Impossible Inventions

Greek fire, ice aircraft carriers, spaceships riding atomic bombs to Saturn.

39 stories

• The 480 Million Copper Needles America Scattered Around Earth to Build a Radio Ring
• The Ancient Greek Robot Maid Who Poured Your Wine — and Then Quietly Watered It Down
• The Car Henry Ford Tried to Grow From Soybeans — and the Axe He Swung to Prove Plastic Was Tough
• The 'Electric' Hairbrush With No Electricity in It — and the Tiny Compass Packed In to Prove It Worked
• The Millionaire Who Declared Gravity 'Enemy Number One' — and Paid Colleges to Put Up Monuments Against It
• The Pigeons a Pharmacist Fitted With Tiny Cameras — and the Patent Office Said It Was Impossible
• The Rain Hat That Showed NASA How to Fold a 100-Foot Balloon Into Orbit
• The Rose-Colored Glasses Farmers Bought by the Million — for Their Chickens
• The South-Pointing Chariot That Needed a Man Hidden Inside to Point South
• The Math Teacher Who Made Ice Out of Sunshine — Until a Report Poured Cold Water on It
• The £50-a-Night Electric Bed That Promised Couples a Baby
• The Perpetual Motion Machine Secretly Powered by an Old Man Upstairs Eating Bread
• The Giant Space Mirror Russia Built to Turn Night Into Day — and the Antenna That Snagged the Sequel
• The Concentration Helmet That Needed Its Own Oxygen Tank
• The Wooden Flying Boat That Flew Once, for 26 Seconds — and Was Kept Ready to Fly for 29 More Years
• The Bronze Dragon That Spat Out a Ball Over an Earthquake Nobody Felt
• The Head-Bump Machine That Printed Your Personality on Ticker Tape
• The 3,000 Letters the Post Office Fired at Florida Inside a Cruise Missile
• The Coin-Operated Holy Water Machine That Beat the Vending Machine by 1,800 Years
• The Scientist Who Faced a Charging Bull With a Cape in One Hand and a Radio Transmitter in the Other
• The Sewing Machine Salesman San Diego Hired to Make Rain — Who Filled the Reservoir and Never Got Paid
• The Bomb Full of Sleeping Bats That Burned Down Its Own Air Base
• The Chemical That Sets Fire to Sand — and the Rocket Chemist Who Recommended Running Shoes
• The Plan to Set Off a Nuclear Bomb on the Moon So Everyone Could Watch
• The Rocket-Powered Wheel That Chased Britain's Admirals Into Barbed Wire
• The Truck Driver Who Flew a Lawn Chair to 16,000 Feet on 42 Weather Balloons
• The Flying Saucer the Air Force Built That Maxed Out at 35 MPH
• The Mechanical Duck That Fooled Paris With Fake Poop
• Greek Fire: The Byzantine Weapon That Burned on Water — and Whose Recipe Died With the Empire
• Starlite: The Fireproof Plastic a Hairdresser Invented and Took to His Grave
• The 2,000-Year-Old Computer Found in a Shipwreck
• The Aircraft Carrier Britain Tried to Build Out of Ice
• The Airplane That Carried a Nuclear Reactor
• The Bomb Three Pigeons Were Trained to Steer
• The Motor That Ran for Twenty-Six Years on a Secret Room Full of Compressed Air
• The Roman Cup That Was Accidentally Nanotechnology
• The Seesaw That Was Built to Raise the Dead
• The Spaceship That Was Supposed to Ride Atomic Bombs to Saturn
• The Two Vacuum Cleaners That Learned to Breathe

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