October 14, 2026·1 min read
The Man Who Fell Faster Than Sound
Fourteen years ago today, a man stepped off a platform 39 kilometres above New Mexico and became the first person to break the sound barrier with nothin...
#264 · World Records
15 stories
October 8, 2026·1 min read
The Man Who Outlived His Own Heart Twenty-Six Times
Sixty-eight years ago today, a Swedish engineer received the first implanted pacemaker. It failed after three hours. He lived another forty-three years.
#248 · Medicine & Health
October 7, 2026·2 min read
The Song With No Author
Generated tracks appear on streaming platforms in volume.
#202 · Visionary Frontiers
October 5, 2026·1 min read
The Artist Who Made Anonymity the Work
Thirty-five years ago, an artist began working the walls of Bristol. The most valuable thing he ever produced was not a painting. It was the decision ne...
#185 · Creative Arts
October 1, 2026·1 min read
Perfect Sound Forever
Forty-two years ago, the recording industry sold people a format to replace one they already owned. It worked better than anyone expected — and then it ...
#143 · Disruptive Innovation
September 30, 2026·2 min read
The Babel Fish Problem
The card imagines earbuds that translate any language in real time. Parts of this already exist. The parts that don't are harder than they look.
#302 · Visionary Frontiers
September 29, 2026·2 min read
The Film Nobody Filmed
Text-to-video can produce short clips of striking quality.
#293 · Visionary Frontiers
September 26, 2026·1 min read
The Night Politics Learned to Care How It Looked
Sixty-six years ago today, seventy million Americans watched two men argue on television for the first time. What they saw and what the radio audience h...
#141 · Cinema & Media
September 23, 2026·1 min read
They Landed a Helicopter on the Roof
Seventeen years ago today, a gang landed a stolen helicopter on the roof of a cash depot in Stockholm, smashed through a skylight, and left with the mon...
#147 · Crime
September 20, 2026·2 min read
The Match Was Theatre. The Real Fight Was Already Won.
Fifty-three years ago today, ninety million people watched a 29-year-old champion beat a 55-year-old hustler in the Houston Astrodome. The match mattere...
#216 · Equality & Justice
September 16, 2026·2 min read
The Drug That Can't Be Approved Because Ageing Isn't a Disease
The card imagines a licensed medicine that slows ageing. The largest obstacle isn't pharmacological. It's regulatory.
#298 · Visionary Frontiers
September 10, 2026·2 min read
Forty Years of the Genetic Fingerprint
Four decades ago, a technique discovered by accident in a Leicester laboratory was used to solve a murder — and, in the same case, to free the wrong man.
#246 · Disruptive Innovation
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