Nuclear icebreakers
Arktika, the second nuclear-powered icebreaker made by the Soviet Union, was the first surface ship to reach the North Pole.
Category: The oceans
Unique bacteria
One variety of bacteria has only ever been isolated from the wreck of the RMS Titanic; another type of bacteria has only ever been found inside clean rooms used to assemble spacecraft.
Pirate democracy
In the 18th century, a new pirate crew would come together to elect a captain and quartermaster, and agree on a shared code of conduct: what we today call the pirate code.
Castaway cache
Between 1867 and 1927 the New Zealand government built, supplied, and maintained a set of supply huts on islands in the Southern Ocean so that no more castaways would starve to death while waiting for rescue.
Twin shipwrecks
In 1864 two ships were wrecked on the same desert island. Despite sharing the island for an entire year, the crews never met and had no idea they were not alone.
The gannet’s dive
Gannets have evolved some very strange adaptations that make them some of the best divers in the natural world.
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 Clipper route
The fastest sailing route around the world – the Clipper route – is also the most dangerous.
A quadrillion fish
The bristlemouth, a small ugly genus of fish found in the ocean twilight zone, is probably the most common vertebrate on the planet – estimates go as high as the quadrillions.
Portugal vs. Egypt in India
How about that time that the Egyptian Mamluks, with secret support from Venice, battled the Portuguese in the sea off the coast of India?
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 house in the depths
A significant proportion of the food in the deepest ocean falls from discarded giant larvacean houses.
Pacific aurora
In 1962 the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in outer space over Hawai’i. It caused an artificial aurora in the sky over Honolulu – and another one over Samoa, more than four thousand kilometres away.
Inaccessible island
Inaccessible Island, in the south Atlantic, is surrounded by steep sea cliffs that make landing and entering the interior nearly impossible.
Medieval clam
In 2006 scientists in Iceland caught a clam that was born eight years after Christopher Columbus sailed to America.
Tunnelling through the Atlantic
Bridges go over water. Tunnels go under water. How about the Archimedes bridge, a hypothetical tunnel design that goes through water instead?