Today in 1968, a high jumper from Oregon, Dick Fosbury, changed his sport forever by winning gold with an unusual jumping motion now known as the Fosbury Flop. Plus: today in 2018, passengers on a bus in Paris refused to make room for a rider using a wheelchair. So the bus driver made room.
Today in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was dedicated and opened, but it was only one of hundreds of ideas for what should be built there. And some of the other proposed designs were wild. Plus: a new device would be able to extract water from the air wherever the user already is.
Vantablack is a color that's so black it absorbs almost all of the light nearby. There's new research out about a "vantafish" that does almost the same thing to avoid its hungry bioluminescent neighbors. Plus: you've heard of drive-in theaters; Paris is going to have a "float-in" theater featuring "socially distanced boats" on the Seine.
The Eiffel Tower was only supposed to stand in Paris for 20 years... but experiments in "wireless telegraphy" helped convince the powers that be to keep the tower in place. Plus: this gallery of the weirdest-looking cars to ever roll off the assembly line is maybe not the aesthetic equal of the Eiffel Tower, but it sure is fun.
If you’re mourning Notre Dame cathedral today, well, you’re not the only one. Here’s a story from its long history that might make you feel a little more hopeful.
