Yahoo yesterday announced that it's bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion to communicate to millennials that it's cool, hip, relevant, and that it understands what GIFs are. But back in the early ages of the dot com-era, the company said precisely that through a monthly publication called Yahoo Internet Life Magazine. Read More >>

In 1942, after having finally entered WWII, the United States Marine Corp spent two million dollars on an insane new initiative. The mission? Strap napalm bombs to bats, and send them flying on deadly kamikaze runs. Seriously. Read More >>

If you love old DSLRs, particularly classic Nikons, you owe it to yourself to spend a few minutes over at Clare's Wyoh Tumblr blog. At the request of a reader with a penchant for Nikon schematics, she scanned a few illustrations from some old manuals and posted them for all of us to ogle. Outdated or not, they're still gorgeous examples of old-school engineering. Read More >>

Since Adobe Photoshop was launched in 1989 photographers have had it easy, being able to tweak images to their heart's content without getting their hands dirty. But it wasn't always like that. Read More >>

Back in the day, hair dryers and perm machines looked like they would eat your brain. Dark Roasted Blend has a nice roundup of photos of the vintage devices that makes you think think we sure did—and still do—some absolutely insane things for beauty. Read More >>

You use it every day without a second thought, but if you think about it for just a second, QWERTY is really, really weird. Where did something so strangely unintuitive come from? The popular story is that it has to do with typewriter mechanics and jamming prevention, and although that explanation sure is tidy, it's also probably bullshit. Read More >>

Sadly NASA’s Space Shuttle program has been shuttered, but when you're feeling whimsical at least you can still watch footage of the behemoth being sent into space. What you might not know, though, is that NASA threw all kinds of camera tech at recording the launches for posterity — and this video shows it off. Read More >>

Programmer John Graham-Cumming tells a fascinating story about what coding like was back in 1985. Unlike today's programmers who wear hoodies, down energy drinks and use a paper thin computer, programmers in 1985 had to code by hand... with actual paper. Read More >>

Twenty years ago today, something happened that changed the digital world forever: CERN published a statement that made the technology behind the World Wide Web available to use, by anybody, on a royalty free basis. Read More >>

You may have expected the first ever portable motion picture camera to be housed in some form of stuffy box — but in fact it was shaped like a rifle, which lends a new accuracy to the idea of shooting some film. Read More >>

One of the things that will never fail to make me happy: seeing people stuck in time explain what modern day technology is. Kim Komando hosted an educational series about computer and explains the basics of its hardware, DOS, Microsoft Windows, Write and more. Read More >>

You're not looking at a new phone headed to stores any time soon — in fact, you're looking at the surprisingly sleek, all-touch webOS smartphone developed by HP which (sadly?) never was. Read More >>

When I was growing up, my parents would tell me about all the ancient technologies they had to use in their youth. Whether it was a car with a manual choke; a phone that required you to ask an operator to connect you, or a record player with a hand crank, mum and dad experienced a tonne of tech frustrations I would never know. Read More >>

The BBC has a wonderful dive into the history of canning, tracing its origins from a technology designed to help expand and sustain the British Empire, to a miracle commodity of modern capitalism. And it almost failed before it ever got going. Read More >>

If you fancy buying yourself a little slice of photographic history, now's your chance. Because the Leica IIIa rangefinder used by Alfred Eisenstaedt to capture the iconic V-J day photo Kiss in Times Square is up for sale. Read More >>