Olympics Fun Facts

Olympics Fun Facts



•The early Olympic Games were celebrated as a religious festival from 776 B.C. until 393 A.D., when the games were banned for being a pagan festival (the Olympics celebrated the Greek god Zeus). In 1894, a French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, proposed a revival of the ancient tradition, and thus the modern-day Olympic Summer Games were born.


•Host Greece won the most medals (47) at the first Olympic Summer Games in 1896.


•The first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France in 1924.


•Norway has won the most medals (263) at the Winter Games.


•The United States has won more medals (2,189) at the Summer Games than any other country.


•The five Olympic rings represent the five major regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceana, and every national flag in the world includes one of the five colors, which are (from left to right) blue, yellow, black, green, and red.


•Up until 1994 the Olympics were held every four years. Since then, the Winter and Summer games have alternated every two years.


•The first Olympics covered by U.S. television was the 1960 Summer Games in Rome by CBS.


•No country in the Southern Hemisphere has ever hosted a Winter Games.


•Three continents – Africa, South America, and Antarctica – have never hosted an Olympics.


•A record 202 countries participated in the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens.


•Only four athletes have ever won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games: Eddie Eagan (United States), Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany), and Clara Hughes (Canada).


•Speed skater Bonnie Blair has won six medals at the Olympic Winter Games. That's more than any other American athlete.


•Nobody has won more medals at the Winter Games than cross-country skier Bjorn Dählie of Norway, who has 12.


•Larrisa Latynina, a gymnast from the former Soviet Union, finished her Summer Olympic Games career with 18 total medals—the most in history.


•The United States Olympic Committee established the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983 to recognize outstanding American Olympic athletes, however, a plan to build a hall has been suspended due to lack of funding.


•The Summer Olympic sports are archery, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, boxing, canoe / kayak, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, show jumping, and running), mountain biking, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, track and field, triathlon (swimming, biking, running), volleyball, water polo, weightlifting, and wrestling.


•The Winter Olympic sports are alpine skiing, biathlon (cross-country skiing and target shooting), bobsled, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hocky, luge, Nordic combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing), skeleton, ski jumping, snowboarding, and speed skating.


Olympics Fun Facts



•The early Olympic Games were celebrated as a religious festival from 776 B.C. until 393 A.D., when the games were banned for being a pagan festival (the Olympics celebrated the Greek god Zeus). In 1894, a French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, proposed a revival of the ancient tradition, and thus the modern-day Olympic Summer Games were born.


•Host Greece won the most medals (47) at the first Olympic Summer Games in 1896.


•The first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France in 1924.


•Norway has won the most medals (263) at the Winter Games.


•The United States has won more medals (2,189) at the Summer Games than any other country.


•The five Olympic rings represent the five major regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceana, and every national flag in the world includes one of the five colors, which are (from left to right) blue, yellow, black, green, and red.


•Up until 1994 the Olympics were held every four years. Since then, the Winter and Summer games have alternated every two years.


•The first Olympics covered by U.S. television was the 1960 Summer Games in Rome by CBS.


•No country in the Southern Hemisphere has ever hosted a Winter Games.


•Three continents – Africa, South America, and Antarctica – have never hosted an Olympics.


•A record 202 countries participated in the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens.


•Only four athletes have ever won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games: Eddie Eagan (United States), Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany), and Clara Hughes (Canada).


•Speed skater Bonnie Blair has won six medals at the Olympic Winter Games. That's more than any other American athlete.


•Nobody has won more medals at the Winter Games than cross-country skier Bjorn Dählie of Norway, who has 12.


•Larrisa Latynina, a gymnast from the former Soviet Union, finished her Summer Olympic Games career with 18 total medals—the most in history.


•The United States Olympic Committee established the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983 to recognize outstanding American Olympic athletes, however, a plan to build a hall has been suspended due to lack of funding.


•The Summer Olympic sports are archery, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, boxing, canoe / kayak, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, show jumping, and running), mountain biking, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, track and field, triathlon (swimming, biking, running), volleyball, water polo, weightlifting, and wrestling.


