Dibs

If you’ve ever sat there gazing at Amazon.com’s URL while waiting for its pages to load slowly, then you’ve probably noticed that it contains the word “obidos.” Some of us were well aware that Óbidos is the name of a Portuguese town, and figured that head honcho Jeff Bezos’s ancestors might have hailed from there. But in its July issue, New Scientist reveals that the Óbidos in Amazon.com’s URL isn’t the Iberian one; it’s the one in Brazil, which in the 18th and 19th centuries was a thriving and populous seaport whose fortune was largely derived from Amazonian manatees, tubby whiskered marine mammals that were subsequently hunted to near extinction.