Igbo-Ukwu bronzes
In the 9th century CE, a town in what is now Nigeria produced the most masterful bronze artefacts in the world.
Category: Arts & recreation
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.
Living brooch
Tourists in Mexico can buy brooches made of bejewelled ironclad beetles. Still living bejewelled ironclad beetles.
Regicide at the masquerade
King Gustav III of Sweden was warned of assassins at his masquerade ball. He went anyway.
Memory culture
Through sophisticated mnemonics and error-checking mechanisms the Vedas, the canonical religious texts of Hinduism, have been transmitted orally for three and a half thousand years with shocking precision in both word and sound.
Gilligan’s Grace
The hymn Amazing Grace was set to its current tune more than fifty years after it was written. Because it was written in common metre, it can also be sung to Mack the Knife, Sympathy for the Devil, the Pokemon theme, and the Gilligan’s Island theme.
American gibberish
What does an American accent sound like to an Italian? The Italian song Prisencolinensinainciusol will show you.
Da Vinci and Machiavelli steal a river
Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli once teamed up to steal the Arno river.
Ancient dioramas
We all know that Egyptian tombs contained models of servants, boats, and animals to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. But they sometimes also contained model gardens, granaries, bakeries, breweries, stables, and slaughterhouses.
Crossed letters
Lewis Carroll’s ninth rule of letter writing was to never cross your letters. But many people did it anyway.
The Generalist Academy 