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America

Stories from the United States. 27 stories, a few minutes each.

  1. The Great Molasses FloodOn January 15, 1919, a storage tank in Boston's North End collapsed and released 2.3 million gallons of molasses in a wave that reached speeds of…
  2. The Origin of OKOn March 23, 1839, the Boston Morning Post published two letters that would become the most recognized word on Earth.
  3. The Wow! SignalOn August 15, 1977, a radio telescope in Ohio detected something that still has no definitive explanation. The signal lasted 72 seconds, arrived at…
  4. Bubble Wrap Was Invented as WallpaperIn 1957, two engineers in New Jersey sealed two shower curtains together and created a sheet of plastic filled with air pockets. Alfred Fielding…
  5. Why Shopping Carts Needed Paid ActorsWhen Sylvan Goldman introduced the first shopping cart at his Humpty Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937, customers refused to use it.
  6. The Inventor of Pringles Is Buried in a Pringles CanFredric Baur spent most of his career at Procter & Gamble developing food storage technologies. He created frying oils, engineered freeze-dried ice…
  7. The Exploding Whale of Florence, OregonOn November 9, 1970, a 45-foot sperm whale washed ashore near Florence, Oregon. The carcass weighed eight tons and was already decomposing. The…
  8. How the Microwave Oven Was Accidentally InventedIn 1945, a self-taught engineer named Percy Spencer was walking through a radar testing room at Raytheon when he noticed the chocolate bar in his…
  9. Why Barns Are Painted RedThe red barns scattered across the American countryside are not painted that color for aesthetic reasons. They are red because rust was cheap.
  10. CentraliaThe underground fire beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania, has been burning since 1962. Experts estimate there is enough coal in the seams under the…
  11. How Post-it Notes Were Accidentally InventedIn 1968, Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M, was trying to develop a super-strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. He failed.
  12. The Winchester Mystery HouseSarah Winchester inherited a fortune built on rifles. Her husband William had been heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, maker of "the gun…
  13. Why We Use QWERTY KeyboardsThe layout of your keyboard was designed in the 1870s to solve a mechanical problem that no longer exists.
  14. How the Slinky Was Accidentally InventedIn 1943, Richard James was a naval engineer at the William Cramp & Sons shipyards in Philadelphia, working on a problem that had nothing to do with…
  15. Murphy's LawThere was a real Murphy. His name was Edward A. Murphy Jr., a captain in the U.S. Air Force, and the law that bears his name originated from a 1949…
  16. The Collyer BrothersIn March 1947, the New York City Police Department received an anonymous tip that someone had died inside a decaying brownstone at 2078 Fifth…
  17. Ketchup Was Once Sold as MedicineBefore ketchup became a condiment, it was a patent medicine.
  18. The Sailing Stones of Death ValleyIn a remote corner of Death Valley, rocks move by themselves.
  19. The Kentucky Meat ShowerOn March 9, 1876, chunks of meat fell from a clear sky onto a strip of land near Rankin in Bath County, Kentucky. The area affected was roughly 100…
  20. How Elevators Changed ArchitectureBefore the elevator, the most desirable floor in any building was the first.
  21. The Tree That Owns ItselfOn a quiet residential corner in Athens, Georgia, there stands a white oak tree that legally owns itself—and the eight feet of land surrounding its…
  22. Hedy LamarrHedy Lamarr was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940s. She was also the co-inventor of a frequency-hopping communication system that laid the…
  23. Nellie BlyIn November 1889, a 25-year-old journalist named Nellie Bly left New York City with a single bag and the goal of traveling around the world faster…
  24. The Boy Who Built a Nuclear ReactorIn 2008, a fourteen-year-old from Texarkana, Arkansas, named Taylor Wilson became the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion. He…
  25. The 1904 Olympic MarathonThe marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis is widely considered the most absurd sporting event in modern history. Of the 32 runners who…
  26. Bobbie the Wonder DogIn August 1923, a family from Silverton, Oregon, lost their dog while traveling in Wolcott, Indiana—roughly 2,500 miles from home. Six months…
  27. The Invention of the ZipperThe zipper took more than forty years and three inventors to get right, which is remarkable given how simple the finished product looks. Its…