Архитектура

All around the country, there stands a figure so much a part of historical architecture and urban landscapes that she is...

In 1891, a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts invented the game we would come to know as basketbal...

In the mid-19th century, decades before home refrigeration became the norm, you could find ice clinking in glasses from ...

The Iron Curtain was an 8,000-mile border separating East from West during the Cold War. Something unexpected evolved in...

In September 1958, Bank of America began an experiment – one that would have far reaching effects on our lives and on th...

Date labels (e.g. “use-by”, “sell-by”, “best-by”, “best if used by,” “expires on”, etc.) are on a lot of products. Forty...

In 1950s Soviet Russia, citizens craved Western popular music—everything from jazz to rock & roll. But smuggling vinyl w...

The skyline of beautiful downtown Oakland, California, is defined by various towers by day, but at night there is one th...

For Americans, the sight of pagoda roofs and dragon gates means that you are in Chinatown. Whether in San Francisco, New...

Many material trifles, such as Silly Putty, started as attempts at serious inventions, but in rare cases, the process wo...

From rock-paper-scissors, to tennis, to Mario Kart, every game is a designed system and all games are grounded in the sa...

On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened in London and thousands of people came out to celebrate it. Women wore...

Ballots are an essential component to a working democracy, yet they are rarely created (or even reviewed) by design prof...

Households tend to take pantry food for granted, but canned beans, powered cheese, and bags of moist cookies were not de...

The phrase ‘from Central Casting’ has become a kind of cultural shorthand for a stereotype or archetype, a subject so vi...

99% Invisible is honored to accept a 2015 Third Coast International Audio Festival award for Structural Integrity, a sto...

Indian philosopher and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a vision: he would build a Utopian city from the ground up, sta...

When something is lost in the mail, it feels like it has disappeared into the ether, like it was sucked into a black hol...

On the night of March 30, 2005, the Powerball jackpot was 25 million dollars. The grand prize winner was in Tennessee, b...

On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual paper route. A short ti...

There are around 6,000 cargo vessels out on the ocean right now, carrying 20,000,000 shipping containers, which are deli...

In 1860, a chance find at sea forever changed our understanding of marine habitats, sparking an unprecedented push to ex...

Stirling, Scotland is the home of Stirling Castle, which sits atop a giant crag, or hill, overlooking the whole town of ...

In communities across America, lawns that are brown or overgrown are considered especially heinous. Elite squads of dedi...

No matter which James Bond actor is your favorite, it’s undeniable that the Sean Connery films had the best villains. Th...

The Bowery, in lower Manhattan, is one of New York’s oldest neighborhoods. It’s been through a lot of iterations. In the...

In 1933, delegates from the United States and fourteen other countries met in Montevideo, Uruguay to define what it mean...

By the late 1980s, AIDS had been in the United States for almost a decade. AIDS had be the number one killer of young me...

So many classic movies have been made in downtown Los Angeles. Though many don’t actually take place in downtown Los Ang...

More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error, for some car industry people, a fully-aut...

On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants boarded an Airbus 330 in Rio de...

Sigmund Freud’s ground-breaking techniques and theories for therapy came to be called “psychoanalysis,” and it was embod...

People who make horror movies know: if you want to scare someone, use scary music. Some of the most creative use of musi...

This week on 99% Invisible, we have two stories about the early days of broadcasting and home sound recording, produced ...

On January 3rd, 1961, Che Guevara suggested to Fidel Castro that they go play a round of golf. They drove out to what wa...

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland is a busy place. Anyone who dies unexpectedly in the sta...

We live in a post-billiards age. There was an age of billiards, and it has been over for so long, most of us have no ide...

Retail spaces are designed for impulse shopping. When you go to a store looking for socks and come out with a new shirt,...

According to legend, Sarah Winchester’s friends advised the grieving widow to seek the services of a Boston spiritual me...

During World War II, a massive recruitment effort targeted students from the top art schools across the country. These y...