What In The World Happened Here?
Index: 1 - 100What In The World Happened Here? I: (
Link)
wagga
Trinity (first nuclear test 1945)
What In The World Happened Here? II: (
Link)
wagga
Battle of Hastings (Norman conquest of England in 1066)
What In The World Happened Here? III: (
Link)
George
Solvay Conference (October 1927, Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons -- most famous physics conference ever)
What In The World Happened Here? IV: (
Link)
AlanK
Ford Theatre ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,,,?")
What In The World Happened Here? V: (
Link)
AlanK
Big Chill (Leiden laboratory of H.K. Ohnnes, where helium was liquified and superfluidity discovered in 1908 and superconductivity was discovered in 1911)
What In The World Happened Here? VI: (
Link)
wagga
First Flight (human, heavier than air, powered... you know... the Wright Brothers)
What In The World Happened Here? VII: (
Link)
wagga
Dealey Plaza ("the grassy knoll")
What In The World Happened Here? VIII: (
Link)
AlanK
Sutter's Mill (site of the trigger to the 1849 California Gold Rush)
What In The World Happened Here? IX: (
Link)
AlanK
Princip Bridge (Latin Bridge, Sarajevo... site of the ambush that triggered "The War to End All Wars")
What In The World Happened Here? X: (
Link)
Harvey
Mount Cook (Aoraki/Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand -- 12,316')
What In The World Happened Here? XI: (
Link)
wagga
Ground Zero (the hot dog stand in the center courtyard at the Pentagon)
What In The World Happened Here? XII: (
Link)
AlanK
Tunguska event (believed to have been the air burst of a meteroroid or comet fragment on June 30, 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia)
What In The World Happened Here? XIII: (
Link)
AlanK
Tsar Bomba (the most powerful man-made nuclear explosion ever, October 30, 1961)
What In The World Happened Here? XIV: (
Link)
wagga
Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC)
What In The World Happened Here? XV: (
Link)
Saltydog
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), Hanford, Washington
What In The World Happened Here? XVI: (
Link)
wagga
Lookout Peak (peak near Mt. Baldy that was part of a very accurate measurement of the speed of light in 1924-1926)
What In The World Happened Here? XVII: (
Link)
AlanK
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (produced two Nobel prizes in 2 years -- 1986, 1987)
What In The World Happened Here? XVIII: (
Link)
AlanK
Radio antenna used in discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background, Crawford Hill, NJ, 1965
What In The World Happened Here? XIX: (
Link)
wagga
Tsunami Marker
(see this NY Times article) What In The World Happened Here? XX: (
Link)
wagga
Lituya Bay, Alaska (on July 9, 1958, an earthquake caused a landslide that resulted in the highest tsunami in recorded history -- 1719')
What In The World Happened Here? XXI: (
Link)
wagga
Graphic summary of world nuclear tests
What In The World Happened Here? XXII: (
Link)
wagga
Edgar Allen Poe Memorial, Baltimore, MD
What In The World Happened Here? XXIII: (
Link)
wagga
California Baking Co. a.k.a. Valley Lahvosh Bakery, Fresno, CA (with a side of music)
What In The World Happened Here? XXIV: (
Link)
wagga
Lake Peigneur, LA (on November 20, 1980, an incredible chain of events turned a freshwater lake into a salt water one, showing that oil drilling and salt mines do not mix well)
What In The World Happened Here? XXV: (
Link)
wagga
"Nuclear Energy" sculpture at site of first man-made chain reaction, Stagg Field, University of Chicago
What In The World Happened Here? XXVI: (
Link)
AlanK
Site of oldest known fission reactor (approximately 2 billion years ago) near Oklo, Gabon (Africa)
What In The World Happened Here? XXVII: (
Link)
wagga
Red Gate Woods (burial site of world's first man-made nuclear reactor)
What In The World Happened Here? XXVIII: (
Link)
wagga
Wittenburg Cathedral (Martin Luther, 95 Theses, October 31, 1517)
What In The World Happened Here? XXIX: (
Link)
wagga
Stringybark Creek Incident (Ned Kelly was hanged for the 1878 killing of three policemen in Victoria, Australia)
What In The World Happened Here? XXX: (
Link)
wagga
Great London Beer Flood disaster of 1814
What In The World Happened Here? XXXI: (
Link)
wagga
Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919
What In The World Happened Here? XXXII: (
Link)
AlanK
Dry Falls, WA (site of Bretz's Floods, aka Missoula Floods, aka Spokane Floods)
What In The World Happened Here? XXXIII: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
Stingray Point, VA (site of Capt. John Smith stingray incident, he of Jamestown Colony fame and many other things)
What In The World Happened Here? XXXIV: (
Link)
wagga
Harvard Bridge, Cambridge, MA (The length of the link between MIT and Boston is 364.4 smoots +/- an ear.)