•The Winter Olympic sports are alpine skiing, biathlon (cross-country skiing and target shooting), bobsled, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hocky, luge, Nordic combined (ski jumping and cross-country skiing), skeleton, ski jumping, snowboarding, and speed skating.

Mathematics and fun for children

•Mathematics is important in many different types of jobs, including engineering, business, science, medicine and more.







•It is believed that Ancient Egyptians used complex mathematics such as algebra, arithmetic and geometry as far back as 3000 BC.






•It wasn’t until the 16th century that most mathematical symbols were invented. Before this time math equations were written in words, making it very time consuming.






•What comes after a million, billion and trillion? Why a quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion and nonillion of course.






•Cutting a cake into 8 pieces is possible with just 3 slices, can you work out how?






•An icosagon is a shape with 20 sides.






•A three dimensional parallelogram is called a parallelepiped.






•Trigonometry is the study of the relationship between the angles of triangles and their sides.






•The smallest ten prime numbers are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29.






•The name of the popular search engine ‘Google’ came from a misspelling of the word ‘googol’, which is a very, very large number (the number one followed by one hundred zeros to be exact).






•A ‘googolplex’ is the number 1 followed by a googol zeros, this number is so big that it can’t be written because there isn’t enough room in the universe to fit it in! It would also take a length of time far greater than the age of the universe just to write the numbers.






•The number Pi (the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle) can’t be expressed as a fraction, this means it is an irrational number. When written as a decimal it never repeats and never ends.






•Here is Pi written to 50 decimal places: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510






•If two quantities have a ratio of approximately 1.618, they are said to be in the golden ratio. This ratio has been used throughout history to design aesthetically pleasing art works such as the Parthenon. It also appears in paintings, music, the design of books, and even in nature.

Edwin Hubble

Edwin Hubble Facts





American astronomer Edwin Hubble is famous for demonstrating the existence of other galaxies, as well as his influential work on astrophysics and his subsequent namesake, the Hubble Space Telescope.






Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who lived from November the 20th 1889 to September the 28th 1953.






•Hubble made a huge impact on astronomy, and science in general, by demonstrating that other galaxies besides our own Milky Way existed. It was the previous belief of many that space was limited to the Milky Way galaxy, Hubble’s discoveries which were announced in 1925 changed our view of the universe.






•In his early years Hubble was a skilled athlete as well as a bright student, competing and achieving highly in track and field.






•At the University of Chicago, Hubble’s studies focused on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. He became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University soon after and also became a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.






•Hubble discovered that the level of redshift in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the distance as that galaxy moved further away from Earth. This is known as Hubble’s law and it helped prove that the universe is expanding. It even led Albert Einstein to admit that ignoring this idea and subsequently “fudging” his equations to avoid it was “the biggest blunder of his life”.






•The well known Hubble Space Telescope is named after Edwin Hubble. It has provided valuable research data and images since it was carried into orbit in 1990, leading to many breakthroughs in the field of astrophysics. Hubble has also been honored with an asteroid and moon crater being named after him.

Interesting & Fun Facts About Great Britain

Interesting & Fun Facts About Great Britain







•The official name of Great Britain is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.


•England, Scotland, and Wales, together make up Great Britain.


•It is the largest island in the European continent and the ninth largest in the world.


•The capital and the largest city of Britain is London, while the capitals of the three countries forming Britain are London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff, of England, Scotland, and Wales, respectively.


•Christianity is the major religion practiced in Great Britain with over 5 million believers across the entire island, divided into 4.5 million in England and Wales, and 750,000 in Scotland.


•The official language of Britain is English.


•The currency used in Great Britain is pound sterling.


•Ben Navis, at 1,344 m (4,409 ft), is the highest point in Great Britain in Scotland, while the lowest point is the Fenlands which is 4 m below sea level.


•Interestingly, with a population of 60 million people, Great Britain is the third most populous island in the world, after Java and Honshû.


•Though the island has been named ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, it includes only England, Wales, Scotland, and many other small outlying islands, namely, Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland. However, it does not include Northern Ireland.


•The word British is used to refer the people belonging to the entire Great Britain, Britain for short. However, they are referred to as Welsh, Scottish, and English in their respective nations.


