Dymaxion Car

When the visionary architect and designer Buckminster Fuller — inventor of the geodesic dome — turned his attention to cars, he created something both wonderful and strange. Fuller envisioned his land-based prototype as eventually being able to travel in the air and underwater as well, so the streamlined car looked like a cross between a VW camper, a zeppelin, and a torpedo. 

Unveiled in the 1930s, the three-wheeled, 20-foot-long omnidirectional vehicle could reach speeds of 120 mph, make a 180-degree turn within its own length, and carry 12 passengers. To many people, it seemed like the future had arrived. But Fuller’s car never went into mass production, partly due to one of the prototypes being involved in a fatal crash. 

Stout Scarab

The Stout Scarab is credited as the world’s first production minivan. Designed by aviation engineer William Bushnell Stout, the streamlined, beetle-shaped vehicle (hence the name “Scarab”) was notable for, among other things, its massive interior space. 

Inside the 16-foot-long vehicle, only the driver’s seat was fixed — all other seats could rotate 180 degrees to face one another. There was also a removable table for business meetings or card games, a dust filter to clean the air inside, interior lighting, and power door locks — all incredibly cutting-edge for the 1930s. Perhaps it was a leap too far. Only nine Scarabs were ever built, but the car went on to influence automotive design for decades.

Peel P50

The Peel P50 is one of the smallest cars ever made. At just 4.5 feet long and just over 3 feet tall and  wide, it’s smaller than most motorcycles and can fit through a standard doorway. And considering it weighs just 130 pounds, two people could easily carry it to the repair shop if it ever breaks down. 

The original, produced between 1962 and 1965, featured a 49cc engine producing 4.2 horsepower, powering a single rear wheel to a top speed of 40 mph. The Peel P50 has no reverse gear — if you need to back up, you simply get out and pull. They are still available to buy — hand built in the U.K. and shipped worldwide — and remain both utterly impractical and absolutely wonderful.

Amphicar Model 770 

The Amphicar Model 770 was based on the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen, an amphibious vehicle used extensively by Nazi ground forces during World War II. That’s not the most auspicious of starts, but the Amphicar nonetheless went on to become the most successful civilian amphibious production car ever made, with 3,878 units sold between 1961 and 1968. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson famously owned one and enjoyed pranking guests by screaming, “The brakes have failed!” as he drove into the lake on his Texas ranch. 

The problem with the Amphicar, and the reason it never sold more, was simple: It was neither a good car nor a good boat. On land, it had poor handling and minimal comfort, while on water it had a max speed of only 7 knots and very poor steering (not to mention problems with rust). Still, it was a whole lot of fun for anyone with the money to buy such an eccentric and impractical vehicle. 

Vanguard-Sebring CitiCar 

If you’ve always aspired to drive a large wedge of cheese, then the Vanguard-Sebring CitiCar is a dream come true. Inspired by golf carts and partly a response to the 1973 oil crisis, this tiny, wedge-shaped electric vehicle was powered by a 2.5-horsepower motor and six 6-volt batteries. It could reach a top speed of 28 mph and had a range of about 40 miles. 

Selling for less than $3,000, it was cheaper than most compact cars, and by 1976, the Florida-based Sebring-Vanguard was positioned as America’s sixth-largest automaker. For a while, the CitiCar was the bestselling electric vehicle in the U.S., despite looking like a doorstop on wheels. 

Fiat Multipla 

The Fiat Multipla is frequently mentioned as one of the ugliest cars ever produced. With its bulbous two-tiered layout and three pairs of buglike headlights, it looks like the offspring of a beluga whale and a cartoon insect. But the Multipla isn’t a bad car. It runs perfectly well, and inside its strangely wide body are two rows of three seats, making it a true multipurpose vehicle with plenty of space for luggage — all things that earned plaudits from the automotive media. 

The problem, however, was its peculiar appearance. It sold 79,000 units across Europe in 1999, but sales dropped off quickly — the Fiat Multipla never even reached America, in large part because of its reputation as an eyesore. It was discontinued in 2010, but can still be seen on the road (and purchased secondhand), albeit increasingly rarely. It remains a cautionary tale of what happens when automotive design goes awry.

