How did one man make a million dollars of one webpage?
What is the Air Force doing buying up thousands of Playstation 3s?
Find out in 10 Wild Ideas That Actually Worked!
Number 10.
"Let The Sunshine In" The town of Viganella sits nestled in the
Alps of Northern Italy, it is so deep in the mountains that there were months on end that
Viganella, with a population of around 200, went without sunlight.
In order to combat this problem and keep the vampires at bay, they came up with an idea
that sounds like the beginnings of a plan from a supervillain--they built a gigantic
mirror.
The mirror is made of a 26 by 16 foot sheet of reflective steel and is controlled by a
computer which helps it to track the sun's position and shoot those healthy rays back
on Viganella during the dark times.
The mirror was completed in 2006, and in a celebration dubbed the 'Day of Light' it was
unveiled and officially put into use.
Another town in Norway, called Rjukan, long suffered from the same problem so they too
decided to use mirrors to shed some light.
In 2013, Rjukan completed a set of three mirrors each with an area of about 17 square meters.
These mirrors have more of a focused reflection than that of Viganella as they are used to
create a 6,500 square foot area of sunlight right onto the town square.
Number 9.
"Two-Faced Tactic" How do you defend against man-eating tigers
that will pounce when your back is turned?
You find a way to make it look like you are always facing them.
That's exactly what a group of Indian workers did in the Sundarbans.
The Sundarbans is a thick forest region in the Bay of Bengal and is home to large portion
of Bengal Tigers who have been known to hunt human prey.
It had long been a part of legend and survival theories that these tigers would only attack
humans when there backs were turned but it took a Science Club of Calcutta student in
1986, to find what seems like an equal parts obvious and silly solution: Wear a mask on
the back of your head, so the tiger thinks you are always looking at them.
They saw immediate results from a small sample size but once the trend caught on the proof
that the masks were effective was overwhelming.
Over the next three years no one wearing a mask became tiger lunch whereas before the
masks the fatalities from such attacks were a staggering 60 per year.
Though some believe that eventually the tigers will catch on the tradition still continues
to this day.
The Indian Forestry Service even hands out masks to all of their workers who enter The
Sundarbans.
Number 8.
"Super Snow Blower" Up until the 1960s when a blizzard hit and
covered runways and train tracks, travel and shipping came to virtual standstill sometimes
lasting days on end.
But Russians and Americans got an ingenious idea 'why not modify these outdated jet engines
we have lying around that can reach temperatures upwards of one thousand degrees and shoot
thousands of pounds of force into super snow blowers?'.
The idea worked even better than expected with the Russians using them to quickly clear
runways and Americans hooking them up to train tracks and making it possible to clear extensive
areas of snow in a matter of hours.
Though they have proven extremely expensive to keep running as they use incredible amounts
of fuel they are still in use today.
In Boston, one of these snow blowing behemoths is aptly named Snowzilla, and using a jet
engine that dates to the 1950s is brought out whenever the a blizzard bogs down the
Metro-North railway.
Snowzilla is 27 feet long and weighs over 26,000 pounds and has even been loaned out
when other cities need its super-blower services.
Number 7.
"Shade Balls" How can a black ball about 4 inches in diameter
help to save valuable drinking water?
Well by itself--not much--but when you take millions of these balls and drop them in a
water reservoir they can not only save water but help to keep it clean.
These are what have become known as shade balls and they were the ingenious idea of
biologist Brian White and have proven effective in reducing evaporation and the growth of
microorganisms.
They do this by shading the water which deters bacteria as they thrive in sunlight.
The shade also cools the temperature of the water which can help stop the production of
carcinogens that are known to sometimes affect water supplies.
The state of California has already gone gung-ho on the shade ball movement by dumping millions
upon millions of them in its various reservoirs.
This has been a significant contributor to the reduction of wasted water in the state.
The droughts in California have been getting more and more severe so saving water has never
been more important as it is now.
Number 6.
"Musical Roads" What sound like something that would only
be real in the realm of Mario Kart, musical roads are actually a real thing, though still
in their relative infancy.
Though there are now various types of these roads in Korea, Denmark and the United States
the first ones were created in Japan by Hokkaido Industrial Research.
The roads are designed with specialized grooves in them so that when you drive over them different
tones resonate from the vibration of the car.
Of course for many of the roads you have to be going exactly the right speed limit, otherwise
the song will be distorted or you won't hear it at all.
In the U.S., a portion of Route 66 was recently turned into one of these melody roads sp that
'America the Beautiful' can be heard from your cars vibrations.
Number 5.
"Money Page" This idea didn't save live or change the world
but it as far as hair-brained money making schemes goes it hard to top this idea that
everyone probably wishes they would have thought of first.
In Wiltshire, England 2005, in order to pay his tuition for the Business Management degree
he had just started pursuing, 21 year old English student Alex Tew got a brilliant yet
simple idea that would end up paying for school and more.
He thought 'what if I can make a website that consists of grid of a million pixels and then
sell those pixels as ad-space for $1 a pop?.'
He called this project the Million Dollar Homepage and not only was it a success the
site went viral and Alex had sold every pixel in under six months.
