Every week for the past year, I’ve curated the most fascinating stories every week in my weekly email Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter. This year the newsletter was honored in the prestigious Webby awards too. It’s always interesting for me which stories seem to resonate most with readers based on how many email responses I get, how frequently a story is shared on social media and how frequently the link to the full story is clicked. Based on this combination of quantitative and qualitative data, here is a partial list of some of the most popular stories of the year, based on what my readers shared (scroll down to read the full stories):

1. The Surprising Forgotten Medieval Habit of “Two Sleeps”
2. Does Science Need To Be Dumbed-Down To Make It Meaningful?
3. Why Humans Learned To Laugh (and Naming the Uranus Mission)
4. The Predictable Failure of Unlimited Vacation Policy
5. The Backstory of the Bookshelf That Converts Into a Coffin
6. Is It Ever Possible to Avoid Buying More Stuff For Your Stuff?
7. The Science Is In. Wearing Your Shoes In the House Is Disgusting.
8. Oslo’s Secret Future Library Holds Books To Be Published In 100 Years
9. Why Do So Many Media Personalities Use Our Hate As A Popularity Test?
10. Why I Just Became A Noble Citizen of the Micronation of Ladonia

Note – Some of the most popular links are to stories that have photo collections such as the winners for the World Press Photo collection to TIME magazine’s best photos of the year (Read more...)