Indian flag monopoly
Every Indian flag in India is made in one small south Indian village.
Category: Fashion & design
Blanket heater table
The Japanese kotatsu combines a table, a heater, and a layer of comfortable blankets.
First piggy bank
The origins of the modern piggy bank are lost to history, but the oldest extant piggy bank comes from 12th century CE Java.
Rational dress
The Rational Dress Society, founded in 1881, fought the strictures of the Victorian corset, crinoline, and high heels.
Animal helmets
The Vikings may not have worn horned helmets, but the ancient Greeks had helmets covered in boar tusks and the Dayak of Borneo had helmets covered in fish or pangolin scales.
Climate crisis knitting
How do you visualise climate change simply and evocatively? Well, you could knit it.
Jean Shrimpton’s white dress
When Jean Shrimpton walked out onto Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia, in 1965, she didn’t know she was about to make fashion history.
The lost bell of Shwedagon Pagoda
A Portuguese mercenary stole the largest working bell in history from Shwedagon Pagoda, and then lost it in the waters of the Yangon River.
Kiln cones
In a kiln, a set of three drooping cones can monitor the effects of temperature on the pottery items being fired.
Vidal Sassoon, antifa
Vidal Sassoon was an icon of 20th century fashion – and also beat up fascists in post-WWII London.
Oldest carpet
A prehistoric Scythian tomb in Siberia contained the oldest surviving carpet in the world.
Relic souvenirs
In early Christian tradition, the power of saints’ relics could be transferred from object to object by a simple touch.
Rose engine lathe
What do the first postage stamps, Fabergé eggs, and watch backs have in common? Rose engine lathes.
Mystery watch
The 19th century mystery watch was a genuine engineering puzzle: a pocket watch whose face was entirely transparent.
The savages of the Pacific
In 1806 the French artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet premiered one of the first multi-panel artistic wallpapers: it depicted a romanticised and colonial panorama of explorations in the South Pacific.
Suffragette medals
When British suffragettes were released from prison, they got medals.