•The longest river is The Severn, measuring 322 km long, that rises in central Wales and flows through Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester in England into the Bristol Channel.


•The official name for the British flag is Union Jack, while the English flag is called the Flag of St. George, the Scottish is called the Flag of St. Andrew, and the Welsh flag is called the Flag of St. David.


•Did you know that the world-famous pop music band ‘The Beatles’ that changed the music scene across the globe are from England?


•Britain is the only country in the world that does not have the country’s name on its postage stamps.


•Surprisingly, there are more chickens than humans in England.


•Of all the mammal species found in Great Britain, rodents constitute 40% which include squirrels, mice, voles, rats, and the European beaver. Others comprise of rabbits, hares, hedgehogs, shrews, moles, and several bats species.


•The deer is the largest land-based wild animal found in Great Britain. The largest species is the red deer, followed by roe deer and fallow deer.

A few interesting facts about Australia.

1. Australia is now the most obese country in the world, just pipping the US at the post with a 26% obesity rate to their 25%. Despite Australia being a sport loving nation there’s obviously a whole lot of armchair sport loving going on, with beer, soft drink or greasy takeaway in hand!






2. Just over 25% of Australians were born in another country, making it the developed country with the highest proportion of migrant settlers in the world, aside from Luxembourg with a third of their population born elsewhere. Australia’s capital cities are where the highest proportions of new arrivals can be found and to say the country’s culinary landscape has benefited enormously from immigration is an understatement.






3. One of Australia’s former Prime Ministers, Bob Hawke, holds a Guinness World Record… not for some kind of political feat, but beer sculling! Fortunately it was well before his term as prime minister (1983-1991), occurring in 1963 during his university days at Oxford where he skulled 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. To this day Bob Hawke is remembered fondly for his beer skulling antics, which he still wheels out in public now and then at cricket matches. Oh, Australia!






4. The Australian state of Victoria gets a public holiday, i.e. government sanctioned day off work, in honour of a horse race. The Melbourne Cup is known as ‘the race that stops the nation’ and that it does, with workplaces all across the country wheeling out a television and popping champagne to barrack on the horses. There’s usually a sweepstake where everyone pays a dollar or two and draws a horse name out of the hat, with the spoils going to the place-getters.






5. Many visitors to Australia are surprised to discover kangaroo meat is actually eaten. While nowhere near as mainstream as chicken or beef, it nevertheless pops up on some restaurant menus and is sold in many butcher shops. The meat is touted as a much leaner and healthier alternative to beef or lamb, with a 1-2% fat content.






Read more






A taste of the Middle East in Sydney’s Lakemba


Natalie: An Australian filling in the missing links to her own story in Vietnam


How Irish am I? An Australian on her Irish roots

10 Interesting facts about India:

10 Interesting facts about India:



The famous board game, called Chess, was invented in India.


In India's 100,000 years of history, it has never invaded any other country.


India is the 7th largest country in the world, the largest democracy and one of the oldest civilizations.


India was one of the richest countries in the world before the British invasion in 17th century.


The value of "pi" used in mathematics was first calculated by the Indian mathematician Budhayana in 6th century.


India is one of the largest exporter of computer software products. It exports software to over 90 countries.


India is home to the world's largest pilgrimage destination called the Vishnu Temple. The temple is located in the city of Tirupati. About an average of 30,000 people visit this temple donating about $6 million US dollars, everyday.


India originated Yoga about 5,000 years ago.


India has the most number of mosques. It has 300,000 mosques which is much more than the Muslim world.


Christians and Jews have been living in India since 52 A.D. and 200 B.C. respectively. Read more...

More interestinf Facts.

Cliche is something that has been repeatdly used to the point of losing original meaning. The word "cliche" comes from the days of moveable type, where each letter had to be set by hand into a framework before printing. Commonly-used phrases were kept, pre-set in clamps so they could be regularly used without having to reset all the letters individually each time. The clamp that keeps letters together to form these oft-used sentences or phrases is called a cliche. Some of the popular cliche's include:







Good things come to those who wait.






Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. The End.






A penny saved is a penny earned.






There's plenty more fish in the sea.






