Flying submarine
In the mid-20th century, several countries had plans to construct a flying submarine.
Category: North & Central America
Red alert at the circus
If you’re at a circus and you hear the band play “The Stars and Stripes Forever” – you better run.
Houdini and Lovecraft and the mummies
The escape artist Harry Houdini and the author H. P. Lovecraft collaborated on a “true” Egyptian horror story.
Quantum crossword
Most crosswords have a single correct solution. A quantum crossword has several.
Underwater circumnavigation
The USS Triton was the first submarine to circumnavigate the world completely underwater. It was spotted just once, by a Filipino fisherman.
The Church of One Tree
The Church of One Tree in Santa Rosa, California, was built in 1873 out of a single giant redwood tree.
For President: Convict No. 9653
Eugene Debs received more than 900,000 votes in the 1920 American presidential election – while in prison for sedition.
Rachmaninoff’s All by Myself
The Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff has a songwriter credit for the power ballad “All by Myself.”
Book of lonely vowels
Christian Bök’s 2001 anthology Eunoia contains five chapters that each use just one of the five vowels.
Mary and the lamb
Sarah Josepha Hale published “Mary had a Little Lamb” in 1830. Forty-six years later, Mary Tyler claimed to be the original Mary.
Little Women and the mummy’s curse
At the same time she was writing the novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott also wrote one of the first stories to feature an Egyptian mummy’s curse.
The Dissent Channel
Since 1971, US diplomats and State Department workers who disagree with government policy can communicate their opposition through the Dissent Channel.
January weather
According to Las Cabañuelas lore, you can predict the weather for the whole year based on the weather of each day in January.
Time zone tripoints
At several points around the world, three time zones meet.
The shadow of the volcano
What do the bicycle, Marmite, Mormonism, and Frankenstein have in common? A volcano in Indonesia.
Log guns
Take a log, paint it black, and make sure your enemy can see it. The “quaker guns” were a key piece of strategic deception in the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars.