Almost Facts

Imagine a city teetering on the edge of disaster, a spark waiting to ignite a catastrophic blaze, yet somehow, the inferno almost never began. It sounds like the setup for a thriller, but this was London in 1666, the very moment before the Great Fire that forever reshaped the city. The irony? The whole thing … Read more

It’s almost surreal to think that one of the most groundbreaking ideas in the history of science—natural selection—might have never seen the light of day. Charles Darwin, the man who shook the foundations of biology, almost kept his theory locked away, quietly tucked in his notebooks. Imagine a world where the phrase “survival of the … Read more

Imagine a world where you pick up your phone, dial a number, and the voice on the other end belongs to someone nobody remembers. Someone almost erased from history, overshadowed by the name that everyone now associates with the invention of the telephone. It’s wild to think about how inventions we take for granted could’ve … Read more

It’s wild to think how close the Wright brothers came to throwing in the towel after a nasty crash nearly crushed their dreams. You know the story—two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, fiddling with gliders and engines, all against the odds. But what often gets lost in the history books is the real grit behind … Read more

Imagine a world where the dissemination of ideas was shackled, where the written word wasn’t a tool of enlightenment but a weapon of control. That’s exactly what was on the verge of happening with the printing press—a marvel that we now take for granted as the bedrock of modern communication. You might think that the … Read more

Countless nights, stargazers and astronomers have gazed up at Saturn, marveling at those shimmering rings. You’d think something so iconic and spectacular would have been understood in an instant, right? Nope. For a long time, Saturn’s rings were a cosmic enigma, mistaken for something entirely different—moons. Yes, moons. It sounds almost laughable now, but that’s … Read more

Imagine living in a world where the word “dinosaur” never really caught on. Instead, every conversation about those colossal prehistoric beasts cycled through the phrase “terrible lizards.” Sounds a tad more dramatic, doesn’t it? Like something out of a B-movie monster flick, rather than the cool, almost majestic creatures we picture today. But, believe it … Read more

It’s wild to think about now, given how iconic Apollo is—the moon landing, the giant leaps, the “one small step” moment etched into collective memory. But let me throw this at you: The Apollo missions nearly got cut dead before they even really launched into history. Yeah, the same ones that defined a generation, sparked … Read more

Try to imagine a world where paper—the everyday stuff we now take for granted—was so precious, so scarce, that only the richest or most dedicated scribes could get their hands on it. It’s almost laughable today, given how we tear through pads of notebooks, print endless documents, or wastefully doodle on paper towels. But mass-producing … Read more

Imagine stumbling upon a dusty slab of rock, buried under centuries of sand and silence, without a clue that it would one day crack open the ancient world’s most stubborn code. That’s exactly what happened with the Rosetta Stone—a colossal game-changer that nearly slipped through history’s fingers before scholars could piece together its secrets. How … Read more