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Harriet Strong needed a way to store water on her California ranch. She was a widowed mother of four with no formal training.

But she studied the hilly land herself. In 1887, she invented a new kind of dam system.

It worked like a staircase. Small dams were built in a series down a valley.

The water pressure from a lower dam helped support the one above it. This made the whole structure stronger and safer.

It was perfect for the steep canyons of California. Farmers used her design to irrigate their land.

Her own walnut orchards flourished, earning her the nickname the 'Walnut Queen'. Her idea proved that water could be its own building material.

Sources: Lemelson-MIT / Whittier Museum

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In 1816, after the War of 1812, the United States began building a large fort at Rouses Point, New York, near Lake Champlain. The location was important because British forces had previously used the Lake Champlain route to invade from Canada. The new fort was meant to prevent that from happening again.

There was just one problem. A new survey showed that the old border markers were inaccurate. The true 45th parallel was about three-quarters of a mile farther south, meaning the Americans had been building their fort on Canadian territory. Construction stopped, and the unfinished fort became popularly known as “Fort Blunder.” Much of its stone was later taken by local residents and reused in nearby buildings.

The situation was finally settled with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which placed the site on the American side of the border. Two years later, the U.S. began building a much larger fort there called Fort Montgomery. The ruins seen at the site today are mainly from this later fort, not the original Fort Blunder.

During the Great Depression, losing your farm could mean losing your entire life. So when banks and creditors started foreclosing on struggling farmers, some communities came up with a pretty wild way to fight back: the penny auction.

When a foreclosed farm went up for auction, local farmers would agree beforehand not to compete against each other. They’d deliberately bid ridiculously low amounts, sometimes just pennies, until one of them “won” the property for almost nothing. The winner would then quietly hand the farm, livestock, or equipment back to the family who had lost it.

And they made sure nobody ruined the plan. Nooses were sometimes hung near the auction as a warning to anyone thinking about becoming a serious bidder. It was intimidation, but it came from a community that was essentially saying: If the system is going to take everything from our neighbor, we’re not going to help it do the job.

It’s one of those Depression-era stories that sounds almost unbelievable today, but for many farmers, it was a desperate way of looking out for each other when the economy had left them with very few options.

The International Olympic Committee has made a historic decision: trans women (biological males) are now banned from competing in all female Olympic events starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The new policy limits eligibility in the female category to biological females, verified through a one-time SRY gene screening that detects the presence of the Y chromosome. This move aims to safeguard the integrity, fairness, and safety of women’s sports after years of controversy involving male-bodied athletes dominating female competitions.
The decision has ignited fierce debate. Supporters argue it finally restores fairness by recognizing that male puberty confers permanent physical advantages in strength, speed, muscle mass, bone density, and skeletal structure—advantages that hormones or surgery cannot fully erase. Female athletes have long voiced concerns about lost medals, scholarships, and safety in contact sports when competing against biologically male individuals. Critics, however, label the policy discriminatory and call for inclusion based on gender identity rather than biology.
At its core, this policy acknowledges a simple biological truth: s*x is binary and immutable, determined by chromosomes and reproductive anatomy, not self-identification. Women’s Olympic categories were created precisely because of average male performance advantages that can reach 10-50% or more in many events. Allowing males into female sports undermines the very purpose of s*x-segregated competition. While trans athletes remain eligible in open or male categories, protecting the female division upholds the original spirit of women’s sports as a protected space for biological females.