IT Insights Blog — history

The Transcona Grain Elevator, built at Transcona in Canada's Manitoba province, is notorious in civil engineering circles for its near collapse in 1913. The structure's bin house — the part that includes the bins, or vertical cylinders (65 of them in this particular instance), where grain is stored — famously tilted 27 degrees to the west in a single day. This occurred shortly after the structure's initial opening, when it was filled with 875,000 bushels of grain.

There are lots of different things in life that we periodically replace or renew. Underwear, for example. There's probably no need to explain the rationale behind this practice. Just know that, if you haven't been changing your underwear often, well, you should probably make a different choice. Doing it every day would be ideal, but you ought to at least consider attending to this rather routine item of personal hygiene management a couple of times per week.

The discovery of the long-lost but never-forgotten city of Troy in present-day Turkey was one of the landmark archaeological finds of the 19th century, and, indeed, in the history of archaeology. Heinrich Schliemann unearthed Troy while excavating a 100-foot-high mound on the Aegean coast of Turkey, though the adventurous German was more of a colorful character and archaeological hobbyist than a researcher or scientist. Think Indiana Jones without a professorship or a teaching position.

All the way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two crazy kids in love — actually two married corporate lawyers, but that's just not as vibey — moved from New York to Paris and a dream was born. While in Paris, Tim and Nina Zagat began to compile a list of their favorite local restaurants, keeping track of whether each was or was not worthy of future visits. The idea stuck and when the Zagats moved back to New York a few years later, they began compiling a list of New York restaurants.

Long ago in the middle centuries of the Roman imperial era, the emperor Septimius Severus died after appointing his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, to succeed him. The boys had an irreconcilable hatred of each other, and only managed to jointly rule the empire for about 11 months before Caracalla had Geta assassinated. Not "knifed in a dark alley" assassinated, either. Geta was murdered at a summit meeting arranged by his and Caracalla's mother