Go down a rabbit hole. Find something unexpected.
Follow the connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and discover where curiosity takes you.
Apollo 11 to ARPANET
5 articles · 4 connections
Start
Apollo 11
The Moon landing was the culmination of the Space Race.
Apollo 11 settled the Space Race, the competition in spaceflight between the United States and the Soviet Union that grew out of their Cold War rivalry.
Source: Apollo 11 links to Space Race on Wikipedia.
The race began in earnest with the shock of Sputnik.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, in October 1957, the alarm it caused in the West became known as the Sputnik crisis.
Source: Space Race links to Sputnik crisis on Wikipedia.
Sputnik prompted the United States to create a new research agency.
In February 1958 President Eisenhower authorised the Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA (later DARPA), to develop emerging technologies for the US military.
Source: Sputnik crisis links to DARPA on Wikipedia.
Step 4 of 5
DARPA
ARPA funded and built an experimental computer network.
ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office played a vital role in creating ARPANET, a packet-switched network whose technology became the foundation of the Internet.
Source: DARPA links to ARPANET on Wikipedia.
Destination
ARPANET
Why it’s unexpected: ARPANET's first computers were connected in 1969, the same year as Apollo 11: the Internet's ancestor and the Moon landing grew from the same Cold War shock.
From today’s featured discovery
Did you know ...
Explore by topic
- Computer Science: Algorithms · Distributed systems · Operating systems · Programming languages · Computational complexity · Cryptography · Computer architecture · Artificial intelligence · Information theory
- Mathematics: Number theory · Abstract algebra · Topology · Set theory · Mathematical logic · Probability · Game theory
- Physics: Quantum mechanics · Thermodynamics · Particle physics · Relativity · Cosmology · Statistical mechanics
- Engineering: Aerospace · Electrical engineering · Robotics · Control theory · Materials science
- Biology: Neuroscience · Genetics · Evolution · Molecular biology · Systems biology
- Economics: Mechanism design · Game theory · Monetary economics · Behavioral economics · Complexity economics
- Curiosities: Paradoxes · Unsolved problems · Forgotten machines · Thought experiments
Continue exploring
Articles you read and the paths you follow between them appear here. Start with today’s featured discovery, a random article, or the Discover feed.
Wikihole in your language
Search and the reader work in every edition below. Choose one around the globe, or drag the globe to turn it.
Other areas of Wikihole
- Unexpected connections – Trails from an ordinary article to a surprising one, with the reason for every step.
- Discover – A live, ranked stream of obscure and technically deep articles.
- Topics – 7 topic areas and 40 collections defined by Wikipedia categories.
- Random article – A random article that passed the quality gate, not Special:Random.
- Search – Full-text search with snippets in any supported language.
- Saved articles – Your reading list, stored only in this browser.
- Rabbit-hole trails – Every path you followed from one article to the next.
Wikihole’s sources
Everything on Wikihole comes live from the Wikimedia projects through their public APIs. Nothing is invented:
- WikipediaArticle text, images and links
- WikidataItem identifiers
- Wikimedia CommonsMedia files
- MediaWiki APISearch, metadata and parsing
- Wikimedia REST APISummaries and pageviews
