Road trip! Let's just pack up and go - but where should we go, stay, eat? Easy decisions for some, perilous for others, until a mailman lent his name to a little book that made the journey a whole lot safer, less humiliating and more enjoyable to generations of travelers setting out on the open road to a better future
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67. Guinness Book of Records, 1955
A compendium of fastests and highests and mosts in a book that nobody needs but millions have enjoyed - documenting the boundaries of human capability; just don't call it trivial, and please, stop eating the bicycles. Golden plover for the win! (or not) (researched by Brooks Scheibler)
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66. First Motion Picture Camera Patent, 1888
Edison invented the movie camera, right? Nope - and therein lies a Hollywood story that doesn't take place anywhere near Hollywood, with guest appearances by Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Jack the Ripper, and Louis Le Prince, the real inventor, and his real life mystery (researched/written by Ellianna Thayne)
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65. NCAA Transfer Portal, 2018
Just enter the portal and fame and fortune await, right? Maybe, though nothing is guaranteed - one of many misconceptions about a tool that does its job and makes things work, no wormholes required
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64. "First" Social Security Number, 1936
Who's got your number? Hopefully nobody who isn't supposed to - the origins of the number we (almost) all live by, why and how it's become so necessary, and what happens when you die - or somebody thinks you have
A look at documents that have had a profound effect on the world. Telling the stories
of these information objects, their genesis, contexts, impacts, and fates also tells the story of human society
and its never ending evolution.
South Africa