What In The World Happened Here? XXXV: (
Link)
wagga
The
Ross Ice Shelf -- Gateway to the
Worst Journey in the World 100 years ago.
What In The World Happened Here? XXXVI: (
Link)
AlanK
Ytterby, Sweden. Seven chemical elements were discovered there. Four were named after the town: Ytterium (Y, 39), Terbium (Tb, 65), Erbium (Er, 68), and Ytterbium (Yb, 70). The other names had local connections: Gadolinium (Gd, 64), Holmium (Ho, 67), and Thulium (Tm, 69). They areall in the
Tom Lehrer song. What In The World Happened Here? XXXVII: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
The Tengye Dzong Olympics (1933) featured spectacular pole vaulting by Jack Longland, who used a section of a wireless mast. This event was held on the approach march from India through Tibet of the Fourth British Everest expedition.
What In The World Happened Here? XXXVIII: (
Link)
wagga
Robert Louis Stevenson Museum (and burial site), Samoa. It turns out that Samoa, which has been just to the east of the International Date Line, will declare itself to be west of the line on December 31 of this year. Suddenly, it will be a day later in Samoa.
What In The World Happened Here? XXXIX: (
Link)
tdtz
Skylab debris in Western Australia. According to
Wikipedia, ground controllers adjusted Skylab's orientation for ideal re-entry dynamics before reentry on July 11, 1979. It did not burn up as expected, and debris landed between Esperance and Rawlinna, southeast of Perth, Western Australia. The Shire of Esperance fined the United States $400 for littering. The fine was paid 30 years later, in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.
What In The World Happened Here? XL: (
Link)
wagga
Georgia Guidestones: A large granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient languages: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
What In The World Happened Here? XLI: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
The Lunar Landing Research Facility at NASA's
Langley Research Center. The LLRF was built in 1965 to prepare the Apollo astronauts for the final 150 feet of their lunar landings.
What In The World Happened Here? XLII: (
Link)
AlanK
Iffley Road Track, Oxford, UK -- Roger Bannister ran 1 mile in 3:59.4 on May 6, 1954.
What In The World Happened Here? XLIII: (
Link)
wagga
Queen Elizabeth II inspecting Merino sheep at the Wagga Wagga agricultural show in 1954 (
link). Our own wagga was
there.
What In The World Happened Here? XLIV: (
Link)
wagga
Barnes mystery -- Skull from 1879 London murder victim found in 2010 (see also
wiki).
What In The World Happened Here? XLV: (
Link)
wagga
Stump of the
General Noble Tree, the largest tree ever cut down.
What In The World Happened Here? XLVI: (
Link)
AlanK
Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) What In The World Happened Here? XLVII: (
Link)
wagga
First Space Shuttle landing -- Parking at Edwards AFB for the landing of STS-1.
What In The World Happened Here? XLVIII: (
Link)
wagga
Bletchley Park -- During World War II, the site of the main UK decryption effort. This is where the German Enigma machine cipher was broken.
What In The World Happened Here? XLVIX: (
Link)
AlanK
Fresno Sanitary Landfill (1937) -- The world's first sanitary landfill. Later a Superfund site, but a great innovation by the standards of its day.
What In The World Happened Here? L: (
Link)
wagga
Hetch Hetchy Valley.
What In The World Happened Here? LI: (
Link)
wagga
Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, where
Captain James Cook was killed in 1779.
What In The World Happened Here? LII: (
Link)
SierraNevada
Once future site of
Hoover Dam. What In The World Happened Here? LIII: (
Link)
wagga
Ankerwycke Yew. What In The World Happened Here? LIV: (
Link)
wagga
B-29 loading pits: (1)
Atomic bomb loading pit on Tinian (2)
X-1 loading pit at Edwards AFB. What In The World Happened Here? LV: (
Link)
wagga
VLA -- Very Large Array (radio astronomy observatory), New Mexico
What In The World Happened Here? LVI: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
Chalk River Laboratories Chalk River, Ontario, Canada
What In The World Happened Here? LVII: (
Link)
wagga
Newton's apple tree and
Einstein's palm tree What In The World Happened Here? LVIII: (
Link)
wagga
Molten Salt Reactor ExperimentWhat In The World Happened Here? LIX: (
Link)
AlanK
Pere Lachaise Cemetery (many very famous people are buried there, but Jim Morrison was the object of this thread).
