For some people, one of the most tantalizing challenges is being told, explicitly or implicitly, that you can’t do something.  In 1965, MAD magazine writer Tom Koch laid down one such challenge.  He wrote an article laying out the rules of a sport he invented called 43-man squamish.  The article was illustrated by artist George Woodbridge, and judging by the mail MAD received from its readers, it was a huge hit.  Of course, Koch didn’t really intend the article to b e a challenge.  His idea was to invent a sport that was complex, convoluted, absurd, and ultimately unplayable.  It featured the kind of text readers of MAD, not athletes, would expect.  It’s an uncommon sport that has instructions like, “The offensive team, upon receiving the Pritz, receives five Snivels in which to advance to the enemy goal.  If they do it on the ground, it’s a Woomik and counts as 17 points.  If they hit it across with their Frullips it’s a Dermish which only counts points.  Only the offensive Nibling

In a lot of American buildings, there is no 13th floor.  It's bad luck! At least once (but as many as three times) a year, Friday the 13th appears on the Gregorian calendar.  Traditionally this is supposed to be a day of bad luck, but just where that superstition comes from isn’t quite clear.  One popular belief is that it dates to Friday, October 13, 1307.  Legend has it that King Philip VI of France gave an order that a number of the Knights Templar were to be arrested on this date.  The arrests were supposed to occur simultaneously, to prevent them from resisting.  King Philip did indeed do this, but the association of that date with this act was not noticed until the early 20th century, so it’s unlikely there’s a connection.  Another theory is that the Last Supper had thirteen people in attendance, and according to Biblical accounts, it was one of the thirteen (Judas) who betrayed Christ, who was arrested and crucified by the Romans the next day, which was Good Friday.  T

The bustling town of Sodom. After God gave Abram this land, peace reigned, except for the dozen or so kings who were at war with each other.   To fund their wars, Sodom was pillaged, and Lot land was cleaned out of its livestock and its women, leaving only a vacant… a vacant… well, I just can’t think of the right word here, but basically, he was broke.   When Uncle Abram found out about this, he raised a militia and went to get it back.   He did get it, too, except for the percentages he doled out to everyone he met who worshiped the same God he did.   When the king of Sodom asked not for goods but for people, Abram turned him down flat. God liked the way Abram snubbed the king of Sodom.   “I keep telling you, Abram,” said God, “this nation thing is going to work out.   I’m going to come down hard of the king of Sodom, but you, you’re getting all this land, which is completely empty except for ten nations of people who are already living there—but who’s counting?”

In 1869, traffic in Manhattan was a nightmare.  It's not so great today, but it could be a lot worse.  Broadway, the main north/south artery, was regularly clogged with horse carts, pedestrians and omnibuses, slowly making their way up and down the island.  The avenues of New York, which also run north to south, weren't much better.  There had to be a better way.  A train would make sense, except that the city was so crowded, there was nowhere to lay the tracks.  An underground train would be great, but the only engines available at the time were steam engines, which give off a lot of smoke.  An underground train would be impossible to adequately ventilate. Alfred Ely Beach An inventor from Springfield, Massachusetts named Alfred Ely Beach thought he had a solution.  He conceived what he called the Beach Pneumatic Transit, which he proposed would be New York's first subway system.  He imagined a series of underground cars that would be rushed along not by steam locom

The first food ever cooked by microwaves was a chocolate bar.  This wasn’t on purpose.  It happened in 1945 when a scientist working for Raytheon got too close to a room where radar was being tested.  Radar was generated by magnetron tubes that produce a radio waves of a very small frequency—thus giving them the name microwave.  Following this accidental (and messy) discovery, the scientists at Raytheon tried cooking other things, like popcorn (it worked!) and a raw egg in the shell (it exploded.  I tried the same experiment when I was a teenager, not realizing that in doing so, I was standing on the shoulders of giants.  I cleaned up the mess, but my mother still wasn’t happy about it.)  The first microwave ovens were sold commercially under the name Radarange, since they grew out of radar research.  Early adopters paid over $2,000 for the first Radaranges, which is a lot for a microwave now; it was more or less two months’ household wage in 1947!  Mostly they were used in commercial

The happy couple on their road trip west of Eden. This is a story that starts with temptation.   However, since it was God who was doing the tempting, no one generally speaks ill of it.   The temptation was this: “Abram, get out of town and I’ll give you a nation that no one will ever speak ill of without suffering for having done so, and that no one will do harm to without suffering for it.”   Since it’s always a good idea to listen to someone who claims that God told him to get a crowd of people together and head out into the desert, Abram had no trouble getting a nice crowd around him.   And at age 75, he was in the prime of his life, all set to wander around the desert. The destination was Canaan, which was to be the land of the Israelites.   The Israelites would be the true inheritors of this land, because no one else was living there.   Except the Canaanites.   At this time, though, the Israelites were still the Hebrews, ready to take the promised land by kicking o