First author
The first author whose name we know was Enheduanna. Daughter of Sargon the Great, she wrote religious hymns, so she can also lay claim to being the first named poet in history.
Recent Posts
Tunnelling through the Atlantic
Bridges go over water. Tunnels go under water. How about the Archimedes bridge, a hypothetical tunnel design that goes through water instead?
Samba volleyball with a trampoline
Okay, here’s a hybrid sport for you: combine volleyball, football, and gymnastics. And (why not) throw in a trampoline and make the referee double as the DJ.
Wall Street’s wall
Wall Street in New York City is named after one of two things: the Walloons, early Dutch settlers… or a literal wall to defend against the Algonquian peoples angry over the slaughter of 120 local Weckquaesgeek.
Black bones
Some breeds of chicken – like the Kadaknath of India and the Ayam Cemani of Indonesia – are extremely black. Their feathers, beaks, skin, meat, internal organs, and even bones are black.
All Greek to me
The longest word in Ancient Greek literature comes from Aristophanes’ comic play Assemblywomen. It is 78 syllables long.
A thousand flavours
The Heladería Coromoto ice cream parlour in Merida, Venezuela offers nearly a thousand different flavours of ice cream, including avocado, garlic, onion, sweetcorn, and crab.
Fatal insomnia
You can’t die from lack of sleep. Except when a genetic mutation prevents you from sleeping at all.
High pool
In Singapore there is a cantilevered platform resting on top of three skyscrapers. And on top of that platform is an infinity pool.
The equation of time
When a day is longer or shorter than 24 hours you need to use the equation of time to bring it back into sync.
Hidden rules of sounds
In English no words begin with the consonant cluster /kstr/, but it does appear in the middle of “extra.” In contrast, Slovak can begin a word with “žblnkn” and Hawaiian never begins a word with more than one consonant. Why?
Right of acorns
In the Domesday Book of 1086 the economic value of forests is not measured in the amount of wood they could provide, but in the amount of pigs they could feed.
The second trip to the moon
An iconic image of silent film: a space ship approaches the face in the moon and crashes into its… mouth? In 1908 a competitor made a nearly identical shot-for-shot remake of Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon.
Ghost in the painting
Artists sometimes change or improve paintings by painting over old versions. Through careful examination or special imaging, we can sometimes see these ghosts of lost art again.
The long winter
In Norse mythology Fimbulwinter is the great winter immediately preceding Ragnarök. It may have been inspired by the horrifying real-life events of 536 CE.
Invisible programming
The esoteric programming language Whitespace uses only three characters: tabs, spaces, and line breaks. That makes it effectively invisible to the naked eye.
The Generalist Academy 