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.
Category: Sciences
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.
Mathematical coincidence
A billionth of a century is approximately pi seconds. The diameter of the Earth is roughly half a billion inches.
Doomsday device
In 1950 Leo Szilard warned the world that a single device capable of annihilating all life on Earth was theoretically possible.
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 house in the depths
A significant proportion of the food in the deepest ocean falls from discarded giant larvacean houses.
The birthday paradox
Put 70 people in a room and there’s a 99.9% chance that two of them share a birthday. Why?
Sir doctor sheriff grandmaster dean Nariman
Temulji Bhicaji Nariman was a knight, a dean, a plague doctor, a sheriff, a grandmaster, and his marriage lasted longer than almost any other in recorded history.
Four-legged woman
Myrtle Corbin was born with four legs.
Biblical and Shakespeare gardens
Some gardens grow only the plants mentioned in either the Bible or the works of Shakespeare.
Fake Moon dust
How do you test Moon landers, or lunar excavation and construction processes? Get some fake moon dust, of course.
Shot by Australia’s first camel
The first camel in Australia shot its owner, the English explorer John Horrocks.
Oldest rose
The oldest living rose bush has been growing on the side of Hildesheim Cathedral for several hundred years.
Prehistoric mathematics
The Ishango bone, found in what is today part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and dating back 20,000 years, may contain some of the earliest evidence of mathematical thought.
Rose engine lathe
What do the first postage stamps, Fabergé eggs, and watch backs have in common? Rose engine lathes.
The Generalist Academy 