Today Lionel Richie is receiving the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Not only has he sold millions of records, he’s become a home goods entrepreneur, an art enthusiast - and one time, personal clothes shopper for none other than Nelson Mandela.
In early 1970 President Richard Nixon introduced new uniforms for the guards at the White House - European-style suits that Americans thought looked better for movie ushers or marching bands.
Polish designer Iga Węglińska has a new way to help us stay in touch with our emotions: she's created clothes that will respond when we get stressed out.
Our wireless, hands-free, automatic, smart device era may be about to get even smarter, thanks to high-tech smart fabric that can send out signals to devices or turn itself into a health monitor. Plus: a trash barrel from the US goes on holiday, traveling all the way across the ocean to end up in Ireland.
A multi-country research team has found ways to turn polyethylene, a key ingredient in single-use plastic bags, into lightweight fabric. So those bags that we don't want to throw out but can't always easily recycle? We might end up wearing them. Plus: many of us spend a lot of our waking hours typing, but James Cook turns his typing into art.
A research team at the University of Rochester and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has found a way to bioprint a strong, flexible and eco-friendly material that could one day serve as fabric for t-shirts, energy storage for space missions and much more. Plus: there's a world record for longest golf drive into a moving car... you knew that was a record, right?
Today in 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, having been snuck into the city to avoid a plot against his life in Baltimore. Kate Warne, the first women detective in America, was key to getting him there safely. Plus: Alex Trebek's family has donated some of the late Jeopardy! host's suits for a very fitting cause.
The (possibly apocryphal) story goes that on this day in 1797, haberdasher John Hetherington walked onto the streets of London wearing the first top hat, which caused so much hubbub that he was arrested and fined for disturbing the peace! Plus: in January 1974, MIT professor James Henry Williams, Jr. built a 35 pound yo-yo made of two bicycle wheels, and dropped it off the side of a 21-story campus building.
Millions of people have back pain that just plain makes things harder to do. A team at Vanderbilt University has developed an exosuit that may ease all that back strain. Plus: how do you let an economist know he's won the Nobel Prize when you don't have his phone number? Have his fellow winner knock on his door in the middle of the night, of course.
Maybe everyone in junior high was right: the clothes you wear really can make you cool! At least if those clothes are the new fabric developed in China with a kind of cooling system embedded inside. Plus: it's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, so let's find out about the largest chocolate chip cookie of all time.
