Animal helmets
The Vikings may not have worn horned helmets, but the ancient Greeks had helmets covered in boar tusks and the Dayak of Borneo had helmets covered in fish or pangolin scales.
Category: Military
Jet vs. airport terminal
The new terminal building of Ottowa’s international airport was supposed to open in 1959. After one pass by a US air force jet the day before the opening ceremony, it could not open until 1960.
Fart battle
The He-Gassen scroll of Edo period Japan depicts an epic battle… of farts.
Walls within walls within walls
Julius Caesar won the Siege of Alesia with a military tactic known as investment: build walls around the besieged settlement’s own walls, and and then build another layer of walls around those ones.
Football war
In 1969, Honduras and El Salvador went to war while their football teams faced off in a World Cup qualifier.
Flying submarine
In the mid-20th century, several countries had plans to construct a flying submarine.
Mercenary despot of the Comoros
The French mercenary Bob Denard overthrew the government of the Comoros four times: in 1975, 1978, 1989, and 1995.
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 lost bell of Shwedagon Pagoda
A Portuguese mercenary stole the largest working bell in history from Shwedagon Pagoda, and then lost it in the waters of the Yangon River.
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?
Eight years on the Suez Canal
In 1967, fifteen ships and their crews were trapped on the Suez Canal because of the Six-Day War. The ships would remain there for the next eight years.
Log guns
Take a log, paint it black, and make sure your enemy can see it. The “quaker guns” were a key piece of strategic deception in the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
First picture from outer space
In 1946 a modified V-2 rocket took the first picture of our planet from outer space.
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.
Vidal Sassoon, antifa
Vidal Sassoon was an icon of 20th century fashion – and also beat up fascists in post-WWII London.