Productivity down? Send for the Udarniks! The Soviet Bloc’s most committed, diligent and industrious workers. “In the terminology of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and other communist countries, an udarnik (/uːˈdɑːrnɪk/ plural udarniks or udarniki; Russian: уда́рник, IPA: [ʊˈdarnʲɪk]), also known in English as a shock worker or strike […]
This chicken did more for the world than you likely ever will. Thank you for your service, chicken. “Over the summer of 1944, Lt. Pat Glover and some of his fellow soldiers of the British 1st Airborne Division had a short debate among themselves over whether or not chickens could […]
The Fulton Skyhook was a less-than-pleasant method to travel from ground to airborne plane. It’s as impressive and terrifying as you would imagine. “The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS), also known as Skyhook, is a system used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States Air Force, and United States […]
The biggest ship in history? Made from an unusual and obscure building material? How’d that go? “Project Habakkuk or Habbakuk (spelling varies) was a plan by the British during the Second World War to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice, for use […]
This contest drew in competitors from all around the world, but its bizarre nature was destined to end in disaster. “The World Sauna Championships were an annual endurance contest held in Heinola, Finland, from 1999 to 2010. They originated from unofficial sauna-sitting competitions that resulted in a ban from a […]
There are many surviving examples from history of the “grotesque” helmet – but who made them and why? “The horned helmet of Henry VIII (more properly called the parade armet) is the surviving part of a full suit of armour made by Konrad Seusenhofer between 1511 and 1514. The armour […]
Rolling cameras stumble across the world’s loneliest man, hidden from the world for decades, but did he want to be found? “The Man of the Hole (c. 1960s – c. July 2022), or the Tanaru Indian, was an Indigenous person who lived alone in the Amazon rainforest in the Brazilian state of […]
Today we hello this is a description “In 2013, Welsh computer engineer James Howells mistakenly disposed of a laptop hard drive containing the private key for 8,000 Bitcoin in the Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales. Howells subsequently assembled a team of specialists and secured funding to excavate the site, but […]
Did you know there are machines that have been running since before any currently living person was born? They might just outlive you too… “A long-term experiment is an experimental procedure that runs through a long period of time, in order to test a hypothesis or observe a phenomenon that […]
We only know how this story ended, and it doesn’t seem to have been a happy story. “In 1836 five boys hunting for rabbits found a set of 17 miniature coffins containing small wooden figures in a cave on the crags of Arthur’s Seat. The purpose has remained a mystery […]