The final 1,000 pixels sold at auction in early 2006 for $38,100.
Alex ended up making over $37,000 more than what seemed like a pipe-dream goal of a million
dollars.
Some of the most prominent advertisers were that of Yahoo!, The Times and the comedy rock-band
Tenacious D.
The Million Dollar Homepage holds a significant place in the evolution of online crowdfunding,
being both an innovative idea and an almost perfect example of economic fundamentals at
work.
But on the flipside it could be a dangerous sign of capitalism run amok.
Number 4.
"Dolphin Saving Giant" Veterinarians at an aquarium in Fushun, China
had a problem, two dolphins had accidentally swallowed sharp plastic debris that has fallen
into their tanks.
The veterinarians had tried everything to remove them, but were unsuccessful as any
instrument they used would be blocked by the constriction of the animals stomachs.
The situation was becoming dire as the dolphins started to show signs of significant fatigue,
depression and loss of appetite.
The vets thought to themselves 'if only we had long enough arms to reach in their and
pull out the plastic ourselves'.
Then it donned on them.
Maybe our arms aren't long enough but we might know of someone who would be up to the task.
So who would have arms long enough to reach all the way down into a dolphin's stomach?
Why, the world's tallest man of course.
With a height of 7 feet and 8.95 inches and arms that are almost 3 and a half feet long,
Mongolian Bao Xishun was happy to help.
After the proper precautionary measures were taken, such as wrapping the dolphin's teeth
in towels and gently holding their heads back, Bao was able to reach in and extract most
of the pieces from the dolphins stomach.
Though he was unable to grab some of the smaller pieces, the most dangerous parts were removed
and the dolphins were able to digest the leftovers.
The dolphins were able to make a full recovery and live healthy lives at the Royal Jidi Ocean
World, thank to the heroics of this friendly giant.
Number 3.
"Six-Legged Stitches" Modern stitches weren't invented until the
1920s, of course there had been other versions involving the thread and needle for centuries,
but before that type of precise wound-care, people had to make due with anything they
could find laying around in their environment to stop the bleeding.
Certain civilizations like the ancient Chinese found a solution in Dorylus ants.
Also known as driver ants, these six-legged pests have some of the largest mandibles of
any genus of ants and along with it the strongest bites of these mound-building insects.
Though their bite can be quite painful, several ancient people in places like South America,
Africa and Asia used the ants unique attributes to their advantage.
In order to quickly close gashes, driver ants were used as a form of ancient stitches.
A person would hold the skin together and then have the ant bite the wounded person
and hold the wound closed.
They would then twist of the body of the ant off while its locked mandibles stayed in place,
repeating this process along the entirety of the wound.
Though we are unsure of who came up with this crazy idea first it is a genius way of using
one's natural surroundings for survival.
Number 2.
"Silly Savior" Silly string is messy and colorful and that's
about it.
Or that's what any normal person might think anyway.
The truth is this common New Year's Eve party favor actually has a practical use and has
probably saved lives.
In what you would think would only be something you would see in a movie about child spies
or the result of a clown soldier being forced into active duty, silly string is commonly
used to detect tripwire.
In fact, this party-gag is so useful to soldiers, one woman gathered up and shipped 80,000 cans
of silly string and sent it to her son and his fellow troops in Iraq in 2007.
Why is this aerosol plastic goo often considered a nuisance to those enjoying the splendors
of civilian life so much so as to be banned in several American cities, so effective at
detecting dangerous booby traps?
Because of its cheap cost, bright color, sticky properties and ability to be shot distances
up to 12 feet.
Soldiers can spray silly string all over a possibly hazardous area and quickly identify
tripwire that are sometimes made of extremely fine fishing lure.
Silly string was originally invented in a failed attempt to create a spray on cast so
its inventor has to be proud that it is finally being put to a use that can help people and
probably in an even more important way at that.
As it was invented in 1972, this trick may have been known about for years, but the tactic
didn't become commonplace on the battlefield until the 21st century.
Whoever first got the idea, though maybe a bit funny in the head for having the string
on them in the first place, is a hero and real-life MacGyver.
Number 1."Condor Cluster" Most of what the military does nowadays doesn't
involve boots on the ground but satellites, drones and powerful computers.
To be ahead of the enemy the United States needs to be constantly innovating and improving
their computers but the problem is the computers needed to perform complicated tasks like radar
enhancement and processing high-resolution satellite imagery are very expensive.
Meanwhile video game systems are being churned out by companies like Sony and Microsoft with
incredible processing power and selling them at a price that the average consumer can afford.
Seeing this, the U.S. Air Force got a wild idea, 'instead of building a supercomputer
from scratch, why not buy up hundred of these video-game systems then connect and customize
them to do the necessary computations?'
The idea worked to resounding success and helped to save millions of dollars along the
way.
In what is called a condor cluster, The United States Air Force Research Laboratory connected
just over 1,700 PlayStation 3s creating the Department of Defense's fastest interactive
computer system capable of half a quadrillion operations a second.
This type of speed used to cost over $20 million dollars but the Condor Cluster only cost around
$2 million and uses only one-tenth of the power.