Matt Novak

Mother Takes A Holiday: Selling Women’s Liberation With Technology

The 30-minute 1952 film Mother Takes a Holiday was produced by the Whirlpool Corporation to sell washers and dryers. Whether it achieved this goal or not I really don’t know, but it’s a fascinating artifact of post-war techno-utopian thinking, slathered with a healthy dose of sexism. “What does the emancipation of American women mean to…

Kraft Foods Gave Away a Real Spaceship Simulator in 1959

If you were an American kid in the 1950s and 60s you were bombarded with an amazing promise: one day, when you’re all grown up, you’ll be able to vacation on the moon. But until then you’ll have to settle for space-adventure TV shows and comic books. Unless, of course, you won this real live…

1 in 3 Americans are on file in the FBI’s criminal database

The FBI has over 77.7 million Americans in its master database of criminals. And according to the Wall Street Journal, they’re adding between 10,000 and 12,000 new names per day. That means that roughly one out of every three American adults has a file with the FBI. From a new article in the Wall Street…

Some people in the 19th century called brunch “blunch”

There are all kinds of dark alternate histories to think about. What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if the doomsday prophecies about 2012 had made any sense? And what if brunch had actually been called blunch? As the New Republic reports, it nearly happened. Well, the blunch one. When the concept…

“Flying Car” Crash in Florida Leaves Two Injured

Two people were injured after a Maverick brand “flying car” crashed today in Marion County, Florida. Both reportedly escaped with minor injuries. The Maverick has been involved in at least two other accidents during testing, one in 2012 and another in 2013. “This homemade vehicle managed to make flight with two people inside but then…

Don’t Get Too Excited About That New “Hoverboard” Just Yet

People are understandably really excited about the latest hoverboard currently being crowdfunded at Kickstarter. It’s called the Hendo and it’s being developed by Greg and Jill Henderson for their company Arx Pax. Is it real? Yes. Has our Back to the Future hoverboard finally arrived? Sadly, no. The New York Times reporters who tried out…

Isaac Asimov’s Newly Published 1959 Paper for DARPA on Creativity

Isaac Asimov was one of the great sci-fi writers of the 20th century. So naturally, at the dawn of the space age, the military wanted to tap his brain. In 1959 he was approached by ARPA (now known as DARPA) to “think outside of the box” about how ideas are formed. His brief work for…

From Football Field to Battlefield: A Futuristic 1950s Vision of TV

As TV technology stormed into American homes during the early 1950s, more and more people started to ask, why don’t we use this stuff on the battlefield? They imagined a world where commanders could remotely monitor the activity of troops on the ground — maybe even from halfway around the world. The January 1952 issue…

Is That a Depression-Era Projector In Your Pocket Or Are You Just…

The June 1930 issue of Science and Invention magazine featured this amazing little pocket projector. But much like other small handheld gadgets of the time, it was pretty impractical given its battery needs. https://gizmodo.com/this-1920s-shockwatch-was-like-a-taser-for-your-wrist-1541046903 From Science and Invention: A complete pocket-sized motion-picture projector has been introduced in Berlin, and has become very popular there. Current…

6 Fake Ebola Cures Being Peddled Online

Throughout history, hucksters have emerged to sell bullshit “cures” for diseases to fearful people. Today these frauds make their home on the internet. And they’re selling bullshit cures for Ebola. There is no known cure— or vaccine— for Ebola, but that’s not stopping shameless profiteers from exploiting the panic over this deadly virus. Below, six…

Curious Alice Is 1971’s Tripped-Out Version of Lewis Carroll’s Classic

In 1971, the National Institute of Mental Health released a short film that was intended to dissuade kids from trying drugs. But if there was ever an anti-drug movie that made kids want to try drugs, this is it. Titled “Curious Alice,” the film was a take-off on the Lewis Carroll stories of Alice in…

Belmore Browne painting the background for the Bighorn Sheep Group at the American Museum of Natural History in February of 1941. Factually is Gizmodo’s new blog of fun facts, interesting photos, and weird trivia. Join us on Twitter and Facebook.

UberPLUS: Like UberX But For L.A. Cliches

Uber launched a new car service in Los Angeles today. It’s basically the old one that everybody uses. But it’s more expensive and perfect for people who reinforce stereotypes about vapid Angelenos only obsessed with shiny, expensive cars! My youngest brother recently moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. While out at one of our fair…

The richest 1% of people own half the world’s wealth

A new report from Credit Suisse shows that the richest one percent of people on Earth own about half of the world’s total wealth. Yeah, you read that right. From the Guardian: According to the Credit Suisse global wealth report (pdf), a person needs just $3,650 – including the value of equity in their home…

Wernher von Braun Predicted We’d Send Men to Mars No Sooner Than 2050s

Student researchers at MIT have concluded that given current technology, any colonists to Mars would die after about 68 days. Mars One, the company that hopes to put people on Mars by the 2025 (and film a reality TV show there, so you know they’re legit) insists that the MIT researchers are wrong. But as…

This Nine Inch Nails Video Was Shot At The Scene of An Infamous Murder

The 1992 Nine Inch Nails song “Gave Up” is fantastic. But if you’re at all familiar with the official video for the song, you’ll know that it’s a bit fucked up. The video was filmed at 10050 Cielo Drive — the Los Angeles home where actress Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by members of the…

1918’s 48-Phonograph Sound System Was Way Ahead of Its Time

Before the rise of synchronized sound in the late 1920s, movie theater owners tried all kinds of different ways to get words and music into the movie-going experience. They brought in enormous orchestras, they built gigantic sound effects machines, and they even tried putting voice actors behind the screen who would read lines for the…

The owners of Ebola.com want $150,000 for the domain

There are a lot of different ways to make money in times of fear. A company in Nevada has apparently found their own way, now that more than 4,000 people have died from Ebola and the world is in a state of panic. Blue String Ventures owns the domain name Ebola.com and they’re offering to…

Raymond Loewy’s NASA Designs Are The Space Future That Never Was

From 1967 until 1973 NASA employed the services of Raymond Loewy, a legendary figure in the design world. Loewy’s firm produced over 3,000 designs for NASA during this time. And everything they produced for the space agency would fit perfectly in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — like the Loewy space taxi pictured above.…

Electric brand apple crate label from the turn of the 20th century in the National Museum of American History collection. Electric brand apples were shipped from Wenatchee, Washington by the Mann Fruit Company. Factually is Gizmodo’s new blog of fun facts, interesting photos, and weird trivia. Join us on Twitter and Facebook.