It there a word for the habit of starting from one article or phrase or word, which takes you to another, then another, then another, and so on, until you end up learning about something completely unexpected, or finding a connection you had no idea about?
It's something I first started in middle school when I learned how to use the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I have continued ever since. It became so much easier, and so much more addictive, once I had access to the internet.
Today it lead me from an item in my Facebook feed about the original platting of Topeka KS, to the history of the Wyandot people, to this guy: [link] who it seems was a cousin of one of my ancestors on the Walker side, and a mutual cousin of this guy: [link]
The closest I have come up with is "following a trail of breadcrumbs" or "down a rabbit-hole," but neither seems quite the right fit because there wasn't a purposeful start point or a focused search or an intended goal, just jumps from topic to topic. It's all "oh, I didn't know that" or "what does that mean?" or "that's odd" or "huh, that's interesting," or sometimes just plain "how?" or "why?"