1

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstäd/Seán Doran © CC NC SA

The “Great Red Spot” on the planet Jupiter is actually an enormous storm that has been swirling for centuries and is larger than Earth itself.

2

Hip-hop icon Jay-Z makes no secret of  his appreciation for Andy Warhol, embedding Warholian references in songs like Already Home (“I’m a Warhol already”) and Ain’t I (“I got Warhols on my hall’s wall”). He selected a painting from Warhol’s Rorschach series for the cover of his 2010 memoir Decoded, and even visited The Andy Warhol Museum in 2014, recreating Warhol’s reclining pose on the famous red velvet couch in the museum lobby.

3

Happy Chanukah! This December marks the 45th lighting of the National Menorah in Washington, D.C., an annual tradition begun by President Jimmy Carter.

4

A stolen van Gogh painting—The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, missing for three and a half years—was recovered in September in Amsterdam when the artwork was confidentially handed over to authorities in a blue Ikea tote bag.

5

Photo: Greg Goebel Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Coral reefs are known as “the rainforests of the sea” because of the incredible diversity of life found in and around them. They cover less than 1 percent of the ocean but support more than 25 percent of the world’s marine species.