Awesome Gadget-filled Antique Desk

Make has a post with a video demonstrating the amazing features of an antique desk.  There is no electricity in the desk, all of the mechanisms are powered by falling weights.

How Tall can a Lego Tower get?

The BBC has an article, though it was in many other places as well, about a study to determine the maximum possible height of a tower made of Lego bricks.  The short answer is 3.5 km but it is worth reading the article to see how they figured that out.

via The Brothers Brick

Where the Bombs Hit

Bombsight is a website that maps the locations of all of the German bombs that were dropped on London during the Blitz (7 October 1940 to 6 June 1941).  Apparently two bombs fell on the small street we used to live on in Fulham and four landed in the square opposite my first London apartment (as well as two on the block where the apartment was).

via Yahoo News

The Sun's Energy

According to this Google+ post, the sun produces enough energy in one second to power the world for 1 million years.

Follow up: A vaguely related article in the Economist has a graph showing the falling cost per Watt of solar panels.