On July 20, 1969, man first landed on the moon. Here are NASA’s Original Mission Video (over three hours — if you just want to see the first step, start at 3:15), photographs taken by NASA’s Apollo astronauts, and a gallery of photos from the mission, memories of plucking NASA’s moonmen from the sea, and the speech prepared for Nixon in the event of a disaster.


The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance — by their heartbeat.

“Hollywood’s Doom Book and other Tales of Blacklisting in American Cinema.”

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 20th of July plot, the unsuccessful bomb attempt to kill Hitler in 1944.

Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?


“How the Escalator Forever Changed Our Sense of Space.”

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include a 19th-century experimental pneumatic subway, lawn-mower physics (in slow motion), treadmill history, why red M&Ms disappeared for a decade, and the anniversary of the beginning of the atomic age (the 1945 Trinity test and related links).