HAistoric — Histories That Almost Were

— How Lighthouse Engineers Inadvertently Invented Tectonic Foreplay —

— In 1870, Paris trusted its defense to a network of pressurized air tubes. I’m sure you can see where this is going. —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— When Victorian Geniuses Decided to Shoot Live Birds Through Mail Tubes, For Science —

— That time in the 17th century some Ethiopian jackass tried to build monasteries underwater, proving once and for all that God has a drinking problem. —

— How The Victorians Nearly Shot Themselves Into Low Earth Orbit For Kicks —

🎙 On the Phonograph

— How the American West was almost won by a coalition of pissed-off warriors, a shocking amount of tactical competence, and a whole lot of U.S. Army incompetence. —

— How George Westinghouse’s Big Dirigible Energy Fucked Over America’s Lamest Inventor and Gave Us Glorious Sky-Whales. —

— With their gold-stuffed city miraculously intact, the Portuguese empire doubles down on being insufferable bastards, with predictably horny results. —

— How a Wildly Misguided Lust for Pressurized Tubes Nearly Turned Our Cities Into Human Hamster Cages. —

— How a bunch of three-foot-tall hominids you’ve never heard of went from an evolutionary footnote to the horniest, most terrifying sailors on the high seas. —

— Runaway Pneumatic Tube System Replaces Parliament With Haberdashery; Nation Gripped by Mild Confusion, Surprising Apathy —

— How Victorians Almost Fisted Themselves Across Continents —

— How two islands in the middle of nowhere successfully told the Age of Sail to shove off, and the world was too busy to notice. —

— How the Gilded Age Tried—And Gloriously Failed—to Turn Humanity into High-Speed Meat Slurry Fired Through the World’s Most Expensive Wangs. —

— How one high-pressure brass tube went rogue and blew the Union’s big chance. —