The Apollo missions have left 96 bags of poop, pee, and vomit on the moon. Back in 1969, mankind made history by walking on the moon for the first time. That wasn’t the only first that happened on that momentous trip – it was also the first time literal trash was dumped on the moon. Subsequent voyages to the moon followed suit, leaving behind all their unwanted trash, but it turns out that’s all for a good reason – the returning spacecraft don’t have enough fuel to carry all that weight back!
100 Mind-Blowing Back Facts
Nintendo used to have a hotline you could call if you were stuck in one of their games. Back in the days before the Internet, video games were much more challenging, and finding the right way to beat them sometimes seemed impossible. Nintendo was well aware of this, and in the US, at least provided a service called the “Powerline,” which struggling gamers could call for tips and tricks.
In Japan, when a train leaves the station at the wrong time, the rail company apologizes. Back in 2018, a train in Japan left the station a full 25 seconds early, which probably sounds like nothing out of the ordinary to most people worldwide. The train operator admitted his mistake, exclaiming, “The great inconvenience we placed upon our customers was truly inexcusable.” Japanese trains are known for their punctuality, so there were a few passengers who missed their train that day!
The Internet has its very own patron saint. St. Isidore of Seville may not seem at first to be the best patron saint of the Internet, considering he lived back in the 7th Century. While he certainly lived well before the Internet was invented, he shared many values with it. He tried to record all the knowledge he could get his hands on during his life, which isn’t that far from what the Internet is – a great big collection of knowledge!
Barbara Bush, George Bush Snr’s wife, once called The Simpsons the “dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.” The former First Lady seemed to be completely against the show and didn’t hold back when quizzed on the topic in 1990. Soon after this, she received a letter “penned” by Marge Simpson, which pleaded with Bush to reconsider her opinion and find a way out of the controversy. Barbara Bush wrote back to Marge, apologizing for her loose tongue, and even went on to call Homer Simpson handsome!
Three towns in Scotland, Australia, and the US are united by how boring they are. The towns themselves probably aren’t that boring, really, but their names sure are. Dull, Scotland; Boring, Oregon; and Bland, Australia, teamed up back in 2014 to get a much-needed tourism boost by creating the tongue-in-cheek League of Extraordinary Communities. It wasn’t long before the three towns’ union gained a new nickname – the Trinity of Tedium.
8th-grade students from a town in Alaska must spend two nights on an uninhabited island as part of their science exam. The tradition began forty-six years ago when a school teacher in Ketchikan, Alaska, made it his goal to educate the town’s youth on how to survive in the harsh climate of Alaska. He also just wanted kids to have more fun at school, as there wasn’t much fun going around back in his schooling days. Despite not being mandatory, most of the town’s grade eights eagerly make the trip each year.
The 1927 Liberian general election was the most rigged in world history. People are quick to claim an election was rigged when their ideal candidate isn’t chosen, but the people of Liberia had something to complain about back in 1927 genuinely. While there were only 15,000 registered voters, Charles King of the True Whig Party somehow managed to rake in 243,000 votes! Despite the results being falsified, the True Whig Party still won the election.
The world’s first Guinness world record for push-ups was 6,006. Charles Linster took home the first Guinness World Record in this category when he completed all 6,006 push-ups non-stop back in 1965. There are plenty of different record categories for push-ups these days, ranging from the most completed in one hour (2,806) to the most consecutive one-finger push-ups (124).
Recorders used to be a popular instrument. Many people around the world will fondly recall the moment in their early schooling years when they no longer had to screech out a horrifying rendition of Three Blind Mice or something along those lines on a recorder. This seemingly useless musical instrument, while shunned today, was all the rage back in the Baroque period of the early 1700s. It was so quiet that it was eventually replaced with the significantly louder flute so that the rest of the orchestra wouldn’t drown it out.
The US Army has its private herd of bison. Unfortunately, it’s not part of some sort of secret plan to create a mounted bison regiment. Instead, the US Army base of Camp Pendleton in California was gifted the bison back in the 70s. The San Diego Zoo entrusted the bison to the base for safekeeping, and they’ve done such a great job at it that the herd has grown from 14 to 90 or so! The herd is constantly monitored, not just to ensure they’re in good health but also because they’re quite dangerous wild animals!
The term “lawn mullet” means having a neatly manicured front yard and an unmowed mess in the back.