Local Anesthesia

In 1921, Evan O’Neill Kane, chief surgeon at the Kane Summit Hospital in Pennsylvania, was in the operating room waiting for his own appendectomy to begin. To the surprise of his staff, who were ready and waiting to operate, Kane announced that he would remove his appendix himself. Reluctant to go against the wishes of their boss, the staff obeyed and stood back. 

This wasn’t some kind of bizarre whim on Kane’s part. He had performed more than 4,000 appendectomies in the past, using general anesthesia, which was standard practice at the time. But general anesthesia was considered dangerous for people with heart conditions and other serious ailments, complicating (or ruling out entirely) many basic surgeries for high-risk patients, including appendectomies. 

Kane believed that general anesthesia wasn’t necessary in these circumstances, and that local anesthesia was the solution. To prove his point, he removed his own appendix using only local anesthetic. With his assistants standing by, he made an incision in his own abdomen, located his appendix, and removed it while fully conscious. While undoubtedly extreme, his self-appendectomy demonstrated that local anesthesia was viable for abdominal surgery, leading to a wider acceptance of local anesthesia and a reduction in surgical mortality rates.

Effects of Deceleration on the Body

When Air Force Colonel John Paul Stapp set out to discover the precise effects of deceleration on the human body, he went all in. With airplanes increasingly flying higher and faster after World War II, pilots were being placed under ever-greater stresses, and bailouts and crashes were becoming far more dangerous. To help counter this and protect pilots, Stapp and his team began strapping themselves into extremely fast rocket sleds in the name of science. 

In one such test, carried out in December 1954, Stapp strapped himself into a sled called Sonic Wind No. 1. Powered by nine solid-fuel rockets, the sled hurtled along a custom-built track, and in just five seconds Stapp reached 632 miles per hour — faster than a .45-caliber bullet fired from a pistol. When the sled’s brakes engaged, Stapp reached a standstill in just 1.4 seconds, experiencing a deceleration force of 46.2 g (46.2 times the force of gravity) — momentarily making his body weigh more than 6,800 pounds. The effect cracked his ribs and burst all the blood vessels in his eyes, making him temporarily blind. 

Stapp’s experiments provided invaluable data regarding human tolerance to extreme forces, and disproved the prevailing medical belief that pilots couldn’t survive forces above 18 g. As well as paving the way for improved safety features in airplanes, his work and advocacy led to the automobile industry adopting stronger safety belts and harnesses, saving countless lives. 

Cardiac Catheterization

In 1929, 25-year-old surgical trainee Werner Forssmann saw a picture in a book that showed a tube inserted into a horse’s heart through a vein. Forssmann believed that such a process could work just as well in humans, but his superiors dismissed the idea as far too dangerous, forbidding him to test the procedure on any patient. So Forssmann, assisted by his operating room nurse Gerda Ditzen, carried out the procedure on himself. 

He anesthetized his arm, then cut into his antecubital vein, through which he inserted a catheter for 65 centimeters. He then calmly walked to the X-ray department, where he advanced the catheter until it reached his right atrium, taking X-rays of the whole process. As toe-curling as the whole thing may seem, Forssmann’s self-experiment paved the way for many different heart studies and procedures to come — and earned him the Nobel Prize in 1956. 

Treatment for Stomach Ulcers

For a long time, stomach ulcers were blamed on stress, poor diet, or eating too many spicy foods (or a combination of all three). The prevailing wisdom rejected the idea that bacteria could be the cause, as it was believed that bacteria couldn’t survive in the stomach’s acidic environment. Then, in the early 1980s, Australian physician Barry Marshall and pathologist Robin Warren discovered spiral bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) in the stomachs of patients with gastritis and ulcers. Yet the medical establishment dismissed their findings. 

