The world’s first motel is in San Luis Obispo, which was built in 1925. When opened, it cost $1.25 for a two-room bungalow with a kitchen and a private adjoining garage.
100 Mind-Blowing Cost Facts
Mount Rushmore cost less than one million dollars to construct. It took 14 years to build – from 1927 to 1941 and took 400 workers.
The money for the Statue of Liberty came from fundraising from auctions, a lottery, and boxing matches in Europe and the U.S. The Statue cost the French about $250,000, which today would be over 5.5 million dollars.
When the historic Plaza Hotel in NYC opened in 1907, a room cost $2.50 per night, the same as $64.26 today. The Plaza now charges over $1,000/night.
At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo on them. The cost for the marketing campaign was in the billions – and it worked.
In the 1830s, the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, wanted to disassemble the Giza Pyramids and use them as pre-cut building materials. Thankfully, the Quantity Surveyor for the project fudged the figures and made it look like it would cost too much to save them.
Spacesuits take 5,000 hours to make, cost 1 million dollars, weigh about 110 pounds and have 11 layers of material.
LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete. An ordinary plastic LEGO brick can support the weight of 375,000 other bricks before it fails. This, theoretically, would let you build a tower nearing 3.5km in height. Scaling this up to house-size bricks, however, would cost far too much.
The Netherlands has a squirrel bridge. One of the most interesting fun facts about humans’ relationship with animals: After a few squirrel casualties, Netherlands officials built a squirrel bridge across the N44 motorway. The two-year project cost a hefty £120,000. However, to date, only five squirrels have been seen using it.
A baby can cost new parents 750 hours of sleep. For first-time parents, having a baby can remove 750 hours from their usual total sleeping hours for an entire year.
Square watermelons cost more than round ones. A square watermelon can be bought for $85. They are mostly expensive due to the intensive labour that is put into shaping them.
Women were only allowed to wear shorts in public after WWII. With the scarcity of resources during the war, people had to wear less or opt for more cost-efficient clothing. After the war, it took time for countries to recover economically. As such, it was socially acceptable for women to wear shorts.
Saffron is more expensive than gold. Iran is the world’s main producer of saffron, supplying 95% of the saffron market. Each flower produces about three red stamens which must be hand-picked. For every 150 flowers, only 1 gram of saffron is produced. The lengthy process plus its rarity makes this precious spice cost $3,000 per kg.
The film captures the horrors and human cost of war. “Schindler’s List” portrays the devastating consequences of war and the immense suffering endured by innocent people caught in its grip.
Costco’s hot dog and soda combo has remained at the same price since 1985. If you make your way to a Costco food court, you can pick up this great deal for just $1.50! Over time the cost price of the deal increased, but Costco countered this by opening a factory to make their sausages. This never seemed to affect its popularity, as 151 million hot dog combos were sold in 2020.
It cost $265 million to make Grand Theft Auto V. When the game was released in 2013, it became the most expensive video game ever made. This was no cause for concern for its developers after it raked in a shocking $1 million within the first seventy-two hours of sales. It took five years to develop the game, with Rockstar’s studios all over the world working together in tandem.
Arizona fines drivers under their unique “Stupid Motorist Law.” This law addresses something which Arizona is all too familiar with – flash floods and stupid drivers. When a section of an Arizona road is flooded, barriers are put up to prevent drivers from attempting to go any further. If you cross these barriers and need to get rescued, you will be fined under the Stupid Motorist Law to reimburse the cost of your rescue.
The inventor of the USB originally designed it to be plugged in either way up. One of the most frustrating things to do with technology has got to be the fact that, try as hard as you will; whenever you go to plug a USB in, it’s the wrong way up. The original design would have been much better but ended up being canned as it would have cost twice the price to make it flippable. The inventor of the USB has since agreed that they made the mistake of not going ahead with the original idea.
First cellular/mobile phone ever. Motorola released the world’s first mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000x, in 1983. This portable phone cost $3,995 upon release and offered 30 minutes of talk time. Charging the device required 10 hours, and it could only store 30 phone numbers in memory. Unsurprisingly, few people purchased the device, but it marked a breakthrough in mobile technology. Nowadays, cell phones and smartphones (no matter how cheap or expensive they are) are indispensable gadgets in people’s lives.
Domain Names were free before 1995. Domain name registration often costs a few dollars (or more) these days. Before 1995, registering a domain didn’t cost a penny, though. The National Science Foundation gave Network Solutions permission to charge for domain registration that year. Two-year registration for a domain initially cost $100. Prices trended downward for .COM domains after that. Available, unparked domains often cost $20 to $30 for a two-year registration. Purchasing a parked or popular domain name can, of course, cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. By 1995, only a few thousand domain names existed, so not many companies received free domains.
