The metric system is the most successful standardisation project in history. It is used by almost every country on Earth, it underpins science globally, and its units have been redefined…
These are not luxuries. Each one solves a specific and recurring problem, and most cost very little spread across the number of dishes they improve.
1. Anchovies in Oil
A…
Source: Wikipedia
There is a limit to how loud a sound can be, and it is lower than most people assume.
Sound travels as alternating regions of higher and lower air…
Source: Wikipedia
Ask anyone to picture an aircraft black box and they will picture something black. It is one of the most widely held misconceptions about aviation, and it is wrong…
Mortar is the least glamorous part of any building and frequently the part that determines whether it survives. Stone and brick last for millennia on their own; what usually fails…
Source: Wikipedia
None of these vanished dramatically. They thinned out over a decade or two, until the last practitioners were curiosities rather than colleagues. Here are fifteen.
1. Switchboard Operator
Source:…
