Michigan, the Daily Mail reported, citing a flurry of social media posts reporting the bizarre sightings. “What is going on with the squirrels lately?! This is the third one I’ve seen looking like this, and it’s honestly freaking me out,” one user posted on Facebook on June 9, alongside...

[I]t appears these two quakes may have occurred on two separate faults. Several faults intersect in this tectonically complex region. Historically, when experts evaluate earthquake risk, they haven't necessarily accounted for this multifault scenario, says Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University. "We always tend to kind of assume that earthquakes will just be on one fault and only on one fault," he says. In 2016, a multifault event — the Kaikōura earthquake in New Zealand — took people by surprise, says Goldfinger, and changed scientists' understanding of how interconnected faults can trigger multiple ruptures. Assuming the Venezuelan quakes...

Explanation: The Sun has just set... in the opposite side of the sky. Pictured here are anticrepuscular rays apparently converging in the east in this image of the limestone plateau in the heart of the Hyblaean Mountains of southeastern Sicily, in Italy. How were these anticrepuscular rays formed, if the Sun wasn't there? After the Sun set (in the west, as usual) its light still illuminated a cloud higher up in the sky. Partially blocked by the cloud, the sunlight produced patterns of light and shadow, crossing the sky in parallel lines. Perspective makes it look like they converge in...