If you remember President William Henry Harrison from U.S. history class at all, then you probably remember him as the poor fellow who died from pneumonia a month after delivering his inaugural address in freezing rain. Except was it really pneumonia after all? A New York Times article suggests a different theory, and a cautionary tale against giving long speeches instead turns into one against improper sewage systems.
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Cities change: skyscrapers go up, row houses are torn down, neighborhoods gentrify, earthquakes destroy. Vintage photographs of cities can be fascinating in and of themselves, but the familiar unfamiliarity of these time-warped photographs are especially intriguing.
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Google famously publicizes gag products on April Fool’s Day. Remember 8-bit maps? YouTube DVDs? But despite a release date of April 1, 2004, its webmail service was no joke. Google’s simple, browser-based inbox introduced to the mainstream several ideas that have become so commonplace over the intervening decade, they practically define modern computing as we know it.
It’s hard to say, looking twenty to thirty years into the future, just how different the digital landscape will look. Semantic
Technology, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Web 3.0 are presently only toddling along in their infant stage. What they will look like in the next few decades is only
guesswork on our part.
In what is easily one of the stranger twists in the military takeover of Crimea, the Russians have seized control of Ukraine’s navy dolphin fleet. Yes, dolphins. The annals of dolphin military history is actually teeming with improbable tales, so let this be your guide to the cetacean Cold War.
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For whatever reason, one of the Gizmodo writers posted an image of an old AOL free trial disc in our staff-wide chat the other day. One thousand hours free for 45 days! This, of course, started us all down a road of weird nostalgia, recalling how we used (or misused) the World Wide Web back in the twilight of the 90s. What were you doing on The Internet back then?
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For a Prime Minister who’s embraced technology more so than other national leaders of sovereign states, one’s hard pressed to sympathize with a man who chose to ban Twitter to cover up a political scandal. The disruption and "going dark" incident sparked public fury and outrage. . .
The Battle of Buda in 1686 was a significant victory over the Ottoman Empire, which threatened Europe, Asia, and Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1896, Gyula Benczúr painted his gorgeous masterpiece titled "The Recapture of Buda Castle in 1686," depicting the final moments of the Holy League victory, after 78 days of siege. Now, you can immerse yourself in its fantastic details, thanks to Ekho, a Hungarian 3D artist, who made a stunning rendering of the painting.
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Here’s a wide ranging film montage that shows the evolution of film from its conception in 1878 to the whizbang movie trailers of today. It covers over a hundred years of film, with a new movie representing a new year starting from 1920 and on. Made by Scott Ewing, the compilation clip comes quick at you but it’s supremely enjoyable to watch.
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Everybody knows Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. Eleven men eating lunch on an I-beam beam hundreds of feet above New York City, none of them wearing safety harnesses—it’s iconic! That’s what makes this roller coaster recreation of it so much fun.
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