Coffee crisis
Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee in the world because of a crisis in 1970s East Germany.
Category: 20th century history
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.
Dictator’s purgatory
António de Oliveira Salazar served as prime minister and dictator of Portugal for 36 years. Following a head injury he was removed from office, but no-one told him and he died two years later still believing himself in charge.
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.
Leaderless orchestra
In 1922 violinist Lev Tseitlin founded an orchestra according to Soviet principles of collective responsibility: it had no conductor.
The unpopular president
Five US presidential elections (so far) have elected presidents who received fewer votes than one of their opponents.
Winston Churchill, fashion icon
Winston Churchill invented an adult romper suit and then wore it everywhere during World War II.
Lunar garbage collection
The second mission to land on the Moon had garbage collection duty: they picked up the remains of a probe that had crashed there two years earlier.
The rise and fall and rise of British canals
The national canal network of Britain powered its Industrial Revolution, then fell into disuse, and then rose again in the late 20th century.
Death at the South Pole
In May 2000, astrophysicist Dr. Rodney Marks fell ill and died at the geographic South Pole. His cause of death is known, but the reason for his death remains a mystery.
Chain across the Baltic
In 1989 two million people formed a human chain stretching 675km from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius.
Switching sides
In the early morning of September 3, 1967, the entire country of Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right.
Early warning
To detect and map enemy planes during World War II, the British Royal Air Force employed a sophisticated network of radar stations, spotters with binoculars, stock market brokers, and a women’s auxiliary with croupier sticks.
Dreadnought vs. human torpedo
The Austrian dreadnought SMS Viribus Unitis was gifted to Yugoslavia in 1918, and then blown up by an Italian manned torpedo less than a day later.
Exiled Americans
In a bid to free up jobs after the onset of the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of people were deported from the United States to Mexico. The majority were American citizens.
Fashionable limp
Queen Alexandra had a scar and a limp – and British fashion followed suit.
The Generalist Academy 