Radon gas may leak out of fault lines in greater quantities prior to an earthquake. In 2009, an Italian man claimed to have used radon monitors to predict a quake near his hometown of L'Aquila. Success with the radon approach has been—like all attempts at predicting quakes—rather hit and miss. But a physics Nobel laureate hopes to change that with a new, improved radon detector that easier to use in the field.
Predicting earthquakes with radon gas
A chemist invented a fake Frenchman to justify capital L for liters
The International System of Units capitalizes a unit's symbol only when the unit is named for a person, which leaves the liter with a lowercase l that is easy to… READ THE REST
Britain's £36 million peanut farm harvested less than it planted
In 1946, with Britain still on wartime rationing and short of cooking fat, Clement Attlee's government approved a plan to plant peanuts across 3 million acres of Tanganyika, a stretch… READ THE REST
What if the whole planet ran on a single clock?
Every so often someone proposes to abolish time zones entirely and put the whole planet on a single clock. It would be the same time everywhere at once: when it… READ THE REST
This $20 PDF editor keeps your files off the cloud and on your device (MSRP $50)
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Tackle PDFs with ease forever with an IndyPDF Editor and Converter lifetime subscription, on sale now… READ THE REST
Learning a new language is less intimidating with Promova for only $80
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Build confidence in a new language with Promova's lifetime subscription for $79.99 (reg. $299.99). Learning a new language… READ THE REST
A popular platform is making it easier to read in your spare time, and it's only $70 for life
Disclosure: Boing Boing earns a commission on purchases made through links in this post. TL;DR: Headway is a mobile app that condenses fiction and non-fiction books into quick summaries, and it's only… READ THE REST
