In 1978 NASA scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais predicted that the number of artificial satellites in low earth orbit might reach such density as to spark a cascade of collisions. The resulting debris belt would eventually make some orbits nearly impassable. “Under certain conditions,” they wrote, “the belt could begin to form within this century and could be a significant problem during the next century.”
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After being tortured, an Athenian named Herostratus confessed to having set fire to the Temple of Artemis during the fourth century bc in order to attain long-lasting fame. Ephesian officials executed Herostratus and ordered his name removed from public record and never to be uttered again. Despite these injunctions—known as damnatio memoriae—Herostratus’ name appeared in the writings of Strabo and Theopompus. The term Herostratic fame thus refers to “fame gained at any cost.” “Herostratus lives that burned the Temple of Diana,” wrote Thomas Browne in 1658. “He is almost lost that built it.”
Pianist and oil heir Roger Davidson brought his computer into a service shop in Mount Kisco, New York, in 2004, complaining of a virus. The owner, Vickram Bedi, confirmed there was a virus and claimed its source was a hard drive in Honduras, which he later explained was linked to an international conspiracy involving Opus Dei that threatened Davidson’s life. Over the course of six years, Bedi charged Davidson over $6 million for data retrieval and personal protection. Bedi was sentenced to jail in 2013.
When Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger in June 1928, the New York Sun ran an article with the headline MISS EARHARD SPURNS FASHIONS: SHE CARES LITTLE ABOUT CLOTHES, DOES NOT USE LIPSTICK—LIKES TO FENCE AND DRIVE CAR. “Flying is a perfectly natural thing in her opinion,” it read, “and requires no special togs: a dress is as good air equipment as trousers.”
Lorenzo de’ Medici once observed a young sculptor complete the head of an old and wrinkled faun whose mouth he had rendered open. While astonished at the craftsmanship, Lorenzo pointed out that old men never have all their teeth. Once the great patron of the arts had left, the artist knocked out one of the teeth; when Lorenzo returned and saw the statue again, he was so taken with the new version that he decided to adopt the artist, whose name was Michelangelo.
Overworked and suffering from chest and stomach conditions, Emperor Marcus Aurelius took a prescription from his physician, Galen, for opium. According to Galen, the emperor did not like that the drug made him drowsy, so he stopped taking it. Then he found himself unable to sleep, so he started taking it again.
Carl Jung attributed his split with his mentor Sigmund Freud around 1910 in part to a generational divide. “Our descendants are our most dangerous enemies,” Jung argued, “for they will outlive us, and, therefore, without fail, will take the power from our enfeebled hands.”
For the treatment of “delirium and mania combined with shameless behavior,” ninth-century Persian polymath al-Razi offered a remedy by medical theorist Simʿun: “Bathe the patient’s head with a decoction of elecampane and sheep’s trotters, pour milk over him, put dung upon him, make him snuff sweet violet oil and breast milk, and feed him anything that is cold, fatty, and fills and moistens the brain.”
Thomas Jefferson tried to avoid using servants at dinner parties by placing a dumbwaiter near each seat. According to one society chronicler, he feared “much of the domestic and even public discord was produced by the mutilated and misconstructed repetition of free conversation by these mute but not inattentive listeners.”
Dorothy Parker was once asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence. “You can lead a horticulture,” she replied, “but you can’t make her think.”
In 1999 an Inuit organization complained that representatives from Donna Karan International had come to the Canadian Arctic and paid between $10,000 and $15,000 for handmade Inuit clothing. “They went to the bar up in Yellowknife,” the group told the Ottawa Citizen, “and people just sold them their clothes.” Items purchased later appeared in Donna Karan’s Madison Avenue store.
The third-century Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius stated that one of the favorite sayings of Antisthenes was, “The fellowship of brothers of one mind was stronger than any fortified city.” Laërtius also recalled an anecdote about Socrates—when asked by a young man if he should marry or not, the philosopher replied, “Whichever you do, you will regret it.”
The first-century Roman writer Gaius Julius Hyginus relates the story of Agnodice, a young Athenian woman who traveled to Alexandria to study medicine. On her return to Athens she disguised herself as a man in order to practice, and was brought before the court of the Areopagus. “You men are not spouses but enemies,” Agnodice’s patients protested, “since you are condemning the woman who discovered health for us.” Around 500 bc, the law forbidding women to study medicine was repealed.
“Aristotle thought earthquakes were caused by winds trapped in subterranean caves,” wrote Anne Carson in her 2019 play Norma Jeane Baker of Troy. “We’re more scientific now, we know it’s just five guys fracking the fuck out of the world while it’s still legal.”
A CIA report declassified in 2000 revealed concerns about extrasensory perception during the space race in the 1960s: a Russian newspaper argued that cosmonauts “get together mentally with each other easier than with people on Earth,” while a Chicago Tribune columnist worried that the Soviets “may be the first to put a human thought in orbit or achieve mind-to-mind communication with men on the moon.”