Monthly Archive: September 2015

The gap between the British Army’s bright red coats and today’s military camouflage was bridged by an unlikely man—a naturist and painter of angels named Abbott Thayer. Thayer was fascinated by how even the most brightly colored birds blended into their surroundings, and even though he was called a fool by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, he eventually turned to designing military uniforms based on the principles he had observed. Working through the years of World War I, his work ultimately led to the Camouflage Corps and the creation of camouflage as we now know it today.

The history of art is full of lost masterpieces. Works by Picasso were burned by the Nazis, and frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci were painted over. But none of them can hold a candle to Michelangelo’s greatest lost work. In January 1494, an unseasonable snowfall occurred in Florence. At the insistence of his patron, Michelangelo went outside and sculpted a snowman. It’s been called the greatest snowman ever built.

You’re in the middle of surgery, and you know it, but you’re unable to move or to tell anyone that you know what’s going on. It’s previously been estimated to happen to 1 in 500 patients who undergo anesthesia, but now estimates have become more along the lines of 1 in 15,000. Those that it does happen to can often describe the doctors’ and nurses’ actions and the surgery in frightening detail. Many later suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that can last for the rest of their lives.

There are some things that a huge percentage of the population can agree are creepy, like dolls and clowns. While there hasn’t been much research done on what makes something creepy as opposed to terrifying, some findings suggest that it has something to do with ambiguity. When we’re not sure what someone’s motives are, we find them creepy. Among some of the professions consistently believed to be creepy are (of course) clowns. Creepy hobbies are usually those that involve watching something—even birds—perhaps one of the reasons we find dolls just so relentlessly creepy.

When America was getting ready to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s generally accepted discovery of the New World, they wanted something that would be bigger and better than the recently unveiled Eiffel Tower. A young engineer named George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. came up with the idea to take the centuries-old concept of a vertically rotating sort of people-carrier and make it steel and massive. The so-called Ferris Wheel turned an incredible profit for the first few years, but after several relocations and waning popularity, it met a heartbreaking end that involved a lot of dynamite.

Excellently preserved for about 11,000 years in a peat bog in Siberia, the Shigir Idol is the oldest wooden statue discovered on Earth. Covered with pictograms and other symbols, this mysterious statue appears to harbor a secret code. Scientists believe these Stone Age markings were meant to communicate information and may completely change our understanding of that period in history.

Chemists at the University of California have invented rewritable paper that can be written on and erased over 20 times before you have to throw it away. This paper uses ultraviolet light and redox dyes to create printed letters and images on glass or plastic film. With so much conventional paper discarded after one use, rewritable paper may help us get closer to the reality of a paperless office.