Documents That Changed the World

Road trip! Let's just pack up and go - but where should we go, stay, eat? Easy decisions for some, perilous for others, until a mailman lent his name to a little book that made the journey a whole lot safer, less humiliating and more enjoyable to generations of travelers setting out on the open road to a better future

A compendium of fastests and highests and mosts in a book that nobody needs but millions have enjoyed - documenting the boundaries of human capability; just don't call it trivial, and please, stop eating the bicycles. Golden plover for the win! (or not) (researched by Brooks Scheibler)

Edison invented the movie camera, right? Nope - and therein lies a Hollywood story that doesn't take place anywhere near Hollywood, with guest appearances by Greer Garson, Spencer Tracy, Jack the Ripper, and Louis Le Prince, the real inventor, and his real life mystery (researched/written by Ellianna Thayne)

Just enter the portal and fame and fortune await, right? Maybe, though nothing is guaranteed - one of many misconceptions about a tool that does its job and makes things work, no wormholes required

Who's got your number? Hopefully nobody who isn't supposed to - the origins of the number we (almost) all live by, why and how it's become so necessary, and what happens when you die - or somebody thinks you have

How can you know what you can't read? A writing system without a key, suspended knots and strings we can't interpret, leaving entire peoples also in suspense to understand their past and stories (researched/written by Diego Licea)

"How dare you treat me like this?" The cry of untold millions of consumers with a grievance to air, or type, or phone in - or bake into clay tablets, in the faint but eternal hope of being heard (researched/written by Ellianna Thayne)

How is a galaxy a document? How could it change the world? Well, look out there, as far as we can see, and even farther - and then look inside, and maybe you'll find out.

I love you, a bushel and a peck - or maybe an acre, or fathom, or hundredweight, or any of the thousands of measurements we have created, which somebody has to establish and standardize, like the meter, one way or the other

The road map and guide book to the afterlife, all spelled out to ensure a successful and surprisingly personalized journey