You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Johnny Campbell was the first to cheer the football team in 1898 in Princeton. Cheerleading is almost 100 years old when most of the cheerleaders were men. Now 98% of cheerleaders are females. The estimates tell that around the world there are more than 4 million cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are generally in the age group of 5 to 13 years. Most of the cheerleaders are gymnasts and 12% are dancers. In US 80% schools have cheerleading squads. The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders is the most famous squad. Football is most popular sport for cheerleading. Cheerleading is no doubt a dangerous sport as it involves injuries like broken bones, busted lips and serious injuries. Though cheerleading is to rouse the interest of match watchers, cheerleading in itself is a competitive sport. The competitive cheerleader must be a high level gymnast as she is to perform without any safeguards.

VERY INTERESTING UNKNOWN FACTS

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.



2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.


3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.


4. Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight. The Wright brother's invented the airplane.


5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.


6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.


7. The word "set" has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.


8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.


9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.


10. Kangaroos can't walk backwards.






Attribution: http://www.citehr.com/67426-very-interesting-unknown-facts.html#ixzz217DRltVh

Funny , but interesting facts

Even though they may seem unbelievable to many, our world is just filled with things which are amusing and weird as well as true. Below are some funny interesting facts which you will probably enjoy.




A turtle can breathe through it’s butt. Hahaha, Funny!


Their were once restrictions on showing toilets on television.


The old American sitcom television program Leave It To Beaver which originally aired from 1957-1963 is said to have been the very first TV program to show a toilet and even then they only got approved to show the top of the toilet tank, not the actual toilet bowl.


All In The Family was another program which originally aired from 1971 to 1979 in the U.S and was the very first TV program to air the sound of a flushing toilet.


The Brady Bunch which was a show about a mother and father raising 6 children originally aired from 1969-1974. The whole family shared one bathroom which was shown often but it contained no toilet. There’s just something about funny interesting facts and toilets lol.


In the Republic of Albania shaking your head no means yes and nodding your head yes means no. It’s a fact.


Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States between 1923-1929, He played the harmonica and it’s said he enjoyed having vaseline rubbed into his scalp and forehead while eating breakfast in bed.


Walt Disney was scared of mice. That’s funny!


Before he was named Bugs Bunny, he was known as Happy Rabbit.


Long ago in Japan they held contests to see who could fart the longest and loudest. The winner received gifts and high honors, and no, matches were not given out.

INTERESTING FACTS TO INCREASE YOUR GENERAL KNOWLEDGE –

Interesting facts about Grham Bell.

35 Interesting Facts About Alexander Graham Bell



World's Greatest Scientists/Inventors






One of the most famous inventors of all-time is Alexander Graham Bell. He is well remembered for his invention of the telephone. Here’s a list of interesting things about this very intellectual inventor.






1.) Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland.






2.) Alexander Graham Bell is an American inventor and teacher of the deaf.






3.) Bell is most famous for his work on the telephone.






4.) He was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London.






5.) Bell immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871.


6.) In the United States he began teaching deaf-mutes, publicizing the system called visible speech.







7.) In 1872, he founded a school to train teachers of the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts and became part of Boston University






8.) Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology in Boston University.






9.) He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1882.






10.) Since the age of 18, Bell had been working on the idea of transmitting speech.

11.) In 1874, while working on a multiple telegraph, he developed the basic ideas of the telephone.







12.) On March 10, 1876, his experiments with his assistant Thomas Watson finally became a reality.






13.) The statement that Bell transmitted was “Watson, come here; I want you.”






14.) At the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, telephone was introduced to the world.






15.) The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877.



16.) In 1880 France bestowed on Bell the Volta Prize, worth 50,000 francs, for his invention.







17.) He used the money in founding the Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C. and invented the photophone with his associates.






18.) Other inventions include the audiometer, the induction balance, and the first wax recording cylinder, introduced in 1886.






19.) Bell was one of the cofounders of the National Geographic Society, and he served as its president from 1896 to 1904.






20.) He also helped to establish the journal Science by financing it from 1883-1894.

