A Facebooking Queen.

Video of Kim Jong-un before he was North Korea’s leader-in-waiting.

Secessionists in America.

Hope runs (and walks).

These stories and more as Michael Levy goes Around the Web.

Last month, the results of the first Census of Marine Life (2000–10) were released to the public. Among the 17 field projects constituting the census was the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program, which tracked and monitored 23 species of marine carnivore. Britannica research editor Richard Pallardy posed some questions about the project to Randy Kochevar, principal investigator and public outreach coordinator for TOPP.

The Windy City. The City of Big Shoulders. The City That Works. The Second City. Hog Butcher for the World. These are all names given to a city that has inspired songwriters from Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen (who penned the Frank Sinatra classic “My Kind of Town”) to modern troubador Sufjan Stevens.

Matt Damon, action hero? You bet: He proved it in The Bourne Identity and the other entries in what to date is a trilogy of Jason Bourne films. Strap yourself in for a bumpy but thoroughly enjoyable ride—and, courtesy of this clip, a scary one through the streets of Paris.

On November 5, Britons observe Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Roman Catholic conspirators, led by Robert Catesby, attempted to blow up the Parliament in London owing to their fury that James I had not allowed for greater religious freedom for Roman Catholics. Though Fawkes was but […]

Espionage, it’s said, is the world’s second-oldest profession. In this series, accompanying the release of the new film Fair Game, we’ll look at twelve of the best spy movies—in which someone always gets hurt, and in which the bad guys often get away with it.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871), a sequel to his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice learns from the Red Queen that, in Carroll’s surreal land of the chessboard, bordered by hedges and brooks, running is all she can do—she must run simply to stay in place. The feeling of constant movement but little progress is something we can all relate to, but evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen took it a step further, developing the Red Queen Hypothesis, in which he claimed that species are constantly adapting and undergoing natural selection because they are competing with coevolving species, trying to maintain an advantage in a world constrained by finite energy and space.

Eighty-eight years ago today, on November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the first traces of what would prove to be one of Egyptology’s most celebrated finds. The burial chamber of King Tutankhamen was discovered largely intact, making it the only tomb in the Valley of the Kings to escape plunder.

The owl in this video has an impressive [if limited] repertoire of impressions. Watch as he goes from Dirty Harry to Twiggy with a flick of his plumage.

For political junkies, the exit polls are where it’s at, and here are a few findings that help to explain yesterday’s drubbing for the Democrats, who lost control of the House of Representatives and numerous governorships and state legislatures, while narrowly holding on to power in the Senate. Elections are always about turnout, turnout, turnout, and the storyline for election 2010 was the enthusiasm gap in favor of Republicans. If the electorate looked like it did in 2008, the Democratic losses may have been minimal, though midterms for the party usually result in some losses; if turnout was typical of a midterm, particularly the 1994 midterm, then Republicans would sweep. In the event, yesterday looked more like 1994 than 2008, and here are some insights into what your fellow Americans were thinking yesterday.