No matter how badly fingerprints are damaged, they will always grow back to their original pattern.
The prop master in Scream forgot to unplug Drew Barrymore’s phone, so she called 911 screaming several times until the police called back during a take.
Occupational therapy (OT) can be traced back to 100 BC.
Among lost works, this story might be even worse: Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, left a suitcase full of the author’s writing on a train. When she went back to get it, it was gone. “I had never seen anyone hurt by a thing other than death or unbearable suffering except Hadley when she told me about the things being gone,” Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast.
The word technology was coined in 330 BC by the one and only Aristotle. You may think of technology as modernized or contemporary, but its etymology dates back to Aristotle’s time.
1 Million Recycled Laptops = Energy Savings of 3,500 Homes. Most laptops reach landfills rather than the recycling bin. Americans need to recycle as much electronic waste as possible, including laptops. Doing so comes with significant energy savings. For example, a million recycled laptops save enough energy to power 3,500 homes for a year. That’s an incredible energy savings and cuts back on further production of new laptops from new materials.
The first Apple logo isn’t what you would think. Originally, it featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree, with an apple about to fall on his head. It was designed back in 1976 and featured a phrase around the border that read “Newton…A mind forever voyageing through strange seas of thought…alone”.
Domain name registration used to be free. Way back when people didn’t realize how huge the Internet would be, registering a domain name was free until 1995. When a fee was introduced, it was high! Prices were typically $100 for two years of registration.
The first computer mouse wasn’t made from plastic. Back in 1964, Doug Engelbart invented the first-ever computer mouse! Back then, it was made out of wood. It was rectangular and featured a little button on the top right. He called it a mouse because the cord coming out of the back reminded him of the tiny rodents.
The first online gaming was before the year 2000. Sega Dreamcast was the first 128-bit console to hit the market. Released in 1999, it was the first console that allowed real-time online play. Unfortunately, it was a little too early for its time, as back then, most Internet connections were not reliable enough.
Apollo 11 astronauts couldn’t afford insurance. Life insurance for a space mission cost a fortune because the risks were extremely high back then. So instead, the astronauts of Apollo 11 signed hundreds of covers that their families could sell in case anything went wrong.
The first word to ever be auto-corrected was “teh.” Back in the day, autocorrect wasn’t as efficient as it is now. To auto-correct “teh” to “the,” you had to press the left arrow and F3.
The most expensive phone number cost millions. Back in 2006, Qatar Telecom hosted a charity auction where they sold the phone number 666-6666. It sold for $2.75 million, bought by an anonymous bidder.
A “jiffy” is a real measurement. If you’ve ever said, “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” you were saying, “I’ll be back in 10 milliseconds.” A jiffy is an actual measurement of time, referring to the length of one cycle of the computer’s system clock – about 10 milliseconds. When used in physics, it stands for the amount of time that it takes light to travel one centimetre.
Amazon’s robot workers skyrocketed in less than five years. Back in 2013, only 1,000 robots were working in an Amazon warehouse. In 2017, they had 45,000 robots across 20 warehouses.
Mexico’s presidential palace is 14 times larger than the White House and started allowing visitors for the first time in 2018. From 1935 to 2018, the Los Pinos presidential palace was the official place of residence for Mexico’s presidents and was closed off to any who weren’t expressly invited. This changed in 2018 when Andres Manuel López Obrador was elected the Mexican President, winning his campaign on the back of promises to fight corruption. As a gesture of goodwill, he chose not to move into the palace, instead simply living in a small apartment in Mexico City’s central district. To give you an idea of what the Mexican president gave up, the presidential palace covers 603,000 square feet (56,000 square meters).
Your tonsils could grow back if there was tissue left behind during the removal process. Sometimes it’s accidental; other times, it’s left on purpose.
The term “footage” comes from films being measured in feet when being edited in the early days of filmmaking. Why footage got its name is one of those questions that you have when taking a long shower or when you’re just starting to drift off to sleep. Fortunately, we have the answer for you and even an explanation! Back in the day, when movies were released without audio, they used to use 35mm film. During this era, the film was measured out and cut into foot-long (0.3 m) strips, which contained 16 frames in each. One foot of 35mm film was just one second of screen time. The amount of seconds in a film naturally became known as the footage.
