On learning that weather erodes granite one inch every 100,000 years, sculptor Gutzon Borglum added an extra three inches to each president’s features on Mount Rushmore.
“Three inches would require 300,000 years to bring the work down to the point that I would like to finish it,” he said. “In other words, the work will not be done for another 300,000 years, as it should be.”
The Ryugyong Hotel is a 105-story skyscraper under construction in Pyongyang, North Korea. Construction began in 1987 with planned completion in 1989. However, after several delays, construction was eventually halted in 1992; due to widespread economic disruptions in North Korea and shortages of raw materials. The massive concrete shell stood topped out but without windows or interior fittings for the next sixteen years.
The building rises to a height of 330 meters (1,080 ft), making it the most prominent feature of Pyongyang’s skyline and by far the largest structure in North Korea. Construction of the Ryugyong was intended to be completed in time for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in June 1989; had this been achieved, it would have held the title of world’s tallest hotel.
In 2008 construction resumed, and the exterior was completed in 2011. It was planned to open the hotel in 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung's birth. A partial opening was announced for 2013, but this was canceled. As of 2018, the building remains unopened and has been called the tallest unfinished building in the world.
Jeremy Scott is fashion's most evolved connoisseur of junk culture, and, in his heyday, Franco Moschino loved nothing more than poking the bear of fashion orthodoxy with flagrant infusions of trash. So when Scott paraded his mutant hybrid of Ronald McDonald and Coco Chanel all in the name of the late, great Franco, there was a friskily superficial compatibility. But—chalk it up to the gulf of time separating the two careers—there was in fact a difference in tone between Scott's revision of the Moschino legacy and Franco's original template. Today's Moschino presentation was a crowd-pleaser. Franco, on the other hand, was more satirical by nature and made a habit of biting the fashion hand that fed him.
From Tim Blanks' 2014 runway review for Vogue
A scold’s bridle, sometimes called a brank’s bridle or simply branks, was an instrument of punishment used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation. First introduced by the Church of Scotland in 1567, the device saw use across Europe and the New World until the mid 18th century.
The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. A bridle-bit, about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue. The curb-plate was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the offender moved her tongue, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible. Woman who were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear the branks, locked onto their head.
The man credited with the ‘invention’ of the numbering sequence of the modern standard dartboard is Brian Gamlin. Gamlin was a carpenter and showman from the County of Lancashire, England and came up with the sequence at the age of 44.
He introduced the numbering variation at a county fair in 1896. Though darts were already a popular fairground activity, Gamlin built the board for a new game he called ‘round the clock’ in which players have to score with darts in numerical order.
Gamlin designed the numbering in such a way as to cut down the incidence of ‘lucky shots’ and reduce the element of chance. The numbers are placed in such a way as to encourage accuracy - the placing of small numbers on either side of large numbers.
There are 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 different possible arrangements of the 20 segments on a standard dartboard, so it's impressive that Gamlin’s arrangement of the numbers is almost perfect.
From a mathematical perspective, total of the difference between adjacent numbers on Gamlin's board is 196, only 4 away from the maximum possible total of 200.
The best way to improve the board would be by moving the 14 and placing it between the 6 and the 10.