Renaissance & Elizabethan Inventions and Inventors Timeline

Renaissance & Elizabethan Inventions and Inventors Timeline







1450: Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press with movable type in Germany






1510: Leonardo da Vinci designs a horizontal water wheel






1510: Peter Henlein invents the pocket watch






1513: Urs Graf invents etching






1537: Tartaglia's gunner's quadrant for aiming cannon, 1st firing tables






1540: Toriano invents a mandolin-playing automaton






1543: John Dee creates a wooden beetle that can fly for an undergraduate production - one of the first robots






1550: John Dee, 'the guiding spirit' of the English school of mathematicians wrote a notable preface to the first edition in English of Euclid's Elements of Geometry






1565: Conrad Gesner of Switzerland invents the pencil






1568: Bottled beer is invented in London






1569: Gerard Mercator invents Mercator map projection






1582: Pope Gregory XIII invents the modern, Gregorian calendar






1583: Leonard and Thomas Digges invent the telescope






1589: William Lee invents the knitting machine






1590: Dutchmen, Hans & Zacharias Janssen invent the compound microscope






1591: Sir John Harington invents the flush toilet in England






1593: Francis Bacon invented the frozen chicken






1593: Galileo invents a water thermometer






1600: William Gilbert publishes treatise "On the Magnet". William Gilbert is referred to as the father of the science of electricity and magnetism






The first telescope was invented by Hans Lippershey (c1570-c1619). The telescope was introduced to astronomy in 1609 by Galileo Galilei

The Flush Toilet--Interesting Facts on an Amazing Invention

The Flush Toilet--A Great Invention



In most developed nations today, people take some important inventions for granted. Prior to the modern period, most people in urban areas lived in filthy conditions. One of the things that led to these horrible conditions were the methods of waste removal--a toss out the window into the street, regardless of who may have been walking in front or below the window. With no real sewage systems to get rid of such rubbish, it festered and bred more pathogens to infect the unsuspecting. It is no wonder that Norman Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages pointed out that the first thing that those entering a medieval town would have noticed was the smell.






This awful situation was largely alleviated with the re-adoption of mass sewage systems and flush toilets that removed such waste from the general population (although there was then the problem of sewage-infested rivers).
Interesting Facts on the Flush Toilet



1. The first flush toilets in world history were apparently developed by the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley. Archaeological digs in sites known as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in modern-day India revealed that most dwellings in these fairly sizable early cities were in use in the mid-2000s BC, in other words about 2,500 years before Christ, give or take a few years.






2. This wonderful technology diffused to European civilization with the Minoan civilization on Crete. The flush toilet was a widespread technology in the Roman Empire, and there is evidence that the flush toilet even made its way to Britain at Hadrian's Wall. Unfortunately, this wonderful invention was lost to Europeans after the fall of the Romans. What did the Romans bring to Europe, in addition, to roads, the Pax Romana, and aqueducts? Of course, the flush toilet.






3. Elizabeth I of England actually had a flush toilet, introduced to the sovereign by her godson Sir John Harrington. While this toilet flushed, there was no trap to keep out the wonderful gasses and odors that build up. This was quite an improvement over the medieval English "castle garderobe," which was basically a toilet-like stand built in a small room that hanged over a moat. Falling in a moat in England at this time was obviously not a terribly positive experience, although with the lack of bathing in Europe during the medieval period, these poor souls probably fit right in.






4. At about the time the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, a Brit by the name of Alexander Cummings patented the S-trap to keep out the stench that a straight pipe allowed to seep back into the privy.






5. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. That urban legend needs to be ...well...flushed down the crapper, as did his advertisement that he had patented an improvement to the flush toilet.





6. In 1994, the US government mandated that flush toilets should only use 1.6L per flush, rather than the 3.4L previously the standard. Interestingly, the two flushes needed to unstop large (or even not-so-large) clogs would have been avoided by simply leaving things the way they were.






A Holiday for the Flush Toilet--World Toilet Day


This interesting fact on the flush toilet needs its own heading, rather than being merely relegated to the rest of the list. Yes, the flush toilet has its own special day. November 19 is World Toilet Day, and the celebration of the flush toilet is meant to "raise global awareness of the struggle 2.6 billion face every day without access to proper, clean sanitation.WTD also brings to the forefront the health, emotional and psychological consequences the poor endure as a result of inadequate sanitation." (WTO website) World Toilet Day is such a big deal that Time magazine even felt the need to promote it.






