Tea bags were an accidental invention. When Thomas Sullivan distributed tea samples in small, silk bags in 1908, his customers dunked them in water – bag and all. Now, this seems like the normal thing to do – but this was during a time when you could only drink tea through big strainers. From Sullivan’s samples, the conventional tea bag was born.
100 Mind-Blowing Distributed Facts
Heroin used to be sold as cough medicine. The Bayer pharmaceutical company distributed heroin as a cough medicine from 1898 to 1910. It was also marketed as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. Thank God for modern medicine.
Books published in Norway are bought by the government to stock the country’s libraries. All books must first go through quality control, and one thousand copies will be purchased and distributed by Arts Council Norway if they pass this step. If it’s a children’s book, 1,550 copies are purchased instead. Not only does this keep small publishing businesses afloat, but it’s also of immense benefit to fledgling writers in Norway.
Reign of Terror. While the guillotine is commonly associated with the brutality of the French Revolution, the Nazis also used the guillotine during the 12 years they were in power. In October 1936, Hitler secretly ordered 20 guillotines to be distributed to prisons in cities across Germany. According to Nazi records, they were used to execute approximately 16,500 people between 1933 and 1945, including resistance fighters and political protesters – a similar number to the French Reign of Terror.
60% of the Overall Malware Attacks Were Distributed Using Encrypted Traffic. Cyberattackers prefer to distribute malware attacks via encrypted SSL/TSL traffic. It appears to be a preferred option, as encrypted channels make it hard for the malware to be detected or mitigated, as reported by WatchGuard.
Over 970 Million Pieces of Malware are Distributed Across the Internet. The growth of malware seems to have no end, as over 970 million copies of malware are circulating the Internet. Every year, malware keeps increasing by nearly 100 million.
Linux is the most famous example of open source software but did you know that it wasn’t always that way? Early versions of Linux were distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. It was version 0.12, released in 1992, that saw Linus adopt the GPL, making his code freely available to all.
A Banknote Can Be Folded 4,000 Times: Our currency is pretty durable. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the sole producer of U.S. paper currency, says it would take 4,000 double folds, forward and backward, for a dollar bill to tear. It might be because paper money isn’t made of paper. It’s a blend of 75% cotton and 25% linen with tiny blue and red synthetic fibres of various lengths evenly distributed throughout the bill.