In 2023’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the latest entry in the iconic adventure film series, everyone’s favourite swashbuckling archaeologist/grave robber hunts after the titular dial, a mechanism invented by Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes to predict the appearance of fissures in time, allowing the user to travel between the present and the past…because,… Read More »
On February 7, 1984, 370 kilometres above the earth, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II floated into the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Challenger and prepared to make history. Strapped to his back was a bulky device resembling a futuristic chair, known as the Manned Maneuvering Unit or MMU. As he gently touched the joysticks… Read More »
In the 2008 film Wanted, mild-mannered office worker Wesley Gibson, played by James McAvoy, is inducted into a secret group of elite assassins known as The Fraternity, who keep the world in balance by eliminating those who threaten its safety. Among the superhuman skills Wesley learns is the ability to “curve” bullets by swinging his… Read More »
On the evening of August 21, 1986, Ephraim Che, a farmer from the highlands of northwest Cameroon, heard a great rumbling in the distance like rolling thunder. Emerging from his hut, he peered down the mountain to the moonlit waters of Lake Nyos, a small but deep body of water nestled in the crater of… Read More »
If you visit Pier 13 at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, you will find two very different historic cargo ships. One is the SS John W. Brown, one of nearly 3,000 cheap, quick-to-produce “Liberty Ships” built to haul cargo during the Second World War. The other, by contrast, is one of a kind.… Read More »
There have been no small number of rather bizarre accidents from humans humaning, everything from that time the City of Boston almost literally drowned in molasses to how humans drilling a 14 inch hole accidentally created a 1,300-foot deep saltwater lake out of a formerly 10-Foot deep freshwater one (more on this hilarious event in… Read More »
While often overlooked, unless you drive an electric car, there is likely a seemingly humble metal can attached to your exhaust pipe that is an absolutely incredible piece of chemical engineering, a product of a herculean but now largely-forgotten feat of politics and industrial research and development that some scholars have compared to the Apollo… Read More »
Despite all the veneration we often throw Ancient Rome’s way, the truth is the Ancient Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves, with an estimated 35% of the total population of that society in the 1st century BCE comprised of slaves. So how did slavery start in this civilization and what was it… Read More »
On January 1, 1959, troops of the revolutionary 26th of July Movement marched into the Cuban capital of Havana, toppling the American-backed government of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Two weeks later, the leader of the revolution, former lawyer Fidel Castro, was sworn in as Prime Minister. Almost immediately, Castro began implementing a program of sweeping socialist… Read More »
From the dawn of history we humans have been obsessed with measurement, striving to gauge, rank, and quantify every part of our world from the tallest mountain to the tiniest grain of sand. It is an obsession which led to the development of the precise mathematics and science which underpin our modern world. But one… Read More »
In a fenced-off field near Langdon, North Dakota stands a strange and enigmatic object: a 24-metre high truncated concrete pyramid, looming over the prairie. Scattered around its base are other strange forms cast in concrete and steel, and a cluster of low, prefabricated buildings, now empty and slowly rusting away. These are the remains of… Read More »