A recently discovered deep-sea snail, the Scaly-Foot Gastropod, has a shell that is impressively developed. So much so that the U.S. military is trying to use its design to inspire defensive layers in military armour.
100 Mind-Blowing Developed Facts
The average person in France sleeps 8.83 hours per day, the most in the developed world.
When Play-Doh was first developed in the 1930s, it wasn’t a toy… it was a way to clean wallpaper.
Most maps of the world are wrong. On most maps, the Mercator projection – first developed in 1569 – is still used. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland 14 times larger than it is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.
Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth. It was developed in Scotland in the late 18th Century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and removal of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th Century that we started using chainsaws for woodchopping.
Kleenex tissues were originally intended for gas masks. When there was a cotton shortage during World War I, Kimberly-Clark developed a thin, flat cotton substitute that the army tried to use as a filter in gas masks. The war ended before scientists perfected the material, so the company redeveloped it to be smoother and softer and then marketed Kleenex as facial tissue instead.
The average horse is capable of 746 watts of power. This is approximately 15 horsepower. This term was developed during the 18th century when the steam engine was being marketed.
Newborns can’t cry. A baby’s tear ducts are not fully developed until 1-3 months old. This is why newborn babies scream so loudly – they don’t have any other way to communicate with their surroundings.
Burger King made a left-handed burger. In a 1998 full-page ad on USA Today, Burger King claimed it developed the “left-handed whopper.” AKA, a burger with the same fixings, but turned 180 degrees to not drip on left-handed customers. What a strange April Fools prank.
The remote control was invented earlier than the television. 30 years before the first digital television, Nikola Tesla invented a “teleautomaton” that could control certain devices at a distance through radio waves. His first remote-controlled device was a remote-controlled boat in 1898. Since then, people adapted the wired remote for television. However, due to injuries, they developed it further to be a wireless remote.
It was said that Einstein couldn’t speak fluently until he was 9 years old. The validity of this claim is contested, but the medical term for late talkers is still called the Einstein Syndrome. It was coined by social theorist Thomas Sowell to describe children who developed speech later than normal.
The movie’s success led to the creation of bucket list apps. After the film’s release, several mobile applications were developed to help individuals create and track their bucket lists.
Texas is where German chocolate cake originated. The “German” in German chocolate cake is an American man, not a member of the European Union. Sam German, who developed the recipe for a mild dark baking chocolate bar in 1852, is specifically remembered in the name of the product.
Europe is the second smallest continent in size but the third largest in population. Europe is known for its diverse cultures, rich history and stunning landmarks. Despite being the second smallest continent in size (after Australia), Europe is home to a staggering population of over 746 million people, making it the third largest continent in terms of population (after Asia and Africa). Europe has one of the highest levels of urbanisation in the world, with over 75% of its population living in urban areas. With the world’s population expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, we must increase efforts to understand and mitigate the challenges brought by rapid and unplanned urbanisation, air pollution, as well as issues related to the management of water and energy. ESA and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), in collaboration with the Google Earth Engine team, have developed the World Settlement Footprint – the world’s most comprehensive dataset on human settlement. Featuring data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions, this unprecedented collection of data on human settlement will advance our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale.
M&M are one of the most beloved candies in the world. But, unknown to many, the Ms stand for Mars and Murrie, the two men who developed the candy. Rations given to soldiers during the Spanish-American War inspired this candy. Traditional chocolate bars would melt before soldiers could eat them. The candy coating ensured soldiers could enjoy their chocolates in the field.
Reindeer in the Arctic can see the world in ultraviolet light. While we cannot see ultraviolet (UV) light, reindeer seem to have developed this ability after moving to the Arctic. They likely evolved this ability to assist them in a world that would otherwise be very bright and white. Under UV light, both food and predators stand out much more against the harsh snowy background.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos were developed by a janitor at Frito-Lay, Richard Montanez, who got the idea after putting chilli powder on some rejected Cheetos and then pitched it to the CEO. He’s now a successful executive and motivational speaker, and a movie is in the works about his life.
The Most Powerful Supercomputer in The World. Riken Research Lab and Fujitsu developed the Fugaku supercomputer. In June 2020, Fugaku dethroned IBM’s Summit supercomputer as the most powerful in the world. This supercomputer broke the record for computations per second (TeraFLOPS) and various other supercomputer metrics. Fugaku offers 442,000 TeraFLOPS of performance while a Playstation 5 offers 10.2 TeraFLOPS.
The first product scanned was a packet of chewing gum in 1974. Norman Joseph Woodland invented the barcode and received a patent in October 1952. It wasn’t until 22 years later when he was employed by IBM, that the barcode was developed to be used for product labeling. Known as the Universal Product Code (UPC), a system that is still used today.
The first computer virus was harmless. In 1971, the first ever computer virus was developed. Named Creeper, it was made as an experiment just to see how it spread between computers. The virus simply displayed the message: “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” The first virus ever released into the wild was called Brain, which also wasn’t harmful. However, it was the very first IBM PC virus.
Record-breaking vaccine. The record for a vaccine to be developed and licensed was four years. The record holder was the mumps vaccine which was licensed in 1967. Following the UK government’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 in early December 2020, that record is now just under 11 months.
Thomas Crapper’s toilet. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flushing toilet, though his name is often associated with it. Crapper did play a significant role in popularising the flushing toilet and developed related inventions like the ball cock. However, the word ‘crap’ does not come from his name; it has Middle English origins and first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1846.
Linux has a specific place in Hollywood. The Visual effects of Avatar and Titanic were developed on the Linux platform in 3D applications using the FOSS software.
Linux Has Its Origins in UNIX: The Linux Kernel was developed by Linux Torvalds, a Finnish computer scientist. It was officially released in 1991 under the GNU General Public License. It was a hobby project he was working on while still a student at the University of Helsinki. He was working on a project based on Minix, a UNIX-based operating system.
Linux Visual Effects in Titanic and Avatar: For those who doubt Linux’s capabilities in animation, consider this: the Oscar-winning visual effects of James Cameron’s legendary film “Titanic” were crafted using Linux-powered machines. Even more impressively, “Avatar“, Cameron’s groundbreaking 3D cinematic masterpiece, marked the last movie to be entirely developed on a Linux platform using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications.
Some of the applications that were developed based on GPT-3 are ChatGPT: launched in November 2020, which is a chatbot, article writer, and code writer. DALL-E: first appearing in January 2021, it creates images from text. Whisper: released in September 2022, it performs as a multilingual voice-to-text.
Google claimed to have developed AI that can design chips for computers much faster than humans. The AI needs less than 6 hours to design the chips, while it takes its human counterparts months to do the same. This is why people worry that AI will take over human jobs. Not all AI facts are as exciting!