Well, dear readers, I hope you found this short venture into the wonderful world of the flush toilet. Be glad you don't live in the medieval period and happy flushing. If you found this Hub especially entertaining, please share, because everyone needs to remember the importance of this wonderful invention that greatly improves our lives.






Important Links about the Flush Toilet


Thomas Crapper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


World Toilet Organization - World Toilet Day


World Toilet Organization (WTO) is a global non- profit organization committed to Improving sanitation conditions for people globally through powerful advocacy, inventive technology, education and building marketplace opportunities locally.


World Toilet Day Raises Sanitation Awareness - TIME


From outhouses to water closets, humans have been devising creative ways to go to the bathroom since, well, the first person crossed his legs with an urgent need to go


Flush toilet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting Facts

Interesting Facts.
Many hamsters blink one eye at a time.



The inventor of the flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.


The average bed is home to over 6 billion dust mites.


Starfish have no brain.


Dolphins sleep with one eye open.


Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which


containing the letter “E”.


Bulls are colour blind.


Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than

Safety Glass by Edouard Benedictus in 1903. SAFETY GLASS

Fascinating facts about the invention



of Safety Glass by Edouard Benedictus in 1903. SAFETY GLASS


Today safety glass, which will not splinter when exposed to shock, is everywhere-in windshields for cars, goggles for machinists, and windows and doors for many public buildings. Essential as it is, safety glass was the result of a clumsy mistake. Edouard Benedictus, a French scientist, was working in his laboratory. The year was 1903. Benedictus climbed a ladder to fetch reagents from a shelf and inadvertently knocked a glass flask to the floor. He heard the glass shatter, but when he glanced down, to his astonishment the broken pieces of the flask still hung together, more or less in their original contour.


On questioning an assistant, Benedictus learned that the flask had recently held a solution of cellulose nitrate, a liquid plastic, which had evaporated, apparently depositing a thin coating of plastic on the flask’s interior. Because the flask appeared cleaned, the assistant, in haste, had not washed it but returned it directly to the shelf.


As one accident had led Benedictus to the discovery, a series of other accidents directed him toward its application. In 1903, automobile driving was a new and often dangerous hobby among Parisians. The very week of Benedictus’s laboratory discovery, a Paris newspaper ran a feature article on the recent rash of automobile accidents. When Benedictus read that most of the drivers seriously injured had been cut by shattered glass windshields, he knew that his unique glass could save lives.






As he recorded in his diary: "Suddenly there appeared before my eyes an image of the broken flask. I leapt up, dashed to my laboratory, and concentrated on the practical possibilities of my idea.,, For twenty-four hours straight, he experimented with coating glass with liquid plastic, then shattering it. "By the following evening," he wrote, "I had produced my first piece of Triplex [safety glass]-full of promise for the future." Unfortunately, automakers, struggling to keep down the price of their new luxury products, were uninterested in the costly safety glass for windshields. The prevalent attitude was that driving safety was largely in the hands of the driver, not the manufacturer. Safety measures were incorporated into automobile design to prevent an accident but not to minimize injury if an accident occurred.






It was not until the outbreak of World War I that safety glass found its first practical, wide-scale application: as the lenses for gas masks. Manufacturers found it relatively easy and inexpensive to fashion small ovals of laminated safety glass, and the lenses provided military personnel with a kind of protection that was desperately needed but had been impossible until that time. After automobile executives examined the proven performance of the new glass under the extreme conditions of battle, safety glass’s major application became car windshields.

Facts that you did not know.

 facts you likely didn’t know about popular inventions

The Super Soaker was invented by a nuclear engineer out of a PVC pipe and Coke bottle

Lonnie Johnson first sold the idea to Lamari by firing it inside their Philadelphia offices. He was then introduced to Hasbro — awesomeness has ensued ever since.

 


Bag-pipes were invented in Persia, not Scotland






“It was most likely a rather crude instrument comprised of reeds stuck into a goatskin bag. As civilization spread throughout the Middle East and into the Mediterranean lands, the people brought along their music.”
 

