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Eleven years after declaring independence from Britain the United States government was a mess. An impotent and poorly funded central administration was failing to manage the squabble of independent states. Everyone was desperate to find a better way. But the solution was not clear. How should the public be represented? Should the representation be based on the distribution of voters? The small states feared that they would be dominated by the bigger states. Should each state

Everybody knows the story of the Spanish Armada. It’s one of the most famous David vs. Goliath tales in history. In 1588 the most powerful man in Christendom, the Catholic King Philip II of Spain, sent an enormous inversion force to overthrow Elizabeth I and destroy the heretic protestants of England. But a plucky fleet of swashbuckling English seamen including the dashing Sir Francis Drake, used agile ships and superior tactics to defeat the fleet of giant and ponderous gall

At the turn of the 20th Century there was a race to be the first to develop powered flight. People all over the world, from backyard tinkerers to government funded teams were attacking the problem. The surprising winners were two brothers who ran a bicycle shop in Ohio. In December 1903, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright successfully flew their plane four miles along the coast of North Carolina. They succeeded where others failed because they loved a good argument. Their fathe

Once a year there is a brief window in the last few weeks of May when the weather conditions are tame enough to make climbing to the peak of Mount Everest possible. Over 800 mountaineers from around the globe gather on the lower slopes spending months preparing for their attempt.  And when there's a break in the weather there’s a mass scramble to the top. Mount Everest is 8,849m high, roughly the level that passenger jets fly at. What makes Everest especially challenging is t

On the 12th December 1799, George Washington was outside, supervising his farm. He’d retired as the first President of the United States of America just two years ago and was still an active 67 year-old. It was a grimy winter’s day, shifting between snow, hail and rain as he rode around his plantation.  He was a sticker for punctuality, so that afternoon to avoid running late for dinner he stayed in his wet riding clothes for a few more hours. The next day he woke with a sore

At the turn of the millennium, on a summer break from university, I worked for a large insurance company. The company had fields of warehouse space with paper files stacked up to the roof.  Those files were the results of decades of business; records of every person or business that had used them, and all the documentation that had built up when any claim was made. Each day we’d receive hundreds of requests for this information and it was my job to run through the warehouse t

On a sun drenched afternoon on February 11th, 1990 the eyes of the world were focused on the front gate of a small prison on the outskirts of Cape Town.  Everyone was waiting to catch sight of a man almost no one had seen for a quarter of a century.  The last time the world had seen Nelson Mandela was in 1964, when he was handed a life sentence for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government. Since that day he'd been confined to a prison island and the state had made it

The industrial revolution was a horrific time to be a working class child.  In the 1830s, on average, children would start work at the age of 10.  They’d expect to work twelve hour shifts, six days a week.  And the working conditions were horrific.  E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class , described them as “places of sexual license, foul language, cruelty, violent accidents, and alien manners.” The booming industries were built on child labour. Ove

Remember massive newspapers? In 1712 the UK government introduced a tax on newspapers. This incredibly dubious tax was designed primarily to price poor people out of sources of information and news. The tax was charged on each page printed. One crafty publisher spotted a loophole. They realised that if they printed the same amount of news on fewer, larger pages, they could provide the same quality product with half the tax. Others quickly copied the idea, until everyone was u

Think Small It was 1959. The US economy was booming, the nation was optimistic and people were driving the massive and flashy cars regularly launched by Detroit. Each year the newest batch of cars were advertised using beautifully illustrated adverts focused on how they looked and felt. Meanwhile in post-war Germany the economy was very different and people needed cheap and reliable cars. And the car they were turning to en masse was the ‘people's car’ - the Volkswagen. The B

The Rose Bowl stadium was a caldron of tension in the closing moments of the 1994 football World Cup final. Under the sapping heat and through two grinding hours of regulation and extra time, Italy and Brazil had fought each other to a stalemate. To split the teams and crown a new World Cup champion, it all now rested on the penalty shootout and the individual bravery of a few chosen players. In the 64 year history of the World Cup this would be the first one to be decided by

A busy U.S. teaching hospital unit was tracking a high number of potentially life-threatening errors. They were recording 23.7 errors per 1,000 patent days when administering drugs . The nurse manager spotted wearing blood-stained scrubs.  She was spending the majority of her time nursing and only about a third of her time managing the unit.  She seemed comfortable with error, saying that a “certain level of error will occur.”  And she’d created a "non-punitive environment” w

The B-17 Flying Fortress was the main US heavy bomber of WW2. It was an incredibly successful design. 12,731 were built and they dropped more bombs than any other aircraft in the war.  They were rugged, stable, and capable of sustaining incredibly heavy damage and still return home.  But they had a major issue. The pilots kept breaking them.  Throughout the war stressed, tired and confused pilots would land their planes and then suddenly retract the wheels.  The planes would

Years ago I had a manager who inadvertently created an incredibly toxic working environment. They were a person who was driven by instinct. When something goes wrong it’s instinctive to think “Who’s to blame?” This was the manager’s immediate reaction every time.  It has the benefit of immediate closure.  The person at fault would be identified. The puzzle was solved.  And the manager could be happy with their instincts being proved right again. Only the world doesn’t operate

There’s a parable for upstream thinking and it goes a little like this: Two friends are sitting by a river when suddenly they see a child drowning. They react immediately, diving in and hauling the child to safety. Just then another struggling child appears, so back in they jump to repeat the rescue. Then another child appears, and another, and another… Suddenly one of the friends jumps out and runs off. The other friend keeps working away, rescuing child after child and gett

“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than seek permission.” It’s an axiom that was popularised by Grace Hopper. How do you get into a university you're barred from? Grace Hopper was born in New York in 1906. She wanted to go to university and study mathematics. It was a very unusual option for women at the time. “I loved mathematics all the way through school, especially geometry. I used to draw pretty pictures with it. It’s not really unusual for a woman to have an interest i

Infinite Thinking In 1868, after the death of his father, 14-year-old George Eastman was forced to leave school and find work as a messenger boy. In his early twenties, now working as a bank clerk and planning a vacation, he purchased a photographic outfit to record the trip, which he described as "a pack-horse load.” He quickly became passionate about photography, fascinated with the complex chemical processes involved and experimenting with making the wet film plates used a

Geoffrey Boycott was a cricketer who played 108 test matches (the five day game) for England from 1962 to 1986. By the end of his England career he’d amassed a record number of runs for an England player. He was England's opening batsmen - possibly the hardest role in cricket. His job was to be the anchor of the team, making sure that the team got a good start by facing fresh bowlers and the new ball, with the aim of staying at bat for as long as possible. Boycott had staying

On the 5th January 1922 at the age of 47, legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack. He died during his fourth, and for obvious reasons, final expedition. In the hours before his death the expedition's doctor, Alexander Macklin had advised him to calm down and "lead a more regular life”, to which Shackleton answered, "You are always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up?" and Macklin replied, "Chiefly alcohol, Boss." Shackleton’s death

I had dinner with a group of founders and business leaders. The person sat on my left was a drummer in a ska band. The person sat on my right played keyboards in a Norwegian wedding band. And, back when blogs were a thing, I ran the third largest snowboard blog in the world, and I continue to write posts like these today. We all had creative hobbies outside of our jobs. Do creative hobbies help? “If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative, you have to not have the