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: Places
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.
Endless clock
A pendulum clock in Dunedin, New Zealand, has been running for 156 years without being wound.
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.
Norse Adams and Eves
In Norse mythology, Ask and Embla were the first humans of this world. After Ragnarök, Líf and Lífþrasir will be the first humans of the next world.
Intentional crash
On the 14th lap of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, racer Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed into a wall. He did it on purpose.
The Pan-American gap
You can drive from northern Alaska all the way to Tierra Del Fuego in southern Argentina… except for a 106km gap in the road between the two.
Thwarting the biopirates
India prevented people patenting their foods, traditional medicines, and yoga poses by recording them all in an online database: 34 million pages’ worth.
Canal vaulting
The Dutch sport fierljeppen is just like pole vaulting. Except you don’t run with the pole, you’re allowed to climb while you’re in the air, and you’ve vaulting over a canal.
Click languages
Clicks are used in several languages of southern and eastern Africa, most famously in Xhosa. The sounds make Xhosa songs and tongue twisters sound amazing.
The Generalist Academy 