Icebox

Icebox used in cafés of Paris in the late 1800s

Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…

Langton's ant after 11,000 steps. A red pixel shows the ant's location.

Families paid the iceman daily for a 25-pound block of lake-harvested ice just to keep butter solid and milk unturned. When ice didn't arrive, the food rotted by afternoon.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

Polish salt miners 64 meters underground carved a Gothic cathedral — vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, bas-relief altarpieces — entirely from salt over 700 years. Mass is still held there; the air tastes of the walls.

Cerberus

Greeks slipped honey cakes called meli into the mouths of their dead to bribe Cerberus at the underworld gate. Virgil's Aeneas carries one. The three-headed dog's middle head was considered the most dangerous.

Joe Hayashi

Joe Hayashi was shot twice and kept fighting, killing 11 Germans and destroying two gun positions in a single action near Tendola, Italy, 1945. He died days later. His Distinguished Service Cross sat in a drawer for 55 years.

Langton's ant

Langton's Ant flips squares black or white under two rules. For 10,000 steps it scrambles randomly. Then, without warning, it locks into a diagonal highway and marches forever. Nobody has proved why.

We've had abortions!

In April 1971, the German magazine 'Stern' ran a cover with 374 women — including Romy Schneider and Senta Berger — who signed 'Wir haben abgetrieben!': 'We have had abortions.' The law they confessed to breaking carried a prison sentence.

Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE)

Titus's legions breached Jerusalem in 70 CE and burned the Second Temple — a structure housing the Menorah and the Ark's last relics — despite orders to preserve it. One million people died in the siege.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood co-invented the LongPen — a robotic signing device transmitting her pen strokes in real time from anywhere on earth — so she could "be" at book signings without flying. She filed the patent in 2004 and the company still operates.

Liu Ziye

Liu Ziye forced his own aunts into his imperial harem, declared them imperial concubines, then was stabbed to death by a palace servant at sixteen — his ministers had arranged the blade.