What In The World Happened Here? LX: (
Link)
SaraC_UK
Magna Park was built on the
Bitteswell Aerodrome, where
Frank Whittle pioneered the
jet engine.
What In The World Happened Here? LXI: (
Link)
Rod
Steve Jobs' Garage -- "Apple Computer manufacturing plant from 1976-77."
What In The World Happened Here? LXII: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
Titan II accident site -- Damascus, Arkansas, September 19, 1980.
What In The World Happened Here? LXIII: (
Link)
wagga
The
Nine Ladies Stone Circle on Stanton Moor, Derbyshire dates from the early Bronze Age. It is believed to depict nine ladies turned to stone as a penalty for dancing on Sunday. It is featured as Ringham Moor in Stephen Booth's novel
Dancing with the Virgins. What In The World Happened Here? LXIV: (
Link)
wagga
Sculpture Symposium at
Broken Hill, NSW, Australia
What In The World Happened Here? LXV: (
Link)
SaraC_UK
Callanish Stone Circles on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. The island is also the site of the discovery of the medieval
Lewis Chessmen, which now reside in
The British Museum.
What In The World Happened Here? LXVI: (
Link)
wagga
The
Thomas Castro butcher shop in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia figured in the infamous 19th century
Tichbourne legal case.
What In The World Happened Here? LXVII: (
Link)
wagga
Residents evacuating
Bikini atoll in March, 1946 prior to the first of 23 gigantic explosions (
US nuclear tests). "Bikini" is also the name of the famous 1946
invention of French engineer Louis Réard.
What In The World Happened Here? LXVIII: (
Link)
SaraC_UK
Jack Kerouac's original boyhood home at 9 Lupine Rd., Lowell, MA.
What In The World Happened Here? LXIX: (
Link)
wagga
Palomares, Spain, site of the
1966 B-52 crash that dumped 3 H-bombs on Spanish soil and one in the Mediterranean Sea.
What In The World Happened Here? LXX: (
Link)
SaraC_UK
On February 13, 1950, a US
B-36 crashed in the vicinity of
Stewart, British Columbia and Hyder, Alaska after jettisoning a nuclear bomb (this was the
first nuclear weapon loss in history).
What In The World Happened Here? LXXI: (
Link)
wagga
The
Intel 4004 4-bit CPU, the first commercial microprocessor. It was was announced 40 years ago on November 15, 1971.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXII: (
Link)
AlanK
Bahia de CochinosWhat In The World Happened Here? LXXIII: (
Link)
wagga
World's first commercial
solar updraft tower, in Jinshawan, Wuhai (Inner Mongolia), China (39°46'2.93"N 106°49'49.01"E).
What In The World Happened Here? LXXIV: (
Link)
HikeUp
Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands was the scene of a major Pacific Theater battle that reached a climax in
November, 1942.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXV: (
Link)
AlanK
Navassa Island, which was the first island seized under the
Guano Islands Act and retained as a US territory.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXVI: (
Link)
wagga
On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen become the first person to visit the South Pole.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXVII: (
Link)
wagga
Isaac Newton's
Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica is
available online.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXVIII: (
Link)
torpified
Heligoland is a German archipelago in the North Sea. In 1925, Werner Heisenberg visited Heligoland to escape persistent hay fever and made a major breakthrough in his development of
Matrix Mechanics.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXIX: (
Link)
wagga
The
SS Flying Enterprise ran into a storm on Christmas Day in 1951 and sank on January 10, 1952 not far from
The Lizard. Captain Carlsen became a
seafaring legend for sticking around during the prolonged sinking process.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXX: (
Link)
wagga
Operation Chastise was an attack on several German dams by the Royal Air Force on 16-17 May 1943. The attack was the subject of the 1554 film
The Dam BustersWhat In The World Happened Here? LXXXI: (
Link)
wagga
The
Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford University opened in 1770 and closed in 2007. It is an
archaeological site and it was the site of the first clinical trials of
penicillin.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXII: (
Link)
wagga
Haycock and Rugged Islands lie in the Red Sea and belong to Yemen. Beginning on December 19, 2011, volcanic activity resulted in a
new island between them. Yes, a
new island.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIII: (
Link)
AlanK
RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIV: (
Link)
wagga
Ryan Island, located on
Isle Royale in Lake Superior, "contains Moose Flats, a seasonal pond, which contains Moose Boulder. When Moose Flats is a pond, Moose Boulder becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world."
