The savages of the Pacific
In 1806 the French artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet premiered one of the first multi-panel artistic wallpapers: it depicted a romanticised and colonial panorama of explorations in the South Pacific.
Category: Places
Buddhist martyr
Buddhism was made the state religion of Silla (a kingdom in early Korea) because a court official planned his own martyrdom.
Science wars: The island universe
April 26, 1920, two astronomers publicly debated the structure of the cosmos. Is the Milky Way everything there is, or is it just one of many “island” universes?
Pig War
In 1859 a dispute over a single pig led to a military standoff between the United States and the United Kingdom. The conflict would eventually draw in George Pickett (of Pickett’s Charge), Henry Robert (of Robert’s Rules of Order) and Kaiser Wilhelm I.
TV hijacking
One Sunday in 1987, two Chicago TV broadcasts were hijacked by someone with a Max Headroom mask, a voice modulator, and an odd sense of humour. He was never caught.
Phasing pianos
Steve Reich’s piece Piano Phase involves two pianos playing the same melody simultaneously at slightly different speeds.
Hobo doctor
In the early 20th century, Ben Reitman was a hobo, a doctor, and a doctor for hobos.
Smallest skyscraper
In 1919, a construction firm led by J. D. McMahon got investors to commit huge amounts of money for a skyscraper in Wichita Falls, Texas. They thought it would be 480 feet high… but they got 480 inches instead.
Real estate frog
The Emei music frog of China advertises the size and suitability of their underground burrow through the acoustic properties of their croaks.
Reef of heaven
Between 1200 and 1500 CE, the city of Nan Madol was built on a series of artificial islands and a coral reef in what is now eastern Micronesia.
Pope vs. music
In 1324, Pope John XXII issued a papal bull condemning the excesses of modern popular music.
Suffragette medals
When British suffragettes were released from prison, they got medals.
Fewest chromosomes and fatherless ants
The jack jumper ant of south-eastern Australia has a nasty sting, can jump five times its own body length, and has the fewest chromosomes of any living thing.
Mona Lisa, shaved
In 1919, Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee on a postcard of the Mona Lisa, renamed it with a bawdy French pun L. H. O. O. Q., and called it art. Half a century later, he framed an unmodified Mona Lisa postcard and named it L. H. O. O. Q. Shaved.
Gut parka
Up near the Arctic Circle, the best waterproof parkas are made out of guts.
A fake place becomes real
Cartographers will sometimes insert fake locations in order to catch plagiarism of their maps. But sometimes those fake locations then become real.
The Generalist Academy 