Here is our monthly selection of links to articles you may have missed the first time around.
Science & Medicine
Honeymooning scientist discovers unknown giant, swimming, venomous centipede by accident in Thailand
Fur. Where did it come from, and why? Is it in any way related to feathers? It isn’t quite as obvious as one might think.

While talking about fur, cats are living much longer and healthier lives than ever before. When we first had cats, some 35 years ago, our vet said that living anything past 12 was a bonus; now it is increasingly normal for them to live into their late teens and even into their early twenties. Of the four cats we’ve lost over the years their ages at death were (in order) 12, 17, 16, 18. Apparently this longevity is in large part due to better nutrition and advances in veterinary medicine.
Although largely reviled, wasps should be valued instead. There are thousands of species, each in its own niche, but all are incredibly useful and efficient predators of other creepy-crawlies. They’re also very useful pollinators. Please cherish your wasps!
Some medics have managed to create a very simple, and very cheap, test for diseases like malaria. And it can be used anywhere, although the “test strip” does need to be mailed back to the lab.
Research from the US is suggesting that older people who use marijuana are actually saving the health services as they use fewer prescription drugs, and that opioid overdose rates are down significantly. Well, you don’t say!
Sexuality
Female athletes all too often have to undergo humiliating sex-testing. Here’s the low-down on an unacceptable practice that would never be tolerated if applied to males. [Long read]
Dr Luisa Dillner in the Guardian takes a look at whether it is more hygienic to remove one’s pubic hair. Conclusion: no it is likely to be less so — but then Fashion!

Social Sciences & Business
Here’s the Guardian‘s simple, nine-point, guide to spotting dodgy statistics and seeing through the obfuscation of politicians (and others).
It may seem incredible, but everyone on this planet is your cousin. What price racism and bigotry now?
Language
We have a perfectly good four-letter word beginning with C— and it’s use is becoming more common. So why is it still taboo? Rachel Braier in the Guardian (again) has some thoughts in its praise.
Art & Literature
We’ve covered miniature carvings from pencil lead before but this miniature landscape with elephants is just stunning!
History
Returning to the topic of marijuana, it seems that our prehistoric ancestors, those founders of western civilisation, were dealing in dope.
Archaeologists are using ‘personal hygiene sticks’ excavated from a 2,000-year-old latrine pit to uncover evidence of the transmission of infectious diseases along the Silk Road.
Over the centuries western civilisation has had some strange beliefs about nudity.
It seems there are a lot of mulberry trees in London and many date from the 17th and 18th centuries. Here’s a history of a few of them.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812, and when he was a teenager London already had horseless buses.
OK, so, Londoners … how much do you really know about Trafalgar Square?
And finally on both History and London … here are a dozen things you maybe didn’t know about St James’s Park — including the pelicans.

Shock, Horror, Humour
And finally … in Iceland they have had to divert a road so they don’t disturb the Elves. I’m told the same has happened in Ireland, but I find that much less surprising!