Category: Website

The very first spaghetti junction; the borders where you must switch which side of the road you drive on; the countries that switched which side of the road everyone drove on; and the arterial road that crosses an airport runway.

The fastest objects ever made by humans; the water speed record that has stood for forty-four years; the fastest premiere-to-clip-show in TV history; and the fastest-moving plant in the world.

Gorgeous glass replicas of sea life; nearly indestructible glass teardrops; the 19th century princess who believed she had swallowed a glass piano; and the action film prop you can eat.

The farcical elections of North Korea; the electoral candidate who was the only one on the ballot, won a quarter of a million votes, and still lost; the electoral error caused by cosmic rays; and the ridiculously circuitous election of the Doge of Venice.

The oldest drinkable wine in the world; the oldest living rose in the world; why we had to leave the Earth to find the oldest Earth rock; and the oldest river that still flows.

The Quran contains several mysterious letters, no-one is quite sure why; the Islamic concept of moderation, expressed as “best, middle, centred, balanced”; the order of chapters in the Quran; and the cats of Islam.

The bioluminescent suction shark that’s one third liver; the falling houses feeding the deep; an unexplained underwater fossil that has been around for half a billion years; and the quadrillion bristlemouths of the mesopelagic twilight zone.

The rise and fall and rise of the British canal; Dutch canal vaulting; the proposed canal to cut off a country; and the fifteen ships trapped on the Suez Canal for eight years.

The frog that breaks its own bones to use as claws; the frogs that raised tadpoles in their stomachs; the musical frog that works in real estate advertising; and the flattest toad in the world.

One of the few female artists of the Italian Renaissance; the Mona Lisa with and without a moustache; why the Sistine Chapel ceiling has green shadows; and the Inquisition vs. a Last Supper painting with drunken Germans, dogs, parrots, and dwarfs.