Plot Twists
In this 1999 film, the narrator discovers that the charismatic soap salesman he admires is actually a hallucination.
Fight Club
This language—spoken by over a billion people—uses tones, meaning the pitch changes the meaning of words.
Mandarin Chinese
She became the first woman in space in 1963.
Valentina Tereshkova
This country’s capital, boasting rainbow houses and fermented shark, is Reykjavík.
Iceland
This 1989 protest in Beijing ended with a lone man standing before a line of tanks.
Tiananmen Square
In Gone Girl, we learn that this character is alive—and running her own twisted game.
Amy Dunne
This German compound word describes pleasure at someone else’s misfortune.
Schadenfreude
This 1954 monster film is often credited as the first major example of the “kaiju” genre.
Godzilla
The mantis shrimp can see up to 16 types of color receptors — humans have only this many.
Three
In 1969, this music festival in upstate New York became the defining moment of counterculture.
Woodstock
In The Good Place, the protagonists realize the neighborhood isn’t paradise—it’s actually this.
The Bad Place
This ancient writing system, used by the Sumerians, was impressed into clay using wedge-shaped tools.
Cuneiform
In 1903, this African American scholar became the first to earn a Harvard Ph.D.
W.E.B Du Bois
This mathematical curve, whose name means “equal speed,” describes a point moving with constant velocity.
The Cycloid
This 18th-century uprising filled the streets of Paris and helped begin the French Revolution.
The Storming of the Bastille
This Agatha Christie novel reveals that the murderer is literally the narrator.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The “Great Vowel Shift” dramatically changed this language between the 15th and 18th centuries.
English
This 1995 Pixar film became the first full-length feature made entirely with CGI.
Toy Story
This phenomenon makes particles appear to pop in and out of existence in a vacuum.
Quantum Fluctuation
The assassination of this heir sparked the chain of events leading to World War I.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
In this video game, the silent protagonist realizes he’s been manipulated by the “green text” command system itself.
Undertale
This linguistic term refers to a word borrowed from another language but altered so much it sounds native (e.g., “beef” from French boeuf).
Loanword
This probe, launched in 1977, became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space.
Voyager 1
This archaeological site in Turkey, dating to around 9600 BCE, predates Stonehenge by thousands of years.
Göbekli Tepe
This 1521 event saw Martin Luther refuse to recant his teachings before imperial authorities.
Diet of Worms