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXV: (
Link)
wagga
Lake Hillier on Middle Island, the largest island in the Recherche Archipelago of Western Australia, is one of the most unusual lacustrine features anywhere.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVI: (
Link)
SierraNevada
Burning Man site in Black Rock City, NV.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVII: (
Link)
wagga
The
Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the Canada-US border in Stanstead, Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont. A thick black line runs beneath the seats of the opera house and diagonally across the center of the library's reading room to mark the international boundary.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXVIII: (
Link)
AlanK
Texas Tower #4, one of three Distant Early Warning system towers, was built in 1957 and located in 180 feet of water in the Atlantic 58 miles offshore from New York. It collapsed in a storm in January 1961, killing 28 men and prompting courts martial and a Senate investigation.
What In The World Happened Here? LXXXIX: (
Link)
wagga
In The Great Escape from
Stalag Luft III, there were three tunnels: Tom, Dick, and Harry. Harry began under the stove in the picture for this puzzle.
What In The World Happened Here? XC: (
Link)
Harvey Lankford
Beginning on January 27, 1951,
Frenchman Flat, a dry lake north of Mercury, NV and south of Yucca Flat, NV became the site of many US nuclear tests as part of the Nevada Test Range. Bob R. has a
relevant story.
What In The World Happened Here? XCI: (
Link)
wagga
A small group of non-native trees at Cuyler Harbor on
San Miguel Island (one of the Southern California Channel Islands). Cuyler was the original site for the 1935 filming of Mutiny on the Bounty but the remoteness and bad weather led to a move to the isthmus on Santa Catalina.
What In The World Happened Here? XCII: (
Link)
wagga
The
1900 Summer Olympics were the only Olympic Games not run by the International Olympic Committee (The IOC ceded control to a special committee associated with the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.) At the center of the picture is the
Velodrome de Vincennes, the main stadium for the Games. It was the venue for the only Olympic experience cricket (the British beat the French badly). The velodrome was also the finish of the Tour de France from 1968 - 1974, a period that included the five victories of Eddy Merckx.
What In The World Happened Here? XCIII: (
Link)
wagga
James Murray in the Scriptorium at Banbury Road, a tin shed where the volunteer's word usage slips were collected in pigeonholes -- the manual method of organizing content for the
Oxford English Dictionary.
What In The World Happened Here? XCIV: (
Link)
AlanK
The Periodic Table originated inside the brain of
Dmitri Mendeleev (that's the "where" in this puzzle). Element 101 is named for him.
What In The World Happened Here? XCV: (
Link)
wagga
The
Sydney Cricket Ground. Some people claim (urban legend) that a cricketer actually hit the clock (that would be a Sixer). It is a fact that this stadium was the site of the
Sydney Riot of 1879 (soccer riots hadn't even been invented yet, and baseball riots still haven't been invented).
What In The World Happened Here? XCVI: (
Link)
Steve C
The
Tioga Gas Mart in Lee Vining, CA features the Whoa Nellie Deli ("the most unusual deli, inside a gas station, you will ever visit").
What In The World Happened Here? XCVII: (
Link)
wagga
The
N1 was the Russian equivalent of the US Saturn V rocket. The second launch attempt was arguably the world's largest man-made non-nuclear
explosion.
What In The World Happened Here? XCVIII: (
Link)
wagga
Krakatoa, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, exploded in 1883, killing at least 40,000 people and making the loudest noise in modern history.
What In The World Happened Here? XCIX: (
Link)
Steve C
Sable Island is a notorious sandbar (sable means "sand" in French) that is part of the Halifax, Nova Scotia municipality and also one of the "graveyards of the Atlantic."
What In The World Happened Here? C: (
Link)
wagga
The
Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916 in Jersey City "... was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materiel from being used by the Allies in World War I... " The torch-bearing arm of the Statue of Liberty arm was struck by shrapnel and has been closed to the public ever since.
