Master of Impossible Crime

In 1659, a ship of the East India Company lost its mast and was forced ashore in Sri Lanka. The captain, Robert Knox, inadvertently angered the ruler, Rajasinghe II, who forbade Knox and his crew from leaving the island. Knox became a farmer and moneylender for 19 years before he escaped. When Knox returned to England, he came with “a strange intoxicating herb like hemp” which he had “often experimented [with] himself, [so there was] no Cause of Fear, tho' possibly there may be of Laughter."

Why would a burglar LEAVE something rather than take it?

Edward Hines. He was a Commissioner of the Wayne County Road Commission in Michigan from 1906 to 1938.

One day in 1911, he watched a milk truck leak milk down a dirt road. He realized a white line could be used to keep traffic coming from different directions on the same road, having their own lanes. He also pioneered the practice of snow removal on public roads.

Listening is one of the simplest ways to learn, build trust, and understand others. The people who grow the most are often the ones who spend less time talking and more time paying attention.

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A mice-cream.

In the good old railway days of Italy, whenever you arrived at a station, one of the first things you heard was the cry, “Aqua Minerale! Gas or No Gas!” One of the most popular items was Pellegrino, which was not available in the United States. Older Italians in the United States made Aqua Minerali gas by injecting CO₂ into a pressurized container of mineral water. It was expensive and time-consuming. Today, you can buy Pellegrino by the case… and you are looking at the graveyard of Aqua Minerali gas.

Not every thought needs to be spoken. Some of the strongest conversations are the ones where patience and restraint speak louder than the perfect comeback.

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How can a Phantom 4 Jet disappear? But then, again, never be lost?

In a saloon in Omaha, Nebraska, F. P. Robinson, paid for a nickel glass of beer with a Mexican dollar. Since the Mexican dollar looked like the American dollar,the bartender gave him $.95 in change. But the Mexican dollar was only worth $.50 in the United States… so Robinson had scammed the bar out of $.50. So off to the pokey he went!

Stephan Bibrowski, born in Wilczagówa, Poland, in 1890, had a body covered with hair. His mother, Benedetta, claimed this was because her husband, Michael, had been mauled by a lion when she, Benedetta, was pregnant. When Stephan was four years old, his mother sold him, to a circus empresario and Stephan ‘toured’ Europe until the 1920s.

For the record, the first traffic light in America was at the corner of Euclid and 105th in Cleveland.

Also, for the record, the light came with a buzzer to alert drivers when the light was about to change color.

Originally, green was for caution, and white was ‘go.’ Red was used because trains used that color to indicate that a train was stopped. White was eliminated as the ‘go’ signal because sometimes drivers thought bright stars were the ‘go’ signal.

…had nothing to do with cops originally. It was the highest degree of Freemasonry and to get the Third Degree, you had to take a difficult test to prove your proficiency.

In the last century, washing machines were too expensive for most homes, so the laundry was sent out. Wives kept track of what ‘went out’ with what ‘came back’ on laundry lists. Today, laundry lists are what husbands take to the grocery store. Now there is a new term in vogue: HHS, “Helpless Husband Syndrome.” You can see it play out every day when a husband compares the picture on his iPhone to the label on the can to make sure you buys the exact product his wife told him to buy.

People often discover flaws in a system only when those flaws affect everyone equally. Fairness has a way of becoming more important when no one is exempt from the consequences.

Join Steve Levi as Heinz Noonan investigates a bizarre case on a California island where an unexplained shower of peanuts leaves locals searching for answers. No suspects. No obvious motive. Just a mystery that may have more to do with politics than peanuts. Sometimes the strangest clues reveal the biggest agendas.

History is not the story of the past; it is the study of the future. This one, with the group of men and little boy, was, in its day, as significant as a Steve Jobs public announcement of the creation of Apple. At the top of the two spires, at the center and on the right, appear to be two sets of boards. Well, they are boards, actually. Those were known as Wigwags. They were state-of-the-art communication in their day. They were line-of-sight communication down railroads across the country and worked as semaphore signals. Messages were passed down the string of Wigwags, a letter at a time, man to man. They were put out of business by the telegraph, and you can see the new telegraph system that was replacing the Wigwags in the upper left of the photograph. Those wires are the incoming telegraph system. I am sure that boy, dressed in his Sunday best, was told he was witnessing the end of an era and the birth of a new one. Technology was moving America forward, and this photograph was a snapshot of the past – and the future.

To reach the second-hand shop on the other side of the road.