The guy who voiced Mr. Owl in Tootsie Pop cartoons also invented the artificial heart







“Paul Winchell built the prototype with the advice and input of Henry J. Heimlich, the doctor who invented the most famous method of saving choking victims, and received his patent in 1963. He later donated the patent to the University of Utah.”

 


The word “hello” was invented because no one knew how to start a telephone call






“Over at the laboratories of Edison’s rival, Bell was insisting on “Ahoy!” as the correct way to answer the telephone. It was trounced by “hello,” which became the standard as the first telephone exchanges, equipped by Edison, were set up across the United States and operating manuals adopted the word.”

The same company that invented aspirin, Bayer, also invented heroin as a cold medicine

 
Corn Flakes were invented to stop masturbation







“In 1898, John Harvey Kellog introduced another health food known as “Corn Flakes.” Corn Flakes — like Graham Crackers and Granola — were designed to avoid inflaming the sexual appetite. At that time, they were not sweetened with sugar. Kellogg believed that sugar was unhealthy and associated with vice and degeneracy.”

Interesting Facts About Inventions

Interesting Facts About Inventions











Before invention of the thermometer, brewers used to check the temperature by dipping their thumb, to find whether appropriate for adding Yeast. Too hot, the yeast would die. This is where we get the phrase " The Rule of the Thumb".

Sliced bread was patented by a jeweller, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912.

Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.

Interesting Facts is that The Sumerians invented writing.

The Sumerians, who lived in the Middle East, invented the wheel in about 3450 BC.






Karl Benz invented the first gas powered car. The car had only three wheels. The first car with four wheels was made in France in 1901 by Panhard et LeVassor.






JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes.

Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.



Interesting Facts is that India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.






Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laserbprinters,all were invented by women.



In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was entitled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.


The first rocket was invented by the Chinese in the 13th century.






False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D.W. Griffith while he was making his 1916 epic, "Intolerance". Griffith wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life. A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to Owen's eyelids. "Intolerance" was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts that he might have been able to settle easily - had he only thought to patent the eyelashes.

Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."






The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.






Mr. Peanut was invented in 1916 by a Suffolk, Virginia schoolchild who won $5 in a design contest sponsored by Planters Peanuts.






Everyone thinks it was Whitcomb Judson who invented the zipper but it was really Elias Howe. Elias was so busy inventing the sewing machine that he didn't get around to selling his zipper invention which he called a "clothing closure".

Interesting Facts is that The oiuja board was invented by Isaac and William Fuld, and was patented July 1, 1892.

The hamburger was invented in 1900 by Louis Lassen. He ground beef, broiled it, and served it between two pieces of toast.


In 2003, scientists managed to create a material dense enough to stop light mid-way through it, allowing them to observe static light.

The Can opener wasn't invented until 48 years after the can.

Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.

Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.

Dry cereal for breakfast was invented by John Henry Kellogg at the turn of the century Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver in 1836.

The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep.

A Brief History of Playing Cards

A Brief History of Playing Cards
Playing Cards have existed for millennia and around them hundreds of games and conventions have been devised. It is upon their fall, their suits and their ranks that fortunes have been dashed and players been daunted. The standard deck comprises 52 cards, in four suits each of thirteen ranks. In the Royal Household are Kings, Queens and Jacks, and another fellow who plays a cameo in games here and there known as the Joker.

The English pattern itself derives from a 15th century design that originated in Rouen, France. One might not think twice as to why it is these characters who have come to contritely inhabit the ranks of the deck. Their place in playing cards was by no means a journey of certainty, and it was not without the possibility of other contenders.


But it was these Kings, Queens and Knights, this English household, dressed in their 16th century period garb that underwrites the standard of the Anglo-American playing card. Their history begins way back in the murky dimness when many patterns were emerging in regions, and when many different Royal Households contended for eminence.






