Christian Ivan worked for months within Blender, carefully creating a flawless 3D model of Manhattan Island, from a desolate landscape in 1600 to 2026. The final output was an 8-minute piece of work that scarcely claimed to be historically accurate. Ivan admitted to using ancient maps and atlas photographs from the New York Public Library to achieve the desired effect.
Europeans now get a direct look at the faces and landscapes that could soon fill their wallets. This week the European Central Bank unveiled ten shortlisted design proposals for the next series of euro notes and opened an online survey so the public can weigh in before a final choice arrives at the end of the year.
Photo credit: Vatican Media
Armed with two Popplio Pokémon trading cards—one holographic, one standard—Reddit user ReptileCake, a self-professed TCG enthusiast, wasn’t just there to soak in the spiritual aura of the Jubilee Year celebrations. He had a mission: to get Pope Leo XIV, the newly minted American pontiff, to sign a card featuring a water-type sea lion whose name sounds suspiciously like “Pope Leo.”
Airports have always been a bit of a hassle, with TSA security checks feeling like the ultimate stress test before you board. For nearly 20 years, the routine of kicking off your shoes, wrestling with bins, and shuffling through scanners in socks has been the American traveler’s rite of passage. But now, the Transportation Security Administration is shaking things up, scrapping the mandatory shoe-removal rule at select U.S. airports to save you time while keeping safety tight.
Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider with five years of experience, set out to test a second-hand harness in China’s Qilian Mountains. He wasn’t planning to fly—just shake out the gear at 10,000 feet above sea level. But nature had other plans. A freak updraft, known as a “cloud suck,” grabbed him and hurled him skyward, launching an ordeal that would see him soar to 28,208 feet—higher than most commercial flights and just shy of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot summit. Thanks to a camera strapped to his glider, the world got a front-row seat to his movie-like survival story.
Starbase, Texas, is now officially its own city, a big moment connected to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. On May 3, 2025, people in what used to be called Boca Chica, a small South Texas community near the Mexican border, voted strongly to become Starbase. Out of 283 eligible voters, 212 said yes and only 6 said no—a formality since most residents are SpaceX workers or their families.
No, this isn’t the plot of an upcoming action heist movie. A real-life truck loaded with dimes had an accident in Texas. On April 29, 2025, an 18-wheeler hauling about 8 million freshly minted dimes ($800,000) tipped over on U.S. Highway 287 in Alvord, Texas, roughly 50 miles north of Fort Worth.
Remember The Line? If not, it’s basically a part of Saudi Arabia’s ambitious NEOM project, a 170-km-long linear megacity under construction in the Tabuk desert, envisioned as a futuristic, zero-carbon urban hub. Things are well underway and construction is progressing nicely, or so we think.
