Culinary diplomacy
A government that employs soft power aims to coerce rather than control – to build influence with other nations through non-violent means. For the government of Thailand, this approach includes restaurants.
Category: Sciences
Rocket cat
In the early 17th century, the German artillery master Franz Helm suggested attaching a bomb to the back of a cat, in the hope that it would run into a fortified town and set it on fire. This sounds like a terrible idea.
Decade potato
NASA famously freeze-dried ice cream so that astronauts could enjoy it in space. But this method of food preparation actually dates back hundreds of years: the South American chuño, or freeze-dried potato, remains edible for decades.
Green Sahara
For a period of about four thousand years, during the Neolithic Subpluvial, the Sahara was green. Rivers, lakes, trees, savanna, and pre-historic societies flourished in this wet period.
The second eradicated disease
Most people know that smallpox was the first disease that we have completely eradicated in the wild. But what was the second, and what does it have to do with Egyptian plagues, measles, and cattle?
Mathematical beauty
Can mathematics be beautiful? Mathematicians often describe proofs in aesthetic terms – they are elegant, sublime, ineffable; in a word, they are beautiful.
The first iron bridge
It’s a bad idea to make a bridge out of cast iron – it’s brittle and doesn’t handle tension well – but the very first major bridge of this type opened to traffic in 1781 and still stands today.
Iceberg battleship
Take water, mix with wood pulp, and freeze. Now it’s as strong and tough as concrete, as long as it stays frozen. So, in World War II, serious plans were afoot to use it to build battleships out of ice.
Buy the moon
“Hey buddy, you wanna buy a moon? And not just any moon, but THE Moon?” You’ve just entered the crazy world of extraterrestrial real estate.
Antifreeze wine
Remember that Simpsons episode where Bart went to France and witnessed antifreeze being added to wine? It had its basis in fact, although it got the country wrong.
Wurundjeri counting
The Aboriginal languages of southeast Australia have an ingenious counting system – there’s a physical mnemonic built directly into the language.
Hole in the head
Why would someone want a hole in the head? And how do we know that it was prehistoric surgery and not, you know, murder?
Venomous primate
Lots of spiders, snakes, and fish are venomous. This is not news to most people. Many people know that the platypus has venomous spurs… but it turns out that the platypus is not the only mammal with venom.
Chaucer’s astrolabe
Geoffrey Chaucer is best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, one of the most important works of early English literature. I guess that didn’t pay the bills, because he also wrote one of the first English technical manuals.
Submarine reindeer
The HMS Trident was a British submarine. Over the course of World War II it sunk several German ships while patrolling the North Sea. And one of its crew members was a reindeer.
Death chemist
Thomas Midgley Jr. was responsible for two of the most environmentally damaging inventions of the 20th century. An environmental historian said he “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history.”
The Generalist Academy 