Featured category: Southeast Asia
The infinity pool on top of three Singaporean skyscrapers, the ingenious Indonesian method for building motorway flyovers, the water puppets of Vietnam, and a very slow venomous primate.
Month: November 2021
From the archives: Cash
Hungary’s one hundred quintillion banknote, the odd denominations of Burma’s numerology money, Britain’s hundred million pound banknote, and money origami.
Cosmic sound
According to our understanding of the Big Bang, “cosmic sound” is older than neutral hydrogen. We can still spot its echoes today.
The author of Aladdin
Neither Aladdin nor Ali Baba were in the original Thousand and One Nights (aka the Arabian Nights). The tales first appeared in the French translation, probably from a Syrian Christian storyteller named Hanna Diyab who lived in Paris from 1708 to 1710.
Eyeglasses for chickens
In the early 20th century, millions of chickens wore rose-coloured eyeglasses so they wouldn’t turn into cannibals.
TV’s inventor on TV
The inventor of television, Philo Farnsworth, had only one notable television appearance.
Hybrids of lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards
You’ve probably heard of the liger and the tigon, offspring of a lion and a tiger together. But what about tiguars, tigards, liguars, lipards, jaggers, jaglions, jagupards, leogers, leopons, and leguars?
Featured category: Food & agriculture
The weeds that mimicked crops so much they became crops themselves, the culinary diplomacy of Thailand, the ice cream parlour of a thousand flavours, and the reason Hershey’s chocolate tastes like vomit.
From the archives: Everyday codes
Deciphering the codes of everyday life: car tyre codes, telegraph abbreviations, the hazardous substance Fire Diamond, and North American train whistle codes.
Largest cemetery
Wadi al-Salaam, the Valley of Peace, in Iraq is the largest cemetery in the world; more than five million people are buried there.
Will Rogers paradox
Someone (not Will Rogers) once joked that “When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, they raised the average intelligence level in both states.” This quirk of statistics has some surprising implications for cancer survival rates.
Daylight robbery
New Zealand entomologist George Hudson proposed modern daylight saving time so that he could catch more bugs.
The knights’ painting
The famed Baroque artist Caravaggio painted his masterwork while on the run from Rome, as an accused murderer and a Knight of Malta. When the knights expelled him from the order, they did so beneath that same painting.
Nose tomb
The Mimizuka monument in Kyoto, Japan, is full of Korean noses. It is a hanazuka, a nose tomb.
The Generalist Academy 