Return to the Winter Palace
In 1917 Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Three years later, more than a thousand actors, circus performers, and ballet dancers stormed it again.
Category: History
Saint Pontius Pilate
The Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox Churches hold that Pontius Pilate, the governor who condemned Jesus Christ to death, later converted to Christianity himself, and they revere Pilate as a saint.
Victorian carpet train
The Birmingham Dribbler was one of the earliest model train toys. Powered by steam, it leaked water everywhere and caused fires when it fell over.
The author of Aladdin
Neither Aladdin nor Ali Baba were in the original Thousand and One Nights (aka the Arabian Nights). The tales first appeared in the French translation, probably from a Syrian Christian storyteller named Hanna Diyab who lived in Paris from 1708 to 1710.
Eyeglasses for chickens
In the early 20th century, millions of chickens wore rose-coloured eyeglasses so they wouldn’t turn into cannibals.
TV’s inventor on TV
The inventor of television, Philo Farnsworth, had only one notable television appearance.
Largest cemetery
Wadi al-Salaam, the Valley of Peace, in Iraq is the largest cemetery in the world; more than five million people are buried there.
Daylight robbery
New Zealand entomologist George Hudson proposed modern daylight saving time so that he could catch more bugs.
The knights’ painting
The famed Baroque artist Caravaggio painted his masterwork while on the run from Rome, as an accused murderer and a Knight of Malta. When the knights expelled him from the order, they did so beneath that same painting.
Nose tomb
The Mimizuka monument in Kyoto, Japan, is full of Korean noses. It is a hanazuka, a nose tomb.
Dance notes
Music notation gives you a record of exactly how to play a piece of music. But how do you write a record of a dance?
Town under one roof
Almost the entire population of Whittier, Alaska, lives in a single building.
Word history duels
Was the word “orange” first applied to the colour or the fruit? Was “Turkey” first a bird or a country? Was “duck” first an action or an animal? “Organ” the instrument or “organ” the body part?
Solved by walking (Part 2)
During World War II, around 7000 Allied pilots and soldiers stranded behind enemy lines were smuggled back to the United Kingdom via a secret network of escape routes. [2 of 2]
Solved by walking (Part 1)
How do you solve Zeno’s paradoxes of motion? If you’re Diogenes the Cynic, you walk it off. [1 of 2]
Let the buyer beware of magic stones
The famous legal phrase caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) entered common law because of a 17th century dispute over a magic bezoar stone.
The Generalist Academy 