So, in 1984, Marshall took matters into his own hands — and into his own stomach. He drank a whole petri dish of H. pylori cultured from a sick patient. Three days later, he began experiencing nausea, vomiting, and halitosis. An endoscopy confirmed the bacteria had colonized his stomach and caused inflammation. Marshall then treated himself with antibiotics. He soon recovered, proving conclusively that H. pylori bacteria can cause acute gastritis, which in turn can cause ulcers that can then be treated with antibiotics. The discovery revolutionized treatment, and in 2005— when the significance of their work was properly recognized — Marshall and Warren were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize.

X-Ray Shoe Fitters 

In the 1940s and ’50s, shoe stores across the U.S. offered customers a peek inside their shoes. The shoe-fitting fluoroscope was a wooden box that displayed real-time moving X-ray images of customers’ feet. Invented by Boston physician Jacob Lowe in 1919, the device was originally designed to diagnose foot problems in World War I veterans, and was repurposed for retail use after the war.

Though the X-ray technology was real, the device was essentially a marketing gimmick to help shoe sellers boost sales by lending the fitting process a scientific veneer. But that was the least of the invention’s issues — the fluoroscopes emitted dangerous doses of radiation that far exceeded the maximum safe daily dose. As a result of growing awareness around the dangers of radiation, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were banned by the late 1950s.

Thomas Edison’s “Little Monsters”

Even the illustrious Thomas Edison had his flops. In 1890, the inventor unveiled the world’s first talking doll, a technological milestone that combined phonograph technology with the classic toy. The 4-pound, 22-inch doll had a porcelain head, wooden limbs, and a tin torso that housed a miniature phonograph. Turning a crank on the doll’s back played wax recordings of nursery rhymes such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Jack and Jill.”

Unfortunately, Edison’s dolls didn’t speak so much as screech. Due to the low recording volume, the women voicing the rhymes were required to scream into the recorder, resulting in creepy recordings that upset customers. The dolls were also plagued by durability issues and were prone to breaking. Parents complained, children were terrified, and many of the 2,650 dolls sold were returned. Within weeks, Edison withdrew them from the market, ruefully calling them his “little monsters.” Today, Edison’s “monsters” are considered rare collector’s items and have been displayed at the Smithsonian.

The Isolator

Science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback — founder of Amazing Stories magazine and namesake of the Hugo Awards — was also a prolific inventor. In 1925, he introduced one of his strangest creations: the Isolator, a helmet designed to eliminate distractions and maximize focus.

Made of wood and felt, the helmet completely enclosed the wearer’s head, leaving only narrow slits for vision. After realizing that people became drowsy inside the helmet after 15 minutes, partly due to oxygen deprivation, Gernsback added an oxygen tank connected to the helmet by a tube. He claimed the device was 75% efficient and predicted it would be a “great investment” for anyone in need of focus. Though the Isolator never caught on, its spirit lives on in noise-canceling headphones and focus apps.

Anti-Bandit Bag

In the 1950s and ’60s, inventors sought clever ways to foil thieves — and few were as dramatic as the Anti-Bandit Bag. One of the most famous versions was debuted by French Canadian inventor John H.T. Rinfret in 1963. Rinfret, inspired by his experience of being robbed, designed a bag with a spring-loaded handle, which enabled the carrier to launch the bag’s contents all over the place in the event of a robbery.

Other anti-bandit bags spewed smoke and dye or triggered shrieking alarms when snatched. One model, aptly named the “Arrestor,” clamped onto the thief’s hand and blasted out three 12-foot telescoping metal rods, preventing the robber’s escape. None of these designs reached mass production, likely due to their unwieldiness, dubious efficacy, and potential to be triggered accidentally.

Pastes and Oils

Early humans also used primitive versions of sunscreen made from natural compounds. Red ochre, a type of claylike iron oxide, has been mixed with water and applied as a paste to the skin since the time of early Homo sapiens. This mixture was used for ceremonial reasons, but scientists believe it may also have served as a physical barrier against the sun. 

