The first spaghetti junction
What do you get when you cross three motorways, two railway lines, three canals, and two rivers? The first junction to be called spaghetti.
Camera pill
There’s a pill you can swallow with a little camera inside. It’s great for identifying gastrointestinal damage, and usually comes out the other end in a day or two. Usually.
Can’t opener
The first tin cans of food were manufactured around 1813. The first can openers arrived more than thirty years later.
Light bulb conspiracy
In 1925, staff from Osram, General Electric, Philips, and others met in Switzerland to artificially fix the life expectancy of light bulbs worldwide. For the next 14 years, the Phoebus cartel controlled the world supply of light.
Smelly code
In computer programming, how do you know when a program is going bad? First, it begins to smell.
Metric martians
The Mars Climate Orbiter space probe cost 327 million US dollars – and it crashed because of a mix-up between the metric and imperial systems.
Tiniest car
The Peel P50, manufactured in the Isle of Man, is the smallest car ever to go into mass production. It’s really, really small.
The queen’s duck
Have you ever had a boss who just had to contribute to your project in order to prove their worth? There’s an easy way to counteract that: just add a duck.
Cosmic election
The universe is full of cosmic rays, blasted out from neighbouring galaxies, supernovae, and the like. In 2003, they nearly changed the outcome of a local Belgian election.
Victorian 360-degree film
The first 360-degree film was recorded for the 1900 Paris Exposition. It recreated the experience of rising in a hot air balloon, but the film probably never played for a real audience because of technical difficulties.
Since sliced bread
We all know that chocolate chip cookies are the best thing since sliced bread. But what is older than sliced bread? Well, the list is long: Betty White. Sidney Poitier. The ex-pope.
Inflatable tanks
World War II saw the first widespread use of inflatable tanks. The whole point of a tank is protective armour. Why would you want to make an inflatable one?
Worse is better
Is it better for software to be simple or consistent? Richard P. Gabriel suggested that simplicity was the most important aspect of software design, more than consistency, correctness, or completeness. He called it “worse is better.”
Death by robot
January 25, 1979: the day that the robot uprising began. Well, not precisely, but that day saw the first human fatality caused by a robot. It would not be the last.
Roving bridge
Horse-drawn canal boats made up the early British Industrial Revolution’s transportation network. But they presented a tough problem: how to get a horse from one bank of a canal to another, without disconnecting the rope?
