TV’s inventor on TV
The inventor of television, Philo Farnsworth, had only one notable television appearance.
Category: Places
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]
The dead marsh
A stand of trees dead for six hundred years stick out of the Namib Desert in the claypan called the Deadvlei.
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.
Mario’s surname
The Nintendo video game character Mario has gone through a number of name changes throughout the years – including, controversially, whether he has a surname or not.
Honorary whites
In apartheid-era South Africa, the government sometimes designated specific people or whole ethnic groups as “honorary whites.” But not everyone accepted it.
Calypso queen
From 1939 until 1977, the winner of the annual Trinidad calypso competition was crowned the Calypso King. In 1978 Calypso Rose won the title, so they had to change the name.
Statue graveyards
When politicians’ historical crimes catch up with them, what happens to their statues?
The Generalist Academy 