How Much Does GPS Cost To Manage and Run? The average person doesn’t know GPS is funded by American taxpayers. Millions of people use GPS for navigation and location tracking each day. In 2020, $1.71 billion was required to fund the core program in the United States. The total budget for GPS tends to trend upward as the system is improved and updated. For 2021, the budget requested to run the GPS program and infrastructure is over $1.8 billion. Currently, the Department of Defence manages GPS as a whole. Extra funding is provided by the Department of Transportation for civilian upgrades to the system. US law ensures that GPS is available free of cost for direct users with no plans to privatize GPS in the future.
This man threw a hard drive loaded with 7500 bitcoins into the trash. James Howells mined 7,500 Bitcoins in 2009 and stored them on a hard drive. At that point, Bitcoin’s value amounted to almost nothing. The cryptocurrency slowly started to grow in value after a few years, and Howells thought he owned a small fortune. Only then did he realize he accidentally threw away the hard drive sometime in 2013? Howells lives in Wales and contacted the Newport City Council to excavate the local landfill. He offered the City Council over $70 million if the hard drive was recovered. Based on today’s rate, the hard drive is worth more than $375 million. The City council baulked at the offer due to environmental regulations and the required cost.
The government used PlayStation 3’s… but not for gaming. In 2010, the United States Air Force used 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles to build a supercomputer for the Department of Defence. They used PS3s because it was more cost-efficient and “green.”
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 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.
Havoc! One of the few known medieval battlefield orders is the cry of ‘Havoc!’. Havoc released the army from any formation and gave freedom to loot, and was an order only ever to be given when it was utterly certain that a battle was won and discipline was no longer required. It was considered so dangerous that it was expressly forbidden without permission from the army’s commander. A wrongly timed cry of havoc could cost a battle and there were severe punishments for crying havoc without permission – sometimes extending to beheading.
More Antivirus Users Prefer the Free to the Paid Version, Globally. Despite its limited features, many antivirus users prefer using the free and limited versions to the paid version of their antivirus software. Some reasons this is so include their perception of security, the type of features in the free version, and the cost of the premium version.
Cloud-based Antivirus Market is Continually Increasing. The Cloud-based antivirus industry is ever-increasing, and experts anticipate the industry expanding to $1.819 billion by 2023. Thanks to the reduced cost of cloud computing and the increased number of sophisticated cyber solutions.
Cost of Redeveloping the Linux Kernel: Redeveloping version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel in a traditional, non-open source way was estimated to cost around $612 million in 2004. Another study in 2006, funded by the European Union, suggested that redoing version 2.6.8 would be even more expensive, at about $1.14 billion. These estimates show how much money could be saved by using the open-source approach of developing Linux.
The average cost of a data breach was $4.88 million in 2024, the highest average on record. (IBM)
100,000 groups and more than 400,000 servers in at least 150 countries were infected by the Wannacry virus in 2017, at a total cost of around $4 billion. (Technology Inquirer)
The average cost of a ransomware recovery in 2024 is $2.73 million. (Sophos)
For large firms, the cost of compliance can approach $10,000 per employee. (Forbes)
The global average cost of a data breach in 2024 is $4.88 million, a 10 per cent increase over last year. (IBM)
The average per-capita cost of a data breach is $165, one dollar higher than in 2022. (IBM)
The average total cost of a ransomware breach is $5.13 million, 13 per cent higher than in 2022. (IBM)
When remote work is a factor in causing a data breach, the average cost per breach is $173,074 higher. (IBM)
Companies with extensive use of AI and automation security tools cost 2.2 per cent less in breach costs. (IBM)
A data breach can cost a company an average of $1.3 million in lost business. (IBM)
The average total cost of a data breach in smaller companies (500 employees or less) increased from $2.92 million in 2022 to $3.31 million in 2022. (IBM)
The average total cost of a breach in very large companies (more than 25,000 employees) decreased from $5.69 million in 2022 to $5.42 million in 2022. (IBM)
The average total cost of a data breach in Canada decreased by 9 per cent from $5.64 million to $5.13 million (IBM)
In 2024, the United States is the country with the highest average total cost of a data breach at $9.36 million. The Middle East is a close second with $8.75 million (IBM).
The WannaCry ransomware attack cost the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) more than $100 million. (Datto)
The cost of downtime to medical organisations due to attacks is estimated to be $15.5 million in 2023. (Comparitech)
The average cost of a financial services data breach is $4.45 million. (IBM)
Cybercrime costs the world economy more than $1 trillion per year (McAfee): McAfee believes the cost of cybercrime around the world is around $1 trillion per year, accounting for around 1% of our total GDP. The costs of cybercrime are often influenced by several factors of course, including the degree of damage caused, the theft of certain property (intellectual or otherwise), and the costs of stolen money. When companies lose data, there are hours of work put into fixing the problem.