Ancient Egyptians, meanwhile, used skin treatments made from ingredients such as rice bran (which absorbs UV light), jasmine (to help repair sun-damaged skin), and lupine (believed to lighten the complexion). Ancient Greece had its own approach: Olive oil was commonly applied to the skin between 800 and 500 BCE. While it offered limited protection, modern studies have found it has a natural sun protection factor (SPF) of about 8 — enough to slightly reduce burning, though far lower than today’s common SPF 30 (the minimum recommended by dermatologists).

Like with ochre, other pastes were made from a variety of natural compounds, including mud and clay. These were used not only as camouflage or ceremonial decoration, but also as protection from the sun. Zinc oxide was used in India as early as 500 BCE, and water reeds and spices were turned into sunscreen by the Sama-Bajau peoples of Southeast Asia around 840 CE. Indigenous peoples in the Americas, meanwhile, used sunflower oil, pine needles, western hemlock bark, and deer fat, while thanaka, a mixture made from ground bark and water, has been used in Myanmar (formerly Burma) for more than 2,000 years. 

Masks

Over time, in some societies — including in ancient Egypt and later in Europe and parts of Asia — protecting the skin became a mark of social status. A pale complexion signaled that you could afford to avoid outdoor manual labor and instead spend your days indoors or in the shade. 

In Egypt, this desired look was achieved through use of parasols and topical skin treatments that blocked the sun. In Europe in the 16th century — particularly in France and England — upper-class women wore striking-looking visard masks to prevent sunburn and preserve that pale complexion. 

The visard mask was made of black velvet with a silk interior lining, and its only features were a slight protrusion for the nose and small holes for the eyes and mouth. The masks weren’t just eerie to look at, either — they were rather unsettling to wear. Most versions didn’t have straps and were instead held in place by a bead or button gripped between clenched teeth; the wearer couldn’t speak while the mask was on. 

By the early 1700s, visard masks had spread beyond the aristocracy, and beyond their intended purpose of preventing sunburns. Women of various social classes wore them, including sex workers, who often used them to discreetly enter public spaces such as theaters. In 1704, Britain’s Queen Anne even banned visard masks from the theater, but they’d already lost their status among the elite and eventually faded out of use.

Tannins and Trusty SPF

By the end of the 19th century, dermatologists confirmed that prolonged exposure to the sun’s UV rays could inflame or burn the skin, and scientists began experiments to develop effective and suitable topical sun protection. In 1878, Austrian physician Otto Veiel promoted tannins — natural compounds found in many plants — as viable sun protection, but they also discolored the skin. 

In 1891, a German doctor experimented with what was likely the first true attempt at a chemical sunscreen, a quinine-based ointment to treat skin sensitivity to sunlight. And in the early 1900s, German physician Paul Unna came up with another sunscreen precursor, a paste made of natural ingredients such as chestnut extract. Ultimately, these early products didn’t apply well, either discoloring the skin or going on too thick, and so the experiments to find a better solution continued.

It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that sunscreens began to resemble what we use today. In 1942, the U.S. military tapped the American Medical Association to study products or substances that could help protect soldiers from getting sunburned during particularly hot World War II Pacific campaigns. The solution was a thick, red, veterinary petroleum salve, also known as “red vet pet.” It was waterproof, durable, nontoxic, inexpensive, and, most importantly, relatively effective. 

Florida pharmacist Benjamin Green had served in the Air Force throughout the war, and in 1944, he began experimenting with ways to make the sticky substance more appealing. He added ingredients such as cocoa butter and coconut oil, creating a smoother, nicely scented lotion — the earliest version of what later became Coppertone. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, sunscreen formulas continued to improve in texture and ingredients, offering broader protection against UVA and UVB rays, and by the 1970s and ’80s, sunscreen was widely marketed for sunburn protection and as a tanning aid.

Today, sun protection can be as subtle as a swipe of SPF lip balm or as advanced as UV-reflective clothing and tinted window film. The methods may have changed, but the instinct remains the same: When the sun beats down, we find ways to keep cool, stay covered, and avoid the burn.

