The Antarctic Snow Cruiser was a 17-metre vehicle built in 1939 to cross Antarctica while carrying living quarters, a laboratory and a small aircraft on its roof. Its four enormous tyres were smooth to prevent snow from clinging to them, but had almost no traction. It moved slightly better in reverse before becoming a stationary shelter. Last seen buried in snow in 1958, its present location remains unknown.
The Dynasphere was a ten-foot motorized wheel patented by British inventor J. A. Purves in 1930. The driver sat inside its iron latticework while the entire structure rolled around them. Purves imagined it as the future of transport and even built an eight-passenger version. It could reach roughly 25 miles per hour, although steering and braking remained unconvincing.
FLIP was a 108-metre oceanographic platform designed to partially sink itself. Once towed into position, its stern filled with seawater and the entire vessel rotated 90 degrees, leaving only its bow above the surface. Doors became floors, walls became ceilings and specially mounted toilets worked in either orientation. Standing vertically, FLIP was largely unaffected by waves, giving scientists a remarkably stable place to study the ocean.
The tantour was a towering cone-shaped headdress worn by married women in nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon, particularly among Druze and Maronite communities. Usually made from silver—and occasionally gold—it could rise nearly 75 centimetres above the head, with a white veil falling from its tip. Its height and decoration reflected family wealth.
The paranja was a Central Asian covering once common among women in cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand. A long robe was worn over the head rather than the arms, leaving its empty sleeves hanging down the back. The face disappeared behind a separate screen woven from black horsehair.
The Michelotti Shellette was a tiny beach car commissioned by yacht designer Philip Schell and introduced in 1968. Giovanni Michelotti removed the doors from a Fiat 850, cut its sides low and furnished the interior with wicker seats, wood trim and an entirely wicker-covered dashboard. A canvas canopy provided approximately as much protection as Mediterranean owners expected to need. Roughly eighty were made, often as land tenders carried aboard yachts. Aristotle Onassis ordered an automatic version whose removable wicker glovebox could also serve as a breadbasket. The Shellette was designed for the narrow distance between a marina and lunch.
The Fiat 500 Jolly was a beach car created by Italian coachbuilder Ghia in the late 1950s. A standard Fiat arrived at the workshop and left without its doors, roof, side windows or conventional seats. In their place were wicker chairs and a striped fabric canopy, often finished with decorative fringe. Built for resorts, golf courses and wealthy yacht owners, the Jolly was small enough to be lifted aboard and unloaded at the next Mediterranean port.
Pen & Pixel was a Houston design studio that gave Southern rap its preferred reality: one in which everything was chrome, flaming, diamond-covered and slightly larger than Earth. Founded by brothers Shawn and Aaron Brauch in 1992, the studio produced thousands of album covers for labels including No Limit and Cash Money.
SLABs are heavily customized cars that emerged from Houston’s Black neighbourhoods in the 1980s. The name is often expanded as “Slow, Loud and Bangin’,” which also serves as instructions. Usually built from large American sedans, they feature candy paint, whitewall tyres, elaborate trunks and wire wheels called swangas, whose spokes extend sideways into traffic.
The Dornier Do X was a three-storey flying boat built in 1929, then the largest aircraft in the world. Its twelve engines sat in pairs above the wing and were controlled by an engineer, who received instructions from the pilots through a ship-style engine telegraph. Inside were sleeping berths, a dining room and a lounge. On one demonstration flight it carried 169 people, including nine stowaways, setting a record that lasted twenty years. The Do X later flew from Germany to New York, though fires, repairs and repeated stops stretched the journey to nearly ten months. It crossed the Atlantic successfully, provided nobody was in a hurry.