There are buttons on the sleeve of almost every jacket, and on almost every jacket they do not do anything.
They cannot be undone, because on most garments there are…
For most of the twentieth century, small birds opened milk bottles.
They would land on a bottle left on a doorstep, peck or tear through the foil cap, and drink…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1960 a zoo was a civic amenity that nobody questioned, stocked by buying animals from dealers who caught them in the wild, and housed in tiled rooms…
The paper clip is one of the few objects in daily use that is genuinely anonymous. The shape everybody pictures - the double oval of bent wire - is called…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The tin can was patented in 1810. The first practical can opener appeared in the late 1850s. For most of fifty years, people bought food sealed in metal…
Everybody who has ever assembled furniture has had a cross-head screwdriver ride up and out of the screw, chewing the head on the way. It is one of the most…