Luckily, some enterprising minds were working on a better solution. In 1902, Alabama entrepreneur Mary Anderson was visiting New York City when she had an idea while riding the trolley. Trolley cars had windows and windshields long before autos, and on this particular ride she noticed her driver struggling to see through the sleet-slicked windshield. The driver tried a few things, including opening both windshield panes to peer between them, and getting out every few minutes to clear the windows. Inspired to solve this nuisance, Anderson sketched out an idea for a window-cleaning device: a hand-operated lever inside the vehicle that controlled a wiper on the outside. 

Anderson received a patent for her invention in 1903, but cars weren’t yet very popular — there were just under 33,000 registered vehicles in the U.S. at the time — and they didn’t all have windshields, so interest was slim. The patent expired without success in 1920, right around the time the automobile started to become a fixture of American life: Between 1919 and 1929, the number of passenger cars on U.S. roads skyrocketed from 6.5 million to 23 million. 

Other similar patents followed, and by about 1916, some of the cars that had adopted windshields also came equipped with wipers, but they were often optional, and were not yet widely used. That same year, however, Buffalo, New York, engineer John Jepson patented a simple windshield cleaner. It was similar in essence but more complex than Anderson's early designs. His consisted of spring-loaded arms that applied consistent pressure on both the top and bottom of the common horizontally split sections of windshields at the time.

The idea caught the attention of John Oishei, a local theater manager who vowed to improve driving visibility after hitting a bicyclist with his car while driving in the rain. He partnered with Jepson to market the device, branding it as the Rain-Rubber with the slogan, “Would YOU Drive Blindfolded?” 

The Rain-Rubber quickly gained traction, and by the mid-1920s, windshield wipers had become standard on cars from several manufacturers, including Cadillac and Ford. While wiper-related patents have continued to flood in by the hundreds each decade ever since, at their core, windshield wipers remain true to the simple concept Anderson thought up on that New York City trolley back in 1902 — a blade wiping away the rain.

Frederick McKinley Jones 

In 1938, Frederick McKinley Jones began designing a portable air-cooling unit for trucks. His invention ultimately revolutionized the transportation industry, with mobile refrigeration allowing trucks and railroad cars to safely transport perishable goods over long distances. As well as fundamentally changing food distribution, the invention also proved vital during World War II, allowing for the transportation and preservation of blood, medicine, and food for military use. 

In total, Jones earned more than 60 patents in his lifetime, and despite having minimal formal schooling, he became the first Black American to be awarded the National Medal of Technology.

Charles Richard Drew

Charles Richard Drew was a physician and surgeon who invented a method for the long-term storage of blood plasma in blood banks. During the early years of World War II, he organized and directed the blood-plasma programs of both the United States and Great Britain, saving thousands of lives. This led to a national blood-banking program led by Drew and the American Red Cross, and the introduction of  bloodmobiles and blood drives as we know them today. 

Drew also openly criticized policies that segregated the blood of African Americans from plasma-supply networks — an issue that saw him resign his position with the American Red Cross. It wasn’t until 1950 — the year of Drew’s death in a car accident — that the Red Cross stopped requiring the segregation of blood based on race. (Blood segregation remained in place in Southern states such as Arkansas and Louisiana until the late 1960s and early 1970s.) 

Marie Van Brittan Brown 

In the 1960s, Marie Van Brittan Brown, a nurse living in Jamaica, Queens, began to feel increasingly unsafe when home alone due to skyrocketing crime rates in the area. So, with help from her husband Albert L. Brown, an electronics technician, she began inventing what became the first home security system with video surveillance. 

Completed in 1966 and patented three years later, the security system consisted of four peepholes, a sliding camera, television monitors, and two-way microphones. It also incorporated a remote control that allowed for locking and unlocking the door at a safer distance, and an emergency button that would send an alarm directly to the police or security. While not manufactured on a large scale due to high production costs, the invention gained widespread recognition and formed the foundation of modern CCTV and home security systems.

