Episode 73 - NATO’s floppy magnets and the history of coffee

Chris discovered the time that the Imperial Japanese Navy flooded Nagasaki when they launched the largest battleship - the Musashi - to ever sail the seas. Whilst the Japanese engineers managed to stop the ship just one metre past the point they thought it would roll off its dry-dock, they failed to account for the tidal wave it would create. Also in this episode, you’ll find out all about NATO’s floppy magnets. That’s right, at the height of the Cold War, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, NATO decided they needed a simple and effective means of tracking Soviet submarines. Only, the idea that was dreamt up was a little too efficient… Meanwhile Harrison has been looking in to the history of coffee. From the origin of the plants that give us the coffee beans to the culture that’s grown up around coffee and the influences it’s had throughout history. Learn why beans smuggled in a bouquet of flowers are today responsible for 39% of beans grown in 2020, how coffee houses were known as penny universities and how the punishment for being caught drinking a cup of coffee involved a cudgel, a sack and a river. Charming!