Oldest wine
A bottle of wine on display in a German museum is more than 1600 years old. There are none older – but it probably tastes terrible.
Category: Sciences
Vital air and lifeless air
Antoine Lavoisier explained how combustion uses oxygen with a very clever experiment. Later, he lost his head.
King of Fire
French magician Ivan Chabert was famous in the 19th century CE for his feats with heat: sitting in an oven, putting melted lead in his mouth, and bathing his feet in molten metal.
Beat deafness
You’ve probably heard of tone deafness, the inability to distinguish small differences in musical tones. Some people have beat deafness: they don’t have rhythm.
Accidental 3D film
Georges Méliès accidentally created 3D film in 1903, nineteen years before the première of the first deliberate one.
Simultaneous not simultaneous
According to special relativity, something can happen both before and after something else – depending on the observer’s frame of reference.
Mad honey
Honey takes on the chemical properties of nectar gathered by bees. This fact turns out to be quite useful if you’re fighting the ancient Romans.
Largest ocean current
How do you measure ocean flow? One sverdrup equals a million cubic metres of water per second. All of the world’s rivers emptying into the ocean is 1.2 sverdrups; the largest current in the world is more than a hundred times larger.
Shattered tears
In the late 17th century CE, Prince Rupert’s drops were some of the most confusing objects known to science: an extremely tough glass teardrop that will disintegrate if its tail is even slightly damaged.
Master and Mistress of Animals
In ancient art from Europe to India a particular artistic motif frequently appears: a male or female figure grabbing two wild creatures, one in each hand. These are the Master and Mistress of Animals.
Girih tiles
The Darb-e Imam shrine in Iran contains an early and exciting example of non-periodic tiling that was only mathematically appreciated five hundred years later.
Worst stink
Organosulfur compounds include some of the sweetest and the worst smells known to science. Thioacetone is the worst of them all.
Freud’s dream
Sigmund Freud’s famous work The Interpretation of Dreams began with a single dream he had on the night of July 23, 1895.
Fork bomb
The fork bomb is a single line of code that can shut down a computer.
Twelve grapes
What is it about this time of year and the number twelve? In Spain and countries culturally connected to Spain, twelve grapes is a New Year tradition.
Highest helicopters
In 2005 a French helicopter pilot landed on top of Mount Everest. In 1972 another French pilot flew more than 12,000 metres up… and then his engine stopped.
The Generalist Academy 