Patricia Bath 

Ophthalmologist Patricia Bath revolutionized cataract surgery when she invented laserphaco, a device and technique that could perform all the necessary steps of cataract removal. Overall, the laser device allowed for less painful and more precise treatment of cataracts, and could help restore the sight of individuals who had been blind for more than 30 years. The device is now used worldwide and has improved the vision of millions of people. When laserphaco was patented in 1988, Bath became the first Black female physician to receive a medical patent in the United States.

In 1916, Sears introduced the feature that is most often associated with its mail-order homes: ready-cut lumber. Cut in the factory to fit, the lumber did not require any trimming before it was nailed together. This allowed for cost savings for the buyer as fewer carpentry hours were needed (a savings Sears estimated at 40%), and it was advantageous for the company as well: Sears was able to purchase lumber in more economical lengths, as well as use second-grade lumber and convert it to first-grade via trimming. The trimmed pieces were often repurposed for other materials — with the timber waste removed, freight costs were substantially reduced. To further encourage sales, Sears reintroduced its own mortgage program, which had originally been active from 1911 to 1913.  

In 1919, the end of World War I brought with it the end of wartime building restrictions. A housing boom ensued, spurred on by the return of soldiers. Sears introduced three tiers of Modern Homes: Simplex Sectional (small two-room structures), Standard Built (less-insulated homes best suited for warmer climates), and Honor Bilt, high-end homes that featured amenities such as cypress siding, kitchens with white tile sinks and enameled cupboards, and “Air-Sealed Wall construction.” Sales from 1912 to 1920 totaled $29,160,000, at a profit of $3,377,000. During that same time frame, around $3.8 million in mortgage loans were written. 

During the 1920s, Sears set its sights on maximizing the booming housing market. The company had opened its first sales office specifically for Modern Homes in Akron, Ohio, in 1919, and in 1920, it built a Philadelphia plant that became the base of Sears’ East Coast operations. In 1921, sales offices opened in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton, followed by sales offices in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington the following year. 

The offices used the Sears mortgage program as a major selling tactic, steering buyers toward mortgages, and the company’s loan policy became more and more lenient in response to sales pressure. Accordingly, sales were booming, increasing from an average of 125 units shipped per month in 1920 to 326 units in May 1926 from the Cairo plant alone. But by 1926, mortgage loans represented 97% of sales. 

The year 1929 was set to be a banner year for Sears Modern Homes. The department had sold 49,000 houses from its inception up to that point. It was averaging 250 units shipped per month just from its Cairo plant, and had a sales staff of 350 people in 48 different offices throughout the country. The $12,050,000 in sales for 1929 represented the highest total the department had ever had. But when the stock market crashed in October 1929, eventually plunging the United States into the Great Depression, Sears Modern Homes was one of the many businesses the bottom fell out of.

The decline was swift. The Sears annual stockholder report for 1932 plainly stated, “Since September 1931, [the Modern Homes department] has operated at a loss. Its sales declined over 40% in our fiscal year, with resulting losses of $81,154,984 during the year.” Two years later, the annual report relayed the dire state precipitating the end of the department: “About $11,000,000 in mortgages were liquidated during the year and the Modern Homes Department was discontinued.” 

The department was reopened in 1935 under a different configuration, selling prefab houses by Chicago’s General Houses, Inc., and the Modern Homes catalog continued to be issued until 1940. Modern-day Sears house enthusiasts cite 1942 as the final year a Sears mail-order home was built, as orders from the final 1940 catalog continued to be filled in the year or so after the catalog was published. Unfortunately, Sears’ own records of home sales were destroyed, complicating a definitive date.

Though the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression provide a tidy explanation for the beginning of the end of the Sears Modern Home department, historians Boris Emmet and John E. Jeuck made a different assessment in their seminal 1950 book, Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck & Company. The book points out the unsustainability of the business model. Increased sales thresholds for Modern Homes necessitated building (or acquiring) more manufacturing plants to handle the increased production needs. The costly production facilities required investments in shipping and transportation, too, along with an increasingly growing and complex service organization to support the business.

