Apple unveils the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max and first foldable
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max go on sale September 18. The foldable iPhone Duo follows on October 23, at new chief John Ternus's first launch.
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Alan Turing swapped 'Can machines think?' for a game
Alan Turing's 1950 imitation game asks a judge to tell human from machine by typed questions. His own sample machine got a sum wrong.
Littler and Van Gerwen traded 170 finishes in one Dublin match
Two treble 20s and the bull make darts' highest finish, 170. In 2026 it shaped a Premier League semi-final in Dublin and a world quarter-final.
Jai Arrow leads Rabbitohs out for 100th game after MND
The NRL gave South Sydney special dispensation to list the retired 30-year-old, and more than 40,000 fans sang Stand By Me as he walked out.
Mutinous soldiers failed to oust Niger's military ruler
Soldiers moved against General Tiani on 29 August and lost. Nigeria denies backing the attempt, and Niger's oil-driven growth rolls on regardless.
Elizabeth Holmes will move to a halfway house next year
Elizabeth Holmes will leave her Texas prison camp for a halfway house next August, years before her full release in 2030.
Max Miedinger drew Helvetica in 1957 as Neue Haas Grotesk
Max Miedinger drew a sans serif for a Swiss foundry in 1957. Stempel renamed it Helvetica when it licensed the design for Linotype in 1961.
Most volunteers gave shocks they believed could kill
Stanley Milgram ran his Yale obedience experiment as Adolf Eichmann stood trial claiming he had followed orders. Most volunteers obeyed.
Office nap pods spread from Google to the law firms
MetroNaps pods costing about $13,000 each spread from Google and Silicon Valley to PwC, KPMG and the law firm White & Case.
France's 35-hour law traded fewer hours for flexible shifts
France's working week fell to 35 hours under the loi Aubry. Its real effect was to make firms renegotiate contracts around flexible, annualised hours.
Ford's moving line cut a Model T from 14 hours to 93 minutes
In 1913 Ford's Highland Park plant started a moving assembly line. Build time fell from 14 hours to 93 minutes, and the car's price fell with it.
Alonzo Church's lambda calculus: computation without a machine
In 1936, Alonzo Church tied effective calculation to his lambda calculus. Alan Turing's work reached the same result on a related problem.
America's 17-year cicadas wait for warm soil to surface
Some periodical cicadas spend 17 years feeding on tree roots, then surface together once the soil warms. Why they keep such long cycles is still unclear.
Employers are retraining staff instead of hiring AI engineers
Job postings for generative AI skills rose 1,848% in 2023, and companies short of engineers to hire are retraining the staff they already have.
Bletchley's Bombe cut Enigma's settings to about a million
Enigma had 158 million million million settings. The Turing-Welchman Bombe cut that to about a million, and helped Bletchley Park find each day's key.
Banyan roots grow from branches, then thicken into trunks
A banyan drops roots from its branches. Once they reach the soil they thicken into pillars, which is how one tree in India came to cover five acres.
Bell Labs built the first practical solar cell in 1954
Three Bell Labs scientists turned silicon into a 6% efficient solar cell in 1954, more than a century after the photovoltaic effect was first observed.
Bernard Williams used Gauguin to put luck into morality
In his 1976 essay on moral luck, Bernard Williams asked if Gauguin's success could justify leaving his family. Critics say it barely weighs the harm done.
Bessemer's process made steel ten times faster
Henry Bessemer patented a way to turn molten iron into steel with a blast of air in 1855. It cut batch times tenfold and made cheap steel possible.
The panopticon was designed so no one had to watch all the time
Bentham's panopticon put a tower inside a ring of cells. Prisoners could not see the watchman, so they had to assume someone was looking, at minimal cost.
Henry Cole sold the first printed Christmas card in 1843
In 1843, a busy London civil servant had no time to write to family and friends, so he commissioned an artist to design a card instead.
Disneyland's chaotic 1955 opening set the theme park standard
Disneyland opened in Anaheim on July 17, 1955, to forged tickets, broken rides and soft asphalt. It still set the standard for what a theme park could be.
Chicago's steel frame, and the iron mill that came first
The Home Insurance Building carried its floors on a steel and iron skeleton, not its walls. That idea let Chicago build past five storeys.
Irish heating oil jumped about €200 a tank in one week
A week of renewed US-Iran fighting added about €200 to a full Irish heating-oil delivery in July 2026, reversing months of falling prices.