From the archives: Disney
Mickey Mouse’s first words, Mel Blanc’s exceptionally short Disney career, the 1941 Disney Strike, and the alternative names for the seven dwarfs.
Author: The Generalist
I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and am curious about most things.
Climate crisis knitting
How do you visualise climate change simply and evocatively? Well, you could knit it.
Shallowest sea
The Sea of Azov, between Ukraine and Russia, is never more than fourteen metres deep. Parts of the sea are shallow enough to wade across.
Boycotting New Zealand
In 1976 most African countries boycotted the Olympics because the games would not ban New Zealand.
The do in do-re-mi
The solfège system teaches Western music scales: do re mi fa sol la ti do. But who is “do”?
Nobody’s land
Bir Tawil is a wedge of land between Egypt and Sudan. Neither wants to claim Bir Tawil: it is one of the only unclaimed territories in the world.
Featured category: Early modern history
The suspicious origins of Wall Street’s wall, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s abandoned children, the crossroads killings of Sengoku era Japan, and Renaissance fart jokes.
From the archives: Names and the nameless
How we know Kofi Annan was born on Friday, the first named author in history, the peculiar names of American pilgrims, and the names of the biblical nameless.
The gannet’s dive
Gannets have evolved some very strange adaptations that make them some of the best divers in the natural world.
The Daylight Comet
Everyone eagerly anticipated Halley’s comet showing up in April 1910. It came as quite a surprise, then, when another brighter comet appeared just four months before: the Daylight Comet.
Islamic banking
By most modern interpretations, Islamic law forbids charging interest. So some modern banks have found ways to profitably lend money without it.
The Tristan chord
Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde set the course of 20th century classical music by keeping the audience in suspense for four hours with a single unresolved chord.
Doomsday Glacier
Thwaites Glacier, in West Antarctica, is roughly the size of Florida. This glacier alone contributes four percent of the global rise in sea levels, and if it melted completely oceans would be 65cm higher – hence its alternative name, the Doomsday Glacier.
Featured category: Africa
Uganda’s first action film, Cameroon’s lake of death, the resurrection of the extinct quagga, and the war over the (literal and physical) throne of the Ashanti Empire.
From the archives: Programming languages
Shakespeare (the programming language), the invisible programming language, programming in 282 different languages at the same time, and the programmer’s Fizz Buzz challenge.
Death of the pyramid
The pyramid of Amanishakheto stood for nearly two thousand years, until an Italian looter blew it up.