Waiters In Paris Once Went On Strike Over Mustaches
This month in 1907 waiters in Paris went on strike. Yes, they wanted better pay and improved working conditions, but their most high profile demand: they wanted the right to grow mustaches.
This Worm-Shaped Pipe-Clearing Robot Could Be The Fatberg Fighter We Need
There really is a robot now called the Pipe-Worm. It's built to unclog pipes, and it does it by mimicking earthworms.
A Robot Seacraft Is Exploring The Ocean For A Few Years
It's called the Intrepid Benthic Rover II, and its five year (or more) mission is to explore the deep ocean, most of the time by itself.
John Hanson, The Guy Who Was Sort Of President Before George Washington
Today in 1781, the first U.S. president, John Hanson, was elected. Of course, being a U.S. president in 1781 was very different from the job George Washington, the first president under the U.S. Constitution, would hold eight years later.
Robots Are Trying To Clean Up The Beaches
Summer is beach season, and for those times when people leave litter and other waste behind, there are two separate projects to develop robots to clean up after them.
The Original Olympic Flag Went Missing For Over 70 Years
The original Olympic flag flew over the Games for the first time in 1920, in Antwerp, Belgium, but before it could be passed to the next host city, the “Antwerp flag” disappeared - for over seven decades.
The CIA Once Created Robot Fish
It's National Go Fishing Day, though the fish in today’s story aren’t exactly the ones you’d expect to catch. They’re robotic fish called Charlie and Charlene, and they were developed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Self-Directed Robot Fish May Point The Way Toward Roads Full Of Self-Driving Cars
Blueswarm is a school of autonomous robot fish who scan their surroundings and calculate how they can swim together without colliding, like a school of actual fish. And the technology modeled on "implicit coordination" may be useful for lots of other high-tech devices in the future.
Robot Lifeguards Could Keep People Safe In The Pool
A team of German developers may have just made the pool safer, by developing a water-based lifeguard robot that can rescue swimmers in distress.
Pigs Can Be Video Gamers
It's true, a researcher at Purdue University and her team trained four pigs on how to use a joystick and play a video game. Pigs are pretty smart, after all.