Menstrual extraction

Plot of shear rate as a function of the shear stress. Dilatants in green.

Temperature map of the cosmic microwave background measured by the Planck spacecraft

01The pigeons roosting inside the horn antenna were trapped and relocated twice before the engineers accepted the hiss was cosmic.
02Penzias and Wilson won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics — accidentally, while testing satellite communication equipment.
03Princeton cosmologist Robert Dicke had been building a detector specifically to find this radiation; Penzias called him first, and Dicke told his team: 'We've been scooped.'

A typical crossbow

Menstrual extraction — a handheld suction device called a Del-Em, invented by Lorraine Rothman in 1971 — lets women remove uterine contents outside any clinic. It was built from aquarium tubing and a mason jar.