This is a classic Damn Interesting article which originally appeared on 12 April 2006

Citicorp Center in New YorkWith its distinctive forty-five degree diagonal crown, the Citicorp building is one of the most recognizable skyscrapers on the New York City skyline. At fifty-nine stories, it’s the third tallest building in midtown Manhattan, and at the time of its completion it was the seventh-tallest building in the world. At ground level, the huge skyscraper almost seems to hover above Lexington Avenue, held aloft by four massive, 114-foot-tall stilts which are located at the center of each side rather than on the corners. This unusual architecture was one of necessity– the structure had to be built around the landmark St. Peter’s Church– but the design left room for a serious engineering flaw which went completely unnoticed during its construction and initial use. Had the weakness not been accidentally discovered and secretly fixed, the mighty skyscraper could have been toppled by a stiff gust of wind without any warning.

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Giant waves breaking on the deck of the oil freighter Esso LanguedocFor centuries sailors have been telling stories of encountering monstrous ocean waves which tower over one hundred feet in the air and toss ships about like corks. Historically oceanographers have discounted these reports as tall tales– the embellished stories of mariners with too much time at sea. But in the last eleven years scientists have discovered strong evidence indicating that such massive rogue waves do exist. The phenomenon has become the subject of recent scientific study, but their origin remains a mystery of the deep.

About one ship is lost every week in the world’s oceans, mostly due to poor seamanship or severe weather. But it now seems likely that at least a small percentage of sea disappearances are due to encounters with these destructive waves. Over the years experienced captains have made very credible reports of meeting behemoth waves which appear spontaneously, cause extensive damage to their ships, and shrug back into the sea just as mysteriously as they had appeared. One account describes the appearance of a giant wave trough which onlookers likened to a “hole in the sea”, followed by a twelve-story-tall “wall of water.” To further compound the mystery, some such waves have been said to appear mid-ocean, and often in calm weather.

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When primitive automobiles first began to appear in the 1800s, their engines were based on steam power, the same power source which had motivated the Industrial Revolution. Steam had already enjoyed a long and successful career in locomotive powerplants, so it was only natural that the technology evolved into a miniaturized version which was unshackled from the rails. But these early cars inherited steam’s weaknesses along with its strengths. The boilers had to be lit by hand, and they required about twenty minutes to build up pressure before they could be driven. Furthermore, their water reservoirs only lasted for about thirty miles before needing replenishment. Despite such shortcomings, these newfangled self-propelled carriages offered quick transportation, and by the early 1900s it was not uncommon to see such machines shuttling wealthy citizens around town.

But the glory days of steam cars were few. A new technology called the Internal Combustion Engine soon appeared, which offered the ability to trundle down the road just moments after starting up. At first these noisy gasoline cars were unpopular because they were more complicated to operate, and they had difficult hand-crank starters which were known to break arms when the engines backfired. But in 1912 General Motors introduced the electric starter, and over the following few years steam was gradually sacrificed at the altar of convenience. Even as the steam car market was briskly evaporating, four brothers named Doble made one last effort to rekindle the technology, and the vehicles they eventually produced proved to be extraordinary machines.

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This article was written by Stephanie Benson, one of our shiny new Damn Interesting writers.

The legend of King Arthur is an enduring one, so popular that it has been shared for centuries. The earliest accounts are simple: A heroic king rescues his country. The story evolved over the centuries, and further elements such as Camelot, the Round Table, and Merlin were added in for flavor. Some versions of the legend state that Arthur did not truly die, but rather that he was put in an enchanted sleep– and it is said that he will return again in an hour of great need.

For hundreds of years the Arthur story has been retold in its various forms, though even ancient historians considered it nothing more than a myth. But in the twelfth century, evidence surfaced that suggested that one of history’s most popular figures might have been more than a mere legend.

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In 1960, when scientists first developed Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, skeptical scientists and engineers joked that this new LASER was a “solution lacking a problem”. But within just a few years, practical uses began to arise for the new technology. Steady advances over the next few decades allowed ever-smaller lasers to produce more powerful and precise beams, and a plethora of new types of lasers were invented that further expanded their application.

Today lasers are ubiquitous and diverse. Several hundred of the smallest lasers can fit on a single microchip, and the largest fills a facility the size of a Wal-Mart. Some generate continuous beams for hours or even days, while others fire a pulse no more than one-millionth of a nanosecond long. In between these extremes lie the everyday lasers inside our CD and DVD players and at the grocery store checkout. But if you’re like me, the first thing you think about when you hear “lasers” is sexy and exotic futuristic weapons, which have been a staple of science fiction since H.G.Wells described a laser-like “heat ray” in his 1898 book The War of the Worlds. Over a century later, though we’re still waiting for our laser guns, some primitive laser-based weapons are finally beginning to appear.

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William T. Love came to 1890s Niagara Falls, New York, with hugely ambitious plans. The landowner and entrepreneur envisioned the creation of an enormous utopian metropolis. His city would be home to enviable industry, and housing for more than a million people. Thousands of acres would become “the most extensive and beautiful [park] in the world”. He planned to power the city using hydroelectric dams on a new 11-kilometer canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers. Within a year, however, Love’s plans failed, and would quickly have been forgotten if it weren’t for one problem.

The one part of Love’s city that had been built was a kilometer-long pit that would have been a part of the canal. After a few decades, this pit was purchased by the City of Niagara Falls, which had decided that it would make an ideal location for a needed chemical-dumping site. After the pit was filled with waste, a neighborhood was built directly on top of it. By the 1970s, the Love Canal became the site of one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.

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A forty-two minute gravity train route from New York City to HawaiiAbout four hundred years ago– sometime in the latter half of the 17th century– Isaac Newton received a letter from the brilliant British scientist and inventor Robert Hooke. In this letter, Hooke outlined the mathematics governing how objects might fall if dropped through hypothetical tunnels drilled through the Earth at varying angles. Though it seems that Hooke was mostly interested in the physics of the thought experiment, an improbable yet intriguing idea fell out of the data: a dizzyingly fast transportation system.

Hooke’s calculations showed that if the technology could be developed to bore such holes through the Earth, a vehicle with sufficiently reduced friction could use such a tunnel to travel to another point anywhere on the on Earth within three quarters of an hour, regardless of distance. Even more amazingly, the vehicle would require negligible fuel. The concept is known as the Gravity Train, and though it seems inconceivably difficult to construct, it has received some serious scientific attention and research in the intervening centuries.

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This is a classic Damn Interesting article which was originally published on 09 March 2006.

In a nutshell, evolution describes the fact that in a given set of organisms, those which manage to survive are the same ones that do most of the breeding. It naturally follows that the traits of the survivors become the most prevalent in the species. Perhaps one of the first traits to be promoted by evolution was the survival instinct itself, since the two reinforce one another so elegantly.

As part of the survival instinct, most animals (including humans) react to sudden, unexpected stimuli with a startle reaction, which includes reflexive movement away from the stimulus and a contraction of the muscles in the limbs. It also causes changes in blood pressure, respiration, and breathing. In a normal individual, the muscular reaction subsides within a couple seconds if no real threat is detected, but for a sufferer of the Jumping Frenchman of Maine Disorder, an unexpected stimulus results in a somewhat different experience.

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