TransMedics is a medical device company. They have developed a technology capable of maintaining donor organs in a near-physiological state outside the body from donor to recipient: the heart is beating, lungs are breathing, and liver is making bile. The portable technology was designed to be transported in all modes of transportation typically used for organ retrieval, to reduce the time-dependent damage associated with cold storage.
In 1979, Vlada Vasiljević stole a white Porsche-Targa 911-s, and then, for about ten evenings drove the police mad with his reckless driving to the Slavija Square in Belgrade. During an official visit of the president Tito to Cuba in 1979, the attention of the capital was directed to the phantom in the white Porsche. The mysterious driver that drove like crazy in a stolen car over the square Slavija made in the midnight hours a real spectacle, constantly managed to get away from the police. Over the radio he openly called the police to catch him, which was the first oppositional act in the post-war Yugoslavia. Several tens of thousand people went on the streets to support him.
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel.
After WW2, the new democratic government suffered from serious lack of money, so it ordered the national bank to manufacture banknotes quickly and cheaply. There was little time to design new notes, thus the plates of banknotes printed in 1926 were reused as well as portraits from other notes. Beginning with the 1000 pengő note, only denominations of integer powers of ten were used. The uncontrolled banknote issuing aggravated inflation. In 1946 Hungary issued a 100 Million B-Pengo, which was the the largest circulated banknote at the time, unfortunately it was worth only about $0.20 USD in 1946. Hungary also printed a 1 Milliard B-Pengo, but it was never released into circulation. The 1 Milliard B-Pengo translates into 1 trillion Pengos.
Originating in India before 2000 BC, the deadly art of sword swallowing has a long and varied history. The art takes about three to seven years to learn and approximately five more to master.
Phineas P. Gage was a railroad construction foreman now remembered for his incredible survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying one or both of his brain's frontal lobes.
A Pfeilstorch (German for "arrow stork") is a stork which is injured by an arrow while wintering in Africa, and then returns to Europe with the arrow stuck in its body. This Pfeilstorch was crucial in understanding the migration of European birds. Before migration was understood, people had no other explanation for the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the White Stork and Barn Swallow. To date, around 25 Pfeilstörche have been documented.
Roy Gardner was once America's most infamous prison escapee and the most celebrated outlaw and escaped convict during the Roaring Twenties.
Red mercury is a mythical substance of uncertain composition purportedly used in the creation of nuclear bombs, as well as a variety of unrelated weapons systems.
The Astor Place Riot in New York City and left at least 25 dead and more than 120 injured. Its genesis was a dispute between Edwin Forrest, the first great American star, and William Charles Macready, the greatest English actor of his generation, which largely revolved around which of them was better than the other at acting the major roles of Shakespeare.