Chaplin and Keaton, together at last
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were two of the biggest stars of silent film. They didn’t appear in a film together until 1952, and that film didn’t win an Academy Award until 1973.
Month: November 2019
Ultimate technobabble
In 1944 a graduate student wrote a parody of technical writing that has entered engineering folklore: the turboencabulator.
International alphabet
In the late 19th century, a linguist and some language teachers concocted a writing system that could represent every meaningful sound in every spoken language in the world. It is still in use today.
Interstellar comet
Two years ago ʻOumuamua was the first interstellar object to be detected passing through our solar system. But the second interstellar object, the comet 2I/Borisov, is passing through right now.
Spacedust buster
The portable vacuum cleaner Dustbuster was built on the back of technology for the moon landings.
Uganda Hollywood
There are a lot of pseudo-Hollywoods making films: Bollywood, Dhallywood, Mollywood, and Wellywood. My favourites are the hyper-violent action films of Uganda’s Wakaliwood.
Rotten before it is ripe
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Rabelais all wrote about the medlar fruit, which must rot before it is ready to eat.
Hobo news
From 1913 to 1929, the hobos had their own newspaper.
Harem conspiracy
The Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III was murdered in a conspiracy formed by one of his harem wives that included magicians, physicians, and butlers.
First scream
The Wilhelm scream is a sound effect that has been used in hundreds of films, including Disney, Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars films. But who was Wilhelm? And why was he screaming?
Ultimate stability
The Gömböc is an object with a very specific trick: no matter how much you push it or tip it over, it will always return to the same position.
Cow opera
Leave it to the Norwegians and Swedes to take a way to call cattle in high mountain pastures and turn it into a genre of music.
Second-fastest animal
Everyone knows that the cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world – but what’s the second-fastest? And why is it so fast?
Boiling saliva
There is a point not more than 20km away from you right now where your normal body temperature is enough to boil the saliva off your tongue and the moisture out of your lungs.
The Generalist Academy 