Science wars: Non-periodic crystals
Up until 1982, all crystals were believed to be, by definition, periodic. But then an Israeli materials scientist discovered something strange…
Author: The Generalist
I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and am curious about most things.
Featured category: The Middle East
The cursed stone city of Saudi Arabia; the largest brick arch in the world; why Lebanon’s prime minister is always Christian, its president always Sunni Muslim, and its speaker Shi’a Muslim; and the strange force of the number 40 in Abrahamic religions.
From the archives: Cars
The tiniest wee car in the world, the car with two faces, the time a Grand Prix driver crashed his car on purpose, and the problem with driving cars after the end of the world.
Twin shipwrecks
In 1864 two ships were wrecked on the same desert island. Despite sharing the island for an entire year, the crews never met and had no idea they were not alone.
Goddess of the sewers
The Cloaca Maxima in Rome is one of the world’s first sewer systems. It still works today, and with good reason: it has its own goddess.
Schools vs. Satan
Some of the first public schools in North America were founded explicitly to counteract “that old deluder, Satan.”
The pictures of Pictures at an Exhibition
Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition based on a journey through his late friend’s art exhibit – but what happened to the pictures?
Rolling uphill
The mechanical paradox is a device that seemingly defies the law of gravity: a pair of cones that roll uphill.
Featured category: Technology
The Chinese chariot that always points south, the first person killed by a robot, the invisible code produced by all modern printers and photocopiers, and the helicopter which flew 12 kilometres up… and then stopped.
From the archives: Coffee and tea
The Swedish king’s “scientific” battle between coffee and tea, the East German coffee crisis, edible tea, and coffee / tea blends.
Chimeric parents
During a child support dispute in 2002, a DNA test seemed to show that a mother was not the parent of her own biological children. The truth was stranger than anyone expected.
Space junk
A bit of the Apollo 12 rocket from 1969 is still floating around out in space. It orbits the sun – but every thirty or forty years it comes back to orbit the Earth for a while.
Endless elevator
Imagine an elevator with no doors that never stops: this is the paternoster lift.
The worst move in chess
Earlier this year, the current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen deliberately played the worst opening move possible against the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura… who then deliberately played the worst possible response.
Burning a million pounds
In 1994 the art duo K Foundation burned a million pounds in cash. They did it on purpose.
Featured category: Education & philosophy
The cowboy college, the clown college, the impossibility of proof, and the impossibility of universal categorization.
The Generalist Academy 