Lateral with Tom Scott 155: The missing whiskey
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Sep 26, 2025 Join Tom Lum, Ella Hubber, and Caroline Roper from the Let's Learn Everything podcast as they tackle fascinating questions. They dive into a bizarre case where locals were rewarded for breaking fossilized skulls, and the mystery behind why 70,000 whiskey bottles went missing due to evaporation. Ella shares the wild story of a spinning birthing table inspired by an elephant, while Tom Lum reveals the clever strategic names used in rock-paper-scissors. Expect laughter and curiosity as they unravel these quirky topics!
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Digital Copies Can Violate Physical Patents
- Microsoft Office added movable colored note boxes in 1997 that mimicked Post-it notes on screen.
- 3M sued Microsoft for creating digital representations of their yellow repositionable notes, reportedly settling out of court.
Fossil-Breaking Bribe Backfired
- Ralph von Konigswald paid locals for skull fragments while searching Java in 1937.
- Locals began breaking larger fossils into smaller fragments to collect more payments, forcing him to stop rewards.
Reissuing Notes Deflated Stolen Cash
- After a 2004 £26.5m Northern Bank robbery, the bank withdrew and reissued its own banknotes.
- Reprinting notes made the stolen cash suspicious or unusable and forced launderers to surface to exchange them.
