Suffragette medals
When British suffragettes were released from prison, they got medals.
Hyperbolic crochet
In 1997, professor of mathematics and crochet enthusiast Daina Taimiņa found a way to join those two passions in order to craft durable sections of hyperbolic surfaces.
Mona Lisa, shaved
In 1919, Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee on a postcard of the Mona Lisa, renamed it with a bawdy French pun L. H. O. O. Q., and called it art. Half a century later, he framed an unmodified Mona Lisa postcard and named it L. H. O. O. Q. Shaved.
Gut parka
Up near the Arctic Circle, the best waterproof parkas are made out of guts.
The order of the Quran
The Quran contains 114 chapters, but they are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically. Instead, they go from longest to shortest.
Hepcat-orooni
Slim Gaillard had one of the more remarkable lives of the 20th century: when he wasn’t inventing words or writing songs about cement mixers he was jamming with Charlie Parker, running bootlegged whiskey in a hearse, or wowing Jack Kerouac in On the Road.
Dancing corpse
George Forster was executed for murder in 1803. Later that same day his corpse was dancing, thanks to Luigi Galvani’s nephew.
Igbo-Ukwu bronzes
In the 9th century CE, a town in what is now Nigeria produced the most masterful bronze artefacts in the world.
Hu’s on first
When Taiwanese baseball player Chin-Lung Hu hit a single in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks he fulfilled a promise made in a comedy sketch seventy-one years before.
First closed captioning
Emerson Romero was a deaf Cuban-American silent film star who lost his job when sound came to cinema – so he invented closed captioning.
Parents vs. Frank Zappa
The Parents Music Resource Center was formed to fight obscenity in popular music. The parental warning labels were their doing. Musician and notorious non-conformist Frank Zappa fought back the only way he could: with music.
The Mason Labyrinth
Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci, inspired by fabulists Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, built the largest maze in the world.
Leaderless orchestra
In 1922 violinist Lev Tseitlin founded an orchestra according to Soviet principles of collective responsibility: it had no conductor.
Winston Churchill, fashion icon
Winston Churchill invented an adult romper suit and then wore it everywhere during World War II.
The extinction of Nosferatu
The classic horror film Nosferatu was nearly lost forever because of Bram Stoker’s widow.
