Whales and dolphins sleep with only half of their brain at a time.

Whales and dolphins are mammals, and that means they breathe air into lungs just like we do. So without water-breathing evolutionary advantages like gills, how do whales and dolphins sleep without drowning? One big benefit is that marine mammals are much better at holding their breath underwater than us primates. Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus), for example, can go 90 minutes without having to come up for air. But over millions of years, whales and dolphins have also developed a few strategies for catching some z’s on the go. Young cetaceans, for example, will swim alongside their mothers and rest within her slipstream. This gives calves time to develop sleeping strategies as well as put on enough blubber to keep them afloat. As adults, whales and dolphins will sleep with half of their brain still operating at a low level of alertness. The other half, along with the opposite eye, is completely asleep. This helps a cetacean keep one eye out for predators, while also periodically breaching the water’s surface to take in gulps of air through its blowhole.

Christmas was once banned in Massachusetts.
When early English settlers arrived in Virginia in 1607, they brought with them a reverence for their European Christmas traditions. Though their celebrations didn’t match those back home — the hardships of colonial life didn’t allow much fanfare — the Virginia colonists still considered Christmas a sacred and restful day. In Massachusetts, however, following England’s lead during the English Civil Wars, the Puritans outright banned Christmas in 1659. The extreme Protestants believed the holiday had no biblical basis and denounced its pagan traditions; the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony fined anyone caught celebrating the holiday five shillings. Though England lifted its ban with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Massachusetts enforced its law until 1681. Even after that, the holiday remained controversial in New England for decades. It wasn’t until 1856 that Christmas officially became a public holiday in the Bay State.

How you can tell when someone's watching you.

Humans can tell when someone is watching them.
“I feel like someone is watching me” is a classic horror film trope, but the idea also taps into a biological fact: Humans are good at sensing when someone is looking at them. While some label this gut feeling a kind of sixth sense, it’s really a biological phenomenon known as gaze detection, caused by a complex neural network in our brain. This detection system rests largely in our peripheral vision; the sense dissipates quickly when someone turns only a few degrees away from us. Because some 10 regions of the brain are involved with human vision, and little is known about gaze detection generally, scientists haven’t pinpointed what’s controlling this seemingly uncanny ability — although researchers have detected a dedicated group of gaze-detecting neurons in macaque monkeys.

Gaze detection is particularly interesting in humans because our eyes are unlike any other in the animal kingdom. The area around the pupil, known as the sclera, is very prominent and white, which makes it easier to discern in what direction someone is looking. The overall theory as to why humans are so good at gaze detection boils down to the evolutionary advantage of cooperation. Simply put, humans are social creatures, and the detection of subtle eye movements helps us work with others while also helping us avoid potential threats. But because of the evolutionary importance of knowing when someone is looking at you, our brains tend to oversignal that someone is staring at us, when they’re really not. So if you’re ever feeling a bit paranoid, blame your brain.

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