Yesterday my brother challenged us to fold a piece of paper in half eight times, claiming it couldn’t be done, and we could not. We tried tissue paper, we tried large newsprint, but seven folds was all we could manage. I remembered a recent story about a high school girl who worked out the math for the problem, and managed twelve folds, by starting with a strip of paper a mile long or something: How To Fold Paper in Half Twelve Times. They don’t give details on the paper used, and the photo of the eleventh fold doesn’t look to me like she’ll manage a twelfth with it, but she exceeded eight for sure.