Stories: Austria

Stories connected to Austria.

• A film star with a second kind of invention.Hedy Lamarr was both an actress and an inventor. During World War II, she co-invented a radio-guidance system.
• An automatic chess player. With a person inside.The Mechanical Turk, first exhibited in 1770, appeared to play chess by itself. A hidden human player actuall…
• The bishop studied in Gaming. Not video games.Artur Bubnevych earned a theology degree at an institute in Gaming, Austria. The place name looks like the En…
• Who could call their chocolate cake the original Sacher torte?Vienna's Hotel Sacher and the Demel pastry shop disputed the right to market their versions as the original.…
• Few major battles did not mean little sufferingThe War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778–79 became known as the Potato War. Large armies maneuvered, with r…
• Schuhplattler strikes the soles as well as the thighsEastern Alpine Schuhplattler combines stamping and clapping with flat-handed strikes on shoe soles, thighs an…
• A phenakistoscope is viewed through its discA typical phenakistoscope places sequential images and slots around a cardboard disc. The viewer spins it bef…
• Mozart wrote a memorial verse for his petMozart bought a starling in 1784. After its death about three years later, biographical accounts describe a f…