Britain's 1911 Act made workers, employers and state pay
The National Insurance Act 1911 took a weekly levy from British wage-earners, employers and the state to fund sick pay and free doctor visits.
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Volcanic ash stopped all four engines on two airliners
British Airways in 1982 and KLM in 1989 lost every engine in volcanic ash. The Met Office now forecasts ash in finer detail to keep more airspace open.
Crossword setters keep grids symmetrical by convention
Turn a standard crossword upside down and the black squares match. The habit dates to 1913, and it helps checkers and setters. Few grids break it.
Scientists logged a 58-foot rogue wave off Vancouver Island
A buoy measured a wave three times taller than its neighbours off British Columbia in 2020. Researchers still cannot say for certain what builds one.
Nitrate film burns underwater, so its reels get their own vaults
Nitrate film resembles guncotton and burns even underwater. US venues keep the reels in fireproof rooms, and a new Los Angeles vault meets NFPA 40 rules.
Underground fungi trade phosphorus for plant sugar
Plants pay arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in sugars and fats. In return the fungi can supply up to 80 percent of a plant's phosphorus, reports show.
Is a farm without soil or sun worth its power bill?
Vertical farms grow lettuce and basil under LEDs with up to 95% less water, but the power bill makes crops such as potatoes hard to grow at a profit.
Inside a UK Amazon warehouse, scanners counted down each pick
A BBC visit to Amazon's Hemel Hempstead site found handheld scanners timing each pick. The New York Times found minute-by-minute tracking at a New York site.
Apollo's computer landed on the Moon with 72 kilobytes
Apollo's guidance computer held 72 kilobytes, so engineers cut software, rolled mission phases in and out, and still landed Apollo 11 through the alarms.
Dick Fosbury turned his back on the bar and won Olympic gold
Foam landing mats let jumpers fall on their backs, and Fosbury's 1968 win in Mexico City showed the sport a style that nearly every jumper now uses.
Five layers of Kapton shield Webb's instruments from the Sun
The coated layers reflect the Sun's heat back into space so the instruments can cool to minus 233C. Tensioning all five took two days in January 2022.
Raised ground can defeat a UK home's damp-proof course
A damp-proof course repels ground water that climbs a wall by capillary action. Soil or rubble piled against the wall can bridge it and let damp in.
Diplomats in Berlin wrote the rules for seizing Africa
At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, European diplomats set the terms of colonisation with no African present, then settled many borders in later deals.
On an induction hob, the pan makes the heat, not the glass
An induction hob generates heat in the pan itself and needs a magnetic pan. In a Which? test it boiled water in 4.81 minutes against gas's 9.69.
Rome's Praetorian Guard protected emperors and killed them
Guards stabbed Caligula, and the Guard eliminated Pertinax. In 193 AD Septimius Severus disbanded it and rebuilt it with his own men.
North Korea ranks people by what their grandparents did
North Korea's songbun system grades each person by family background and loyalty, and shapes where they live, study and work, a UN panel and researchers say.
Glacier ice keeps a year's snow and air in every layer
Each ice layer holds a year of snow and its trapped air, which reveal past temperature and carbon dioxide. Meltwater is now washing that record away.
What the Rana Plaza accord changed in Bangladesh's factories
After Rana Plaza killed more than 1,100 people, brands signed a binding safety accord. It brought tens of thousands of inspections, but most brands kept out.
Cambodia's 1993 election was the UN's biggest peacekeeping bet
In May 1993 the UN staged Cambodia's election under a 22,000-strong force. The royalists won 58 seats to 51, and the coalition that followed broke up in 1997.
Set designers build the whole stage in miniature first
A model box is a scale version of a theatre set. It shows the director, builders and actors the stage before construction, and the RSC now has a digital one.
Russia's Kaliningrad exclave relies on transit through Lithuania
Some goods for Kaliningrad cross EU land under sealed transit rules. In 2022 Lithuania banned transit of sanctioned steel and iron-ore goods, angering Moscow.
England's compulsory purchase fight is about hope value
Planning permission can lift farmland's price 275 times. In 2023 the government planned to let a minister drop that hope value from an order, case by case.
Britain and the US make big firms publish CEO pay ratios
UK firms with over 250 staff set CEO pay against workers at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles. US public firms divide it by the median worker's pay.
US Four Corners marker is at most 1,800 feet off, not 2.5 miles
A surveyor fixed the Four Corners point in 1875 on the law's line from Washington, not Greenwich. That explains why a claimed 2.5-mile error never existed.