In 2005, Mark Zuckerberg unsuccessfully tried to sell Facebook for $75 million. Back then, it was called TheFacebook.
Traditionally, when a US aircraft landed on the wrong carrier, it would be covered in graffiti before being sent back to the right one.
Loss of horsepower. Napoleon took 187,600 horses with his army as he rode into Russia in 1812, and only 1,600 came back.
Oll Korrect. The origin of the phrase ‘OK’ dates back to a fad for intentionally misspelt abbreviations in 1830s Boston. When witty Bostonians began spelling ‘all correct’ as ‘Oll Korrect’, newspapers picked up on the joke. In 1840, US President Martin Van Buren, originally from Kinderhook in New York, adopted the phrase for his re-election campaign and his supporters set up ‘Old Kinderhook’, or ‘OK’, clubs across the country. The term quickly made the transition from slang to legitimate use.
Luckiest man in the world? Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the first atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. Despite being only three kilometres away from the blast, Yamaguchi survived, though was seriously burned and temporarily blinded. The following day, he began the journey back to his hometown of Nagasaki, arriving on 8 August. On 9 August, he was a little over a mile from the epicentre of the second atomic bomb when it dropped on Nagasaki. He survived but was injured again, along with his wife and infant daughter.
Gravity is also the reason why our days are getting longer. Over a billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted around 18 hours. Our days are longer now because the moon’s gravity is causing Earth’s spin to slow down. In Earth’s earlier days, the moon wasn’t as far away, which caused Earth to spin much faster than it currently does. Longer days also mean shorter years—kind of. The time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun hasn’t changed, but the amount of days within a year has. Back when the dinosaurs ruled 70 million years ago, days were only around 23.5 hours long, and a year was made up of 372 of those slightly shorter days.
The length of a year on Earth can also get a bit complicated. The original Roman calendar was a bit of a mess, so much so that in 46 BCE Julius Caesar mandated a 445-day-long year to help bring the calendar back in sync with the seasons.
But Sosigenes made a bit of a miscalculation, so the calendar continued to be a little off. He thought a year lasted 365.25 days. It’s around 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds, equivalent to about 365.242 days. This tiny error had some pretty big consequences: By 1577, the Julian calendar was off by 10 days, meaning key Christian holidays were being celebrated on incorrect dates. Pope Gregory XIII took issue with this and established a commission to get the calendar back on track. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was created. Rather than having an extra day every four years without exception, years that are divisible by 100—like 1700 or 1900—skip leap year. Unless the year is also divisible by 400, like the year 2000, in which case the Leap Year is back on! Even this system isn’t perfect, though: It has an error of one day in 3236 years.
Daylight saving time ended on a national level after the war, but individual states and municipalities kept it going until World War II. At the end of World War I, the entire nation went on what was effectively a year-round daylight saving time. After World War II, the entire nation was again picking and choosing daylight saving time. It’s been reported that in Iowa, back in 1964, there were 23 different combinations of dates that communities turned on and off daylight saving time. In 1966, the government officially mandated a standardised daylight saving time for the entire United States, though individual states could opt out. Until 2007, daylight saving time ended in October. It’s been reported that the candy industry lobbied to wait until after Halloween to change the clocks back an hour.
People have been tracking time for thousands of years. In 2013, archaeologists found what’s thought to be the world’s oldest lunar calendar while excavating a field in Scotland. The calendar, which is made of a series of 12 pits that mimic the moon’s phases, dates back to around 8000 BCE.
Travelling back in time is possible—theoretically, at least. According to Einstein’s theory, you could travel back in time by moving faster than the speed of light, as long as you could somehow have infinite mass. Since that probably won’t work, you could create “wormholes” between two points in space-time. (This would also be tough since humanity still hasn’t invented the technology to build a wormhole.) Or you could try bending space-time by plucking some “cosmic strings.” Two of these theoretical strings, which are thin streams of pure energy that are moving in opposite directions at very near the speed of light, could theoretically warp space-time enough to create a closed time-like curve—also known as a time machine.
It may be the biggest free software project now (see #1) but when the very first kernel was released back in 1991 it was made up of a comparatively minuscule 10k lines of code — baby Linux!
The first book to be published about Linux was Matt Welsh’s ‘Linux Installation and Getting Started’ back in 1993. The first dedicated magazine, Linux Journal, was published a year later in March 1994. The first issue carried an interview with Linus.
