Medieval Medicine: A 1,000-year-old onion and garlic salve kills modern bacterial superbugs

Long before radar revolutionized air defense, enormous acoustic mirrors and specialized sound locators stood as the first line of defense against enemy aircraft. Designed as giant “ears,” these structures amplified distant engine noises, allowing operators to detect incoming planes by sound alone. Dive into the intriguing world of these pioneering listening devices, their operation, limitations, and enduring legacy in military history.

In 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class. On the board were two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics written as an example by his professor. Dantzig mistook the examples for homework assignments. He solved the “unsolved” problems and submitted the homework to his professor a few days later. His solutions earned him a doctorate.

William James Sidis, who was only 11 years old when he enrolled in Hardvard, finished his primary and secondary schooling in less than a year. He knew eight foreign languages by the age of eight and even invented his own language, "vedergood."

Anne Oakley was such a good shooter that she could split a playing card help edge-on, hit dimes thrown into the air, shoot cigarette from her husband's lips, and pierce a playing card thrown into the air before it hit the ground.

In 1887, Susanna Salter became the first female mayor in the United States, elected in Argonia, Kansas. Her nomination was initially a prank by men opposing women in politics. However, she won by a landslide and served effectively, inspiring the women’s suffrage movement and breaking barriers for women in leadership.

A Greek prime minister in 1830’s tried to spread the potato in Greece but people weren’t interested so he put armed guards in front of shipments of potatoes so people would think they were important. People later started stealing these potatoes a lot which spread the crop to all of Greece.

Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.

The German town of Nördlingen is embedded with 72,000 tons of microscopic diamonds. About 15 million years ago, a meteorite hit this region, and the impact created a massive depression and formed rocks containing diamonds, glass, and crystals. The town was built in the impact crater sometime around 898 CE.

Hundreds of young women worked in clock factories during World War I, painting watch dials with luminous radium paint. The company lied about the risk of radiation, claiming there was no danger, which resulted in the death of the young women.

An airplane crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. Among other damage, plane parts severed the cables of an elevator and the woman inside fell over 70 stories. She lived and holds the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

During WWII, a German captain and an engineer flushed the submarine's high-tech toilet incorrectly, causing the vessel to rapidly fill with water. British planes patrolling the sea attacked them as the submarine was brought to the surface. While many members of the crew were killed in the attack, the captain escaped!

At the 1912 Olympics, a marathon runner quit and went home to Japan without telling officials and was considered a missing person in Sweden for 50 years. In 1966, he was invited to complete the marathon. His time: 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20.379 seconds.

In the bustling vaudeville scene of early 20th century New York, a mysterious performer known as "Sober Sue" captured public imagination not for jokes or songs, but for her unshakable stoicism—she never smiled or laughed. A local theater even offered a tempting reward of $1,000 to anyone who could make her laugh, drawing crowds and famous comedians eager to claim the prize. Despite countless hilarious attempts, Sue remained expressionless, a mystery that baffled performers and audiences until it was revealed that she suffered from facial paralysis, explaining her unchanging demeanor.

In 2009 in a coal mine of Columbia, scientists discovered fossils of the world’s largest species of snake. The species is called “Titanoboa cerrejonensis,“and it is from around 60 million years ago. It would have had measured about 48 feet long and weighed about 2,500 pounds

On April 28, 1988, Aloha Airlines flight 243 was on the way to Honolulu from Hilo when a huge portion of the upper part of the fuselage blew off the airplane.

Sony's PlayStation was never meant to be an actual product. Instead, it was intended to be a CD-ROM console that would support Nintendo games. However, when Nintendo backed out of the deal at the last minute, Sony went ahead and launched what soon became one of the most successful gaming consoles of all time.

The Arabia was a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856. Over time, the river shifted 800 meters to the east, eventually turning the site of the sinking into a field. The steamboat remained under 45 feet of slit and topsoil until 1988, when it was excavated. The mud, as it turned out, was such a great preserver that most of the artifacts on board were found to be intact. They even found jars of preserved apples that were still edible!

The unbroken seal of Tutankhamun's tomb before it was opened in 1923, it was unbroken for over 3000 years.

Nathan "Nearest" Green was an African-American head stiller who is now more frequently referred to as a master distiller. He was renowned for imparting his distilling knowledge to Jack Daniel, the creator of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distiller, after Jack Daniel was freed from slavery following the American Civil War.

A 2,000-year-old mummy of a Chinese woman, Xin Zhui, also known as “Lady Dai,” was preserved in 21 gallons of an “unknown liquid.” With her original hair, organs, eyebrows, and eyelashes intact, the mummy still has blood in her veins. Her skin and ligaments are soft and as flexible as that of a living person.

To prevent tourists from stealing their beer glasses, some bars in Belgium require people to hand over one of their shoes as a deposit which is then put in a basket and hung from the ceiling. These shoe baskets have also become an attraction.

When Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs first opened in 1916, the owner hired people to dress as doctors and eat hot dogs outside his shop, to convince people his hot dogs were healthy.

For years, scientists didn’t know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths

1850 Dmitri Mendeleev walked almost a thousand miles to Moscow so he could apply for the University of Moscow. Although he was not accepted, he walked to St. Petersburg where he was accepted, And with that education, he developed the the periodic table of the elements

Vince Coleman, a railway dispatcher, sacrificed his life in order to warn an incoming train of an imminent explosion. His telegraph said “Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.” He saved 300 lives.