TAC staged a wrecked car as a zoo predator to make speeding feel deadly
TAC staged a wrecked car as a zoo predator in Melbourne to make speeding's death toll feel as scary as a snake.
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3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDBrown gave the Bank of England power over rates before his own government could use it
Gordon Brown, four days after Labour's 1997 win, gave the Bank of England control over interest rates to prove his government wouldn't manipulate them.
Read the caseMarshall drank a dish of bacteria himself since no ethics board would test it on patients
No ethics board would let Marshall test his theory on a patient. So he became the patient himself, drinking the bacteria to prove it caused ulcers.
Read the caseBaylor Hospital pooled teachers' prepayments into Blue Cross
Baylor Hospital's Kimball pooled teachers' fixed monthly payments to cover hospital care for the few who got sick.
Read the caseBell Labs' Ken Thompson solved chess endgames by computing backward from checkmate
Ken Thompson solved chess endgames by starting at checkmate and computing every position backward.
Read the caseFranklin defeated counterfeiters by printing money from real leaves
Benjamin Franklin defeated counterfeiters by casting real leaves' veins into his currency printing plates, creating patterns no engraver could copy.
Read the caseKrafton India staged a real wedding inside BGMI to counter 'violent game' stigma
Krafton India staged a real couple's wedding inside BGMI, shifting the debate from violence to love.
Read the caseBich made the ballpoint cheap enough to throw away
Marcel Bich fixed the ballpoint's one weak part with watchmaking precision, then stripped everything else to disposable plastic, selling over 100 billion.
Read the caseBillboard swapped phone surveys for barcode scans and found hidden hits
Billboard replaced its phone-survey charts with Nielsen SoundScan barcode scans, revealing country and hip-hop were huge all along.
Read the caseBuurtzorg cut nursing overhead by giving each neighborhood its own 12-nurse team
Buurtzorg cut nursing overhead by giving each neighborhood its own 12-nurse team that owns the whole caseload.
Read the caseCalifornia removed blame from divorce law
California's Family Law Act let couples divorce by citing irreconcilable differences, removing the need to prove fault and eliminating the incentive to lie.
Read the caseCape Town mapped water use as colored dots, cutting consumption in half
Cape Town published a public map with each household's water use as a colored dot, making consumption visible and social, which helped cut usage by half.
Read the caseCapsule Inn Osaka sold salarymen a sealed sleeping box
Capsule Inn Osaka sold salarymen a sealed sleeping pod instead of a hotel room they didn't need, fitting Osaka's land cost.
Read the caseCardiff cut street violence by piping hospital ER data to police
Cardiff surgeon Jonathan Shepherd cut street violence by piping anonymized hospital ER data to police, halving violence-related admissions.
Read the caseUS evacuated Zeiss's optics experts to keep them from Soviets
The US Army evacuated 120 Zeiss optics experts from Jena to Oberkochen, moving tacit knowledge instead of documents.
Read the caseCheetos named its orange finger stain 'Cheetle'
Cheetos turned its top complaint—orange finger dust—into a named, celebrated brand asset called 'Cheetle'.
Read the caseChickasaw Nation bought insurance for its patients to fund their care
Chickasaw Nation paid insurance premiums for its own patients, turning free care into reimbursable revenue.
Read the caseChile made every worker a pension shareholder so no government could raid the system
Chile's labor minister replaced pay-as-you-go pensions with individual accounts, making each worker an owner who would defend the system.
Read the caseChime handed workers wages they had already earned instead of lending them money
Chime launched MyPay, letting workers unlock up to $500 of earned wages before payday, no interest or credit check, recovered from next paycheck.
Read the caseFeeney gave away his fortune in secret before anyone could talk him out of it
In 1982, Feeney secretly and irrevocably signed his fortune to a foundation, hiding his role for fifteen years.
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