On 15 August 1994, William R. Della Croce, Jr. filed for the trademark Linux and then demanded royalties from Linux distributors. After court battles, Linus Torvalds got the trademark rights back in 1997.
500 million consumers, dating back to 2014, had their information compromised in the Marriott-Starwood data breach made public in 2018. (CSO Online)
The top 5 dishes in England are… Whilst Chicken Tikka Masala may be the national dish, England’s top five most popular dishes include: 1. Full English Breakfast – The ultimate, fried classic that is bursting with a mixture of flavours. Including those from tomatoes, eggs, sausages and bacon. 2. Black Pudding – A blood sausage that consists of a mixture of pork or beef blood, cereal and fat. The English county of Lancashire is often associated with savoury pudding. 3. Devilled Kidneys – This dish has ties to the Victorian period, originating from gentlemen’s clubs in London. It comprises lamb kidneys simmered in a spiced sauce. 4. Eggy Bread – Inspired by French toast and believed to date back to the medieval period, eggy bread comes as it’s described! You can enjoy this as a sweet or savoury dish for breakfast/brunch. 5. Kedgeree – This meal is the English take on an Indian dish, khichdi. It is packed with different flavours, including spiced rice, eggs and fish.
Back in the 19th century, Alaska was a part of Russia.
Stonehenge Is More Ancient Than the Pyramids: Few people are aware that Stonehenge, one of the most well-known prehistoric monuments in the world, predates the pyramids by even longer. Another interesting information about England is that Stonehenge was constructed during the Bronze Age as a cemetery. The remarkable stone circle was created in the late Neolithic era, roughly 2500 BC, and the initial stones were part of an early Henge monument, which dates back to 3000 BC. Meanwhile, the construction of the pyramids took place between 2500 and 2400 BC. Therefore, we can conclude that both of these ancient sites are well worth seeing! Not only as a sightseeing spot for tourists all over the globe, but Stonehenge is also a site of interest for students in related fields as well. For learners studying this prehistoric monument, uhomes.com provides a list of accommodation options in the area.
Money dates way back: Money has been a part of human history for at least 5,000 years. Before then, a system of bartering was likely used. The world’s oldest coin dates back to 600 BCE in China, which then moved to paper money around 700 CE. But for parts of Europe, it took until the 16th Century to switch from metal coins to paper money.
Billions of funds are transferred each year: In 2021, money transfers to low and middle-income countries reached US $605 billion according to the latest World Bank data. It’s estimated that around one billion people worldwide (or 1 in 7 people) are involved in international money transfers, with around 200 million migrant workers sending money back home and 800 million people receiving it.
The Dollar Sign Was First Used in 1785: Here’s another fun money fact: The official adoption of the dollar sign in the U.S. can be traced back to 1785, when it evolved from the Spanish symbol for pesos. It’s believed the $ originated from the abbreviation PS, which was used to indicate Spanish pesos in the Americas. Gradually the “S” came to be written over the “P,” eventually morphing into the dollar sign we know today.
The Oldest Currency Still in Use Is the British Pound: The British pound dates back to 775 AD and was called the pound sterling when Anglo-Saxon kings used silver pennies, or sterlings as money. Today, this foreign currency is the fourth most traded in the foreign exchange market, after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen.
The First Universal Credit Card Was Introduced in 1950: Credit cards originated in the U.S. back in the 1920s, but were issued by individual firms, such as oil companies and hotel chains, to their customers, specifically for purchases made at company outlets. It wasn’t until 1950 that Diners Club founders Ralph Schneider and Frank McNamara issued a card that could be used at a variety of establishments. The Diners Club card sparked the modern credit card era. Others soon followed, such as American Express, which debuted their card of this type in 1958.
The phrase ‘to pay through the nose’ dates back to the Danes who would slit the noses of the Irish who wouldn’t pay their poll tax.
The oldest cat video on YouTube dates back to 1894. It features two cats boxing.
Back in 2020, only 9% of firms reported using AI tools like machine learning and voice recognition. However, the market was by no means small – it was worth $10 billion, and it’s continued to grow, with projections that it’ll reach $27 billion by 2026.
Back in 2019, Microsoft and Google warned that bad AI could potentially harm a business’ brand. Although many companies are eager to implement AI, the fact is that if not done properly, it could exacerbate existing problems or create new ones.