Qantas Airways once powered an interstate flight on cooking oil. This marked Australia’s first commercial flight using sustainably derived biofuel.
100 Mind-Blowing Marked Facts
The shortest war in history lasted less than an hour. When the sultan of Zanzibar died and a new one took over without British approval in 1896, the Brits saw it as disrespect. When the unofficially appointed Sultan Khalid bin Barghash refused to step down, British warships spent 38 minutes bombing the palace before Khalid fled. This marked the end of the Anglo-Zanzibar War.
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.
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.
Establishment: The NSA was officially formed on November 4, 1952, by President Harry S. Truman. This marked the beginning of a new era in intelligence gathering.
Big Ben Is Not a Clock: One of the interesting facts about England is that, despite what the general public believes, Big Ben is the name of the thirteen-ton bell, not the iconic clock. And Big Ben is often associated with the entire tower. The tower was officially known as St. Stephen’s Tower until 2012 when it was renamed Elizabeth Tower in honour of Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, which marked 60 years on the British throne.