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.
Category: Places
Glowing snails
Just one species of land snail and a few species of freshwater snail glow in the dark.
Darwin crosses a line
On 17 February 1832 – at the bidding of Neptune, god of the sea – Charles Darwin was blindfolded, his face covered in paint and pitch, and he was dunked into a water bath. He had crossed the line for the first time.
The Floating Admiral and the Detection Club
In 1931 fourteen members of writers’ collective the Detection Club – including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, and Ronald Knox – wrote a mystery novel together… one chapter each.
Rigging the lottery
On December 29, 2010, Eddie Tipton won US$14.3 million from Hot Lotto. In 2015 he went to jail for it. Tipton had hacked the lottery’s random number generator.
First picture from outer space
In 1946 a modified V-2 rocket took the first picture of our planet from outer space.
Sea life in glass
19th century glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka provided natural history museums around the world with lifelike glass replicas of marine life.
The parricide’s sack
In the Roman Empire someone who killed their parent would be sewn into a sack with a live rooster, dog, monkey, and snake, and then thrown into the water. In medieval Germany, they used a cat, a dog, and a picture of a snake.
Wind on the tower
In 1978 the structural engineer of the Citigroup Center skyscraper learned of a fatal flaw in the design that could cause the tower to topple in high winds. Over the next three months a team raced to secretly repair it at night.
The tempest enigma
Around 1508 the Italian Renaissance artist Giorgione painted The Tempest. No-one knows what it means.
Churches of Antarctica
Antarctica has eight churches: four Catholic, one non-denominational, and three Eastern orthodox.
The strange death of Rudolf Diesel
The inventor of the diesel engine died at sea under mysterious and still unexplained circumstances.
Horror frog
The Central African hairy frog can break its own bones and stick them through its skin as impromptu claws.
The ten commandments of whodunits
In 1929 Ronald Knox codified the ten rules that all detective fiction should follow.
Vidal Sassoon, antifa
Vidal Sassoon was an icon of 20th century fashion – and also beat up fascists in post-WWII London.
The house in the depths
A significant proportion of the food in the deepest ocean falls from discarded giant larvacean houses.
The Generalist Academy 