Pride vs. the cyclone
Three American and three German warships spent months in a standoff in Apia Harbour in Samoa. And then a cyclone hit.
Category: History
Da Vinci and Machiavelli steal a river
Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli once teamed up to steal the Arno river.
Telepathic snail mail
In 1850 Jacques-Toussaint Benoît claimed to be able to send messages via telepathically linked snails. He could not.
Infinite pi
The Indian mathematician Mādhava was the first to use infinite series to calculate pi, some time around 1400 CE.
Medieval clam
In 2006 scientists in Iceland caught a clam that was born eight years after Christopher Columbus sailed to America.
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.
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.
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.
The biter bit
Sigurd the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, died in 892 CE when he was bitten by the severed head of his foe, Máelbrigte the Bucktoothed.
Bards of Mali
The Epic of Sundiata, describing the rise of the first ruler of the Mali Empire, was passed down by griots – West African bards – for over six hundred years before it was written down.
Pi approximation
The closest approximation of Pi for nearly a thousand years was calculated by Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi around 480 CE, using an algorithm developed by Liu Hui.
Telegraph code
T CODE CD CNDNS LG MSGS TO SV MON WN SDG TM BI CBL.
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.
Largest brick arch
Tāq Kasrā, one of the last surviving buildings of the ancient Sasanian Empire’s capital city, has the largest unreinforced brick arch in the world.
Emperor auction
Didius Julianus won the Roman Empire in an auction held by the Praetorian Guard in 193 CE.
The Generalist Academy 