In addition to the long curly cords, and the part where they are permanently attached to a wall, old-fashioned landlines have something else that we've lost in the cell phone revolution: a dial tone. What happened to that thing? Read More >>

It's funny how fondly we look back at classic ads—print, commercials, anything—compared to how we react to ads today. That Apple 1984 commercial? Perfection. Those old VW Bug print ads? Soooo cute! Today? Ew banner ads. Ugh Flash. ZOMG what happened to my ad block!? There's no room for art in advertising anymore because we've all been conditioned to ignore the pixels dedicated to advertisements. Or from another perspective, ads are so tainted because they're all plastered with social media links that we can't take them seriously any more. Read More >>

I wish I could live during a time when we believed creatures and aliens and things lived on the Moon. My imagination would have had so much fun! But alas, real life is too boring for that kind of fun. Still, in 1836, people believed that astronomers had found life on the moon. They imagined a world of hairy men with wings, unicorns and naked insect ladies. Read More >>

What with today's fancy Doppler radars and forecast graphics and fear mongering, it's refreshing to get a glimpse of the relative simplicity in man's very first attempt at remotely monitoring the shifts in Earth's climate. Read More >>

Nobody likes arriving at an empty coffee pot. Especially computer scientists at Cambridge University—which is why, back in 1991, a team of them invented the world's first webcam to keep an eye on coffee levels from their desks. Read More >>

The word on the interwebs is that this 1999 Angelfire page belongs to one Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, that Mark Zuckerberg, which means this could be the very first website that the hoody that made Facebook ever created. If true, it's a time machine into the 15-year-old brain of the most powerful man on the Internet. Read More >>

Did you know Albert Eistein wanted to make a fridge? Seriously. The greatest brain in modern physics dedicated a lot of time in trying to create a long lasting, energy efficient, environmentally friendly refrigerator. Read More >>

Forget dropping thousands of pounds on the monstrously spec'd gaming laptops sold by the likes of Alienware. As long as you're not itching to play the latest titles, you can look to the hacker who created this brilliant working NES laptop for some money-saving DIY inspiration. Read More >>

It probably can't quite compete with all the memories they have of landing on the moon, but the second best souvenir the Apollo 11 astronauts have of their adventure has to be this solid gold model of the Lunar Module given to them by Cartier on their return. Read More >>

It might be hard to imagine, but there was once a time where thousands upon thousands of books and arguably the sum totally of human knowledge was not readily available at your fingertips. And while it's no Kindle, Agostino Ramelli's 16th century bookwheel was a valiant attempt to make that happen. Read More >>

1893 marked the 400 year anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World. To commemorate the anniversary, the 51st US Congress of 1890 declared that a great fair—the World's Columbian Exposition—would be held on April 9th of 1893 in Chicago and Daniel H. Burnham, father of the skyscraper, would oversee its construction. If only he could find enough civil engineers to pull it off. Read More >>

Forget auto-exposure, or even light meters. Back in the day this booklet and some mental arithmetic was all that was required to achieve the perfect exposure when taking photographs. Read More >>

Imagine going about your day like the people in Russia only to be smacked against a wall by a meteorite's shockwave. That's already crazy. But imaging being in your home, napping on your couch and actually getting hit by an actual meteorite. That actually happened to Ann Hodges in 1954. She survived. Read More >>

Here's the grandaddy that spawned the thing you guys like least on the Internet: ads. This artsy, graffiti'd print on a black background telling you to click "right here" is supposedly the first banner ad to ever appear on the Internet. It popped up nearly 20 years ago in 1994 and was an ad for an American network. Read More >>

Oh my god. This is perfect. Because things on the Internet never really die and because old terrible things on the Internet eventually become wonderful and especially because Geocities was so hilariously awful, One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is my new favourite website. It posts screenshots of old Geocities pages in all their blinging, blinking, clip art, galaxy background glory. I can't get enough of this. Read More >>