Ask HN: Wikipedia articles that made you say "wow "? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Wikipedia articles that made you say "wow "?

16 pointsfrogulis18 comments

As title suggests, I'm looking for Wikipedia articles that made you feel like "one of today's lucky 10000" [1].

I recently read the article about Catatumbo lightning [2], which gave me the desired feelings of cool, surprising, and scientifically interesting. I'd love to be aware of more such topics. I suppose it doesn't even have to be Wikipedia; it's just a good medium for this sort of thing.

1. https://xkcd.com/1053/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning

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Feel free to submit interesting articles, other users do https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

I recently found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations

this one is interesting! I really see the future becoming more like the network states balaji is talking about.

specifically this one is interesting, crowdfunded an island! I dreamt about exactly this around the same time - but this guy actually did it! :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Islandia

I post this one occasionally, for the pure joy of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...

"it doesn't have to work for very long" design doesn't get much shorter time scale than that. (Barring fusion / fission but you shouldn't do that in the garage)

In a way it's the inverse of: https://www.capturedlightning.com/frames/shrinker.html

There was research a while back to fit optics to the back end of fighter aircraft. Effectively turning the airplane into a gas dynamic laser, and extracting the energy from the population inversion of CO2 in the supersonic exhaust could yield up to 10 Megawatts of output!

NSFW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture

There is a fairly decent list at: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

Thanks for reminding me of the ‘from?’ feature!

This one is good for a poke in the critical thinking, with a side of random facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

This isn’t scientifically fascinating, but I didn’t believe this story when I first heard it…

Keith Sapsford (14yrs old) died from falling out of a landing wheel compartment of a plane shortly after take off. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel-well_stowaway

The article 'List of missing treasures' is a great launching point. While there are many fantastic things in there, I particularly enjoy learning about all of the artifacts from rulers of past that have been lost to time, and are theoretically out there somewhere in the water or some farmer's field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_treasures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_sex_scandal?wprov=sfti...

It was basically that episode of South Park where Butters becomes a pimp and it almost cost FDR his career.

As a fan of the occult & alchemy this Wikipedia page made me feel so emotional especially the "Gallery" section. I found it a few weeks back & I keep visiting it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splendor_Solis

Not quite what you're looking for, but there's a video about Wikipedia that will make you say "oh, shit" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho

Posted this a few days ago but no one commented. I heard about it on the new Netflix series on ww2. Impressive stuff

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system

Not a wiki article, but a whole googology and fast growing hierarchies field. It is quite a rabbithole. You can read/watch about things like G, TREE, SCG, BB. But only after diving deep you can start to comprehend what you could think they actually are. All astrophysics wows instantly pale in comparison.

For example, the tiny big number like 3^^^^3 has ~around 3^^^^3 digits in basically any reasonable base: base-10, base-16, base-64k, base-1m. You can’t express its length in a regular form. For contrast, the “trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillions” has only 21 digits in base-1m.

Another example is Moser:

N in a triangle is N^N. So e.g. N in two triangles would be (N^N)^(N^N).

N in a square is N in N triangles.

N in a pentagon is N in N squares.

Mega is 2 in a pentagon, i.e. 2 in two squares, or 2 in two triangles and a square, or 256 in a square, or 256 in 256 triangles. Pretty big, huh?

Moser is 2 in a Mega-gon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_and_Reality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bridgman

I mean, sure, Helen Keller accomplished a lot. But crazy to me that no one talks about the deafbling woman who validated tactile signing almost 50 years before her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow

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