The cost of hacking is increasing (FBI and McAfee): The FBI revealed that although they considered the cost of cybercrime to be around $3.5 billion for the US in 2019, the actual toll could be a lot higher because many exploits and attacks go unnoticed. Even without a clear view of unreported crimes, the cost of cybercrime is increasing significantly every year. McAfee found the costs of an attack are increasing, but that the costs of manageing an event before and after an attack are higher now too.
The Average cost of a data breach is around $3.86 million (IBM): According to IBM, the average cost of a breach in data is around $3.68 million as of 2020. In 2021, this cost accelerated to $3.61 million in hybrid cloud environments. What makes the costs of data breaches even greater is that the average time to identify a breach is often around 287 days. The average cost of a ransomware breach was around $4.62 million in 2021 according to IBM, and healthcare suffered the worst, with the highest total cost for a data breach according to industry.
Attacks involving compromised passwords cost SMBs around $384,598 per attack (Ponemon Institute and Keeper Security): According to a report by the Ponemon Institute and Keeper Security, 68% of SMBs worldwide say their employees’ passwords were lost or stolen in 2019. Additionally, 68% also said employees using weak passwords was one of the biggest causes of hacking issues. Attacks involving compromised passwords cost around $384,598 per attack. Unfortunately, only 48% of companies require employees to use strong or unique passwords, and 55% of brands say they don’t have employee password usage policies. Only 38% of SMBs stop employees from using the same password on all internal systems.
In the past 5 years, there have been over 2.2 million complaints about Internet crime to the FBI (FBI IC3): According to the Internet Crime Complaints Centre – or IC3, the number of complaints issued to the centre has increased significantly in the last five years. Around 2.2 million complaints were recorded in 2020. The FBI notes this is a significant increase since the beginning of 2016. What’s more, the cost of cyber-attacks is higher too. In 2016, complaints of hacking and cybercrime accounted for around $1.5 billion in losses. In 2020, the complaints accounted for around $4.2 billion.
Hacking attacks increased significantly during 2020 (Iomart): According to studies from Iomart, the number of cyberattacks, hacking, and their resulting costs have increased significantly during 2020. The number of breaches increased by around 273% during the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same period in the year before. Not only has the number of attacks increased, but the severity of the hacks is higher too. According to Japanese brand, Honda in June, a hacking attack hitting internal production systems cost the company around $250,000 in bitcoin.
Remote working may be causing increased hacking issues (IBM): According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute, there’s been a 10% increase in the average total cost of data breaches between 2020 and 2021. Remote working and digital transformation caused by the pandemic of 2020 increased the average cost of a data breach by around $1.07 million. During the pandemic, IBM notes customer PII was the most common type of record lost, included in around 44% of breaches, and each record was worth around $180.
In 2021 the most common initial attack vector was compromised credentials (IBM): IBM reported the most common initial attack vendor to be compromised credentials in hacking cases. In other words, this is when people lose their username or password. Compromised credentials accounted for around 20% of attacks, while phishing was responsible for 17%, and cloud misconfiguration led to around 15% of hacks. Though business email compromise was responsible for only 4% of hacking incidents in this report, it also had the highest average cost at around $5.1 million per attack. The second most expensive initial attack vector was phishing, at around $4.56 million.
It costs more than a cent to make a cent: In the US, it costs roughly 2 cents to make a 1-cent coin. For a nickel (5 cents), it’s 7.5 cents. These extra costs quickly add up. In 2018 (when the most recent figures were available), it’s estimated that cent production cost the US taxpayer an extra $85.5 million and nickel production an extra $33.5 million.
ChatGPT initially used a Microsoft Azure supercomputing infrastructure powered by Nvidia GPUs, which Microsoft constructed specifically for OpenAI and cost “hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to a Bloomberg report.
The GPT-3 AI model reportedly cost OpenAI $12 million for a single training run. Training GPT-4 cost $100 million.
The daily cost of running ChatGPT is approximately $700,000 due to computational power and expensive servers.
According to a SemiAnalysis report, OpenAI requires ~3,617 HGX A100 servers (28,936 GPUs) to serve Chat GPT so the cost per query is about 0.36 cents.
Running ChatGPT also implies an environmental cost, as it uses 500 ml of water for every 5 to 50 prompts it answers. This water is used to cool down the supercomputers that generate heat after using its computational power.
Although the revenue benefits of AI have held steady or decreased, cost savings have grown greater across all functions since the first year of the pandemic. – McKinsey