Playing Cards are believed to have arrived in Europe around the 1350’s. One of the earliest historical references comes in 1379 (Giovanni de Covelluzzo, City of Viterbo) and not surprisingly it is the form of a prohibition forbidding the use of cards on Sunday or the Sabbath. By that time, however, playing-cards were well and truly vested in European culture and were as well known in Switzerland and Germany as they were along the Mediterranean coast. How they got there, no one really knows. (PROBABLY FROM CHINA)

The earliest archaeological documentation of playing cards comes from 12th century China. This oldest of tangible artefacts is described as a paper money card. Apparently the deck was arranged in four suits of coins, more coins, strings of coins and myriads of strings of coins, with numerical values 1-9. The cards are thought to have been accepted as a kind of paper currency. In games like these, they were not only used as the instruments of gaming, but the very bets you laid.






Even further back than this, it is known that playing cards existed in Persia and throughout the Arabian Peninsula as early as the 8th century. While it seems plausible enough to expect that Gypsies or merchants arriving from these places may have been responsible for introducing them to European culture, the threads are difficult to weave, and any exemplary forms completely unknown.






More likely that playing cards arrived in Europe from Egypt, crossing the Mediterranean some time in the 14th century. In Egypt there was a class of military servants who used a 52-card deck that looks almost identical to some of the earliest Italian decks. The 52 cards were divided into four suits of Swords, Sticks, Cups and Coins. Numbers 1-10 were represented as pips arranged on the card, exactly as they are on playing cards today, and the three royal titles were Malik (King), Na’ib Malik (Deputy King) and Thani Na’ib (Under Deputy), though none were represented in human form, but rather as geometric patterns.






By the late 14th century playing cards were in widespread use right across Europe and card-making shops were emerging everywhere. It was in Germany that the giant leap forward took place in printing, and wood blocks were churning out cards by the 100s. The earliest examples of European design displayed the ‘Latin Suits’ of Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins. The Germans and the Swiss were producing more elegant forms as Hearts, Bells, Leaves and Acorns (1475) and by the 1480s the French had turned to producing Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds.






Although the first playing cards to arrive in England were Latin suited, by the 1590’s the most common cards in circulation were those of French origin.






It was the Europeans who began to give the Court cards their faces, and as they did so their characters turned to more familiar titles like “King”, “Chevalier” and “Valet”. While all this was going on, there was also some conjecture about the optimum number of cards to be playing with. Some decks had as few as 48, others as many as 56. In some the Royal Household was extended to four by including Queens, in others, Queens replaced Kings altogether. In France’s high world of Fashion, the Valet was even given some plaits in his hair.


By the late 15th century, most card players had agreed that the standard deck played best with 52 cards. In Germany, that meant the end for Queens, and in Spain they had never really been invited into the Household in the first place. In France, however, just enough elegance balanced with sophistication and the Queens were spared gallows of disregard. It was from here they found passage to England, flanked either side by King and Knave, to take residence in the Royal Household there.






Design elements took a number of forms. In France, for example, there were some nine distinctive regional patterns, and much experimentation and variation was going on across Europe. It was in the city of Agen, France, around 1745 that fledgling reversible court cards first broke press. Up until then, picture cards were drawn in full length with head, legs, and torso and included many design elements such as weapons and horses. Naturally, the new reversible design eliminated some of these, but since you didn’t have to turn your picture cards right way up every time you were dealt them upside down, everybody liked the idea. Ironically, the French authorities prohibited production of these new cards, while everywhere else they were eagerly embraced. As early as the 1800s, even some decks being produced in America had this design feature.






The rise of the Ace to pre-eminence had it beginnings in the 14th century. In early games the Kings were always the highest card but by the late 14th century special significance began to be placed on the lowest card, the One or “Ace” as we have come to know it. The practice was only further popularized in the republican fervor of the French Revolution (1789-1799) where many more games began to be played ‘Ace high’. There was even the suggestion of doing away with the Royal family altogether and instead of Kings, Queens and Knights have Liberties, Equalities and Fraternities, but that idea just never caught on.






The Ace of Spades is regarded as the insignia card of the deck. Traditionally it is used to display the manufacturers logo or brand name as a testament to quality and a mark of identification. The practice began in 17th century England when, under the reign of King James 1st, a duty was imposed on local playing card manufacturers. The Ace of Spades carried the insignia of the printing house, so they could be identified, and a stamp as proof of tax paid. The duty was abolished in the 1960’s but the practice of inscribing the brand insignia on the Ace of Spades remains.