The push for sales meant relying on ever more lenient mortgages and approving otherwise undesirable credit risks, creating what Emmet and Jeuck called an “ever increasing and ever more unsound mortgage receivable structure.” Ultimately, the business was simply not scalable: As sales increased, profit margins declined. The peak profit margin for Modern Homes was 15% in 1919 and 1920. It dropped to an average of approximately 10% from 1921 to 1926, and fell under 5% by 1928. The narrowing margins left the business unable to weather a slowdown in sales, let alone a large economic crisis. As Emmet and Jeuck wrote, “At any time subsequent to 1926, the onset of a [sales decline] would probably have developed losses comparable to those which actually were incurred after 1929; the condition was inherent in the structure.”

Heeding Haldane’s recommendation, British miners began taking canaries into the coal mines — carried in small metal or wooden cages — to detect the presence of odorless carbon monoxide. If the canary showed any signs of distress (or if it suddenly died), it was a clear sign to the miners that conditions were unsafe and the mine should be evacuated. The use of canaries in this way is perhaps the most common example of what is known as a sentinel species, a term applied to animals or plants that serve as harbingers of danger to human health or the wider environment. 

It wasn’t long before the use of canaries in coal mines became commonplace not only in Britain but also in the United States and Canada. The birds became such a trusted part of the mining process — part of the team, you could say — that miners were known to treat their avian companions almost as pets. In some cases, special cages were designed for the canaries that could be used to resuscitate the poor little birds should they succumb to noxious gases. These metal-and-glass cages were fitted with a small oxygen tank. If the canary inside began to show signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, the cage door was closed and a valve opened to revive the bird with a fresh supply of oxygen.

Canaries were used in British coal mines for almost a century. Then, in 1986, hundreds of canaries breathed a collective sigh of relief when Britain announced that the use of birds in coal mines would stop, to be replaced with modern detectors, often known as “electronic noses.” But to this day, canaries retain their connection with coal mining, as much a symbol of the profession as coal-blackened faces, hard hats, and pickaxes. The canary’s role in the mines was so significant that it also became ingrained in the English language: The common idiom “a canary in the coal mine” is still used to refer to something that gives an early warning of danger. 

Precision Medical Instruments

The Romans were great pioneers in the field of surgery. We know from archaeological evidence — including well-preserved artifacts found in the buried remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum — that the Romans used precision medical instruments including bone forceps, catheters, obstetrical hooks, scalpels, and surgical scissors. The level of technology found in some of these tools is not so far from their modern counterparts. The Roman version of the vaginal speculum, for example, did not change significantly until the 20th century. The Romans also had a medical military corps with specialized field surgeons who were tasked with keeping the legions fit, healthy, and alive. 

Underfloor Heating

Heated floors might seem like a modern luxury, but the Romans started using them 2,000 years ago. Ancient Romans used an underfloor heating system known as a hypocaust, which drew in hot air from a wood-burning furnace outside the house and channeled it into a chamber below the floor. This not only warmed the floor itself but radiated heat throughout the home. Many examples of hypocausts can still be found in the foundations of villas and townhouses in Roman centers in Germany and England, where cold winters would have made the toasty floors especially inviting. 

The Shopping Mall

Markets have long been prevalent throughout the world as a gathering place for people to sell and buy all sorts of goods and produce. But the first permanent and covered shopping mall was likely built by the Romans: Trajan's Market (Mercatus Traiani), constructed between 100 and 110 CE. Made of red brick and concrete, it had six levels that housed around 150 different shops, as well as government offices and living accommodations. A street on the upper level, meanwhile, was named Via Biberatica after the Latin word for “drink,” suggesting that even the Romans needed to unwind after a hard day’s shopping. 

Our Calendar

Most of the world now uses the Gregorian calendar, first introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. But credit for the modern calendar should really be given to the Romans. The Gregorian calendar is based on the much earlier Julian calendar (which itself owed a lot to the Egyptian solar calendar), introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The calendars share many similarities, though one of the main differences is the treatment of those pesky leap years. The Gregorian calendar handles them more precisely, resulting in a discrepancy between the two calendars that is currently 13 days, and will become 14 days in 2100.