You inhale 50 potentially harmful bacteria every time you breathe. Thankfully, your immune system is working hard all the time, so virtually all of these are promptly destroyed without you feeling a thing. Phew.
100 Mind-Blowing Working Facts
The inventor of the microwave appliance received only $2 for his discovery. Percy Spencer was working as a researcher for American Appliance Company (now Raytheon) when he noticed that a radar set using electromagnetic waves melted the candy bar in his pocket. He had the idea to make a metal box using microwaves to heat food, but the company was the one to file the patent. That was in 1945, and he received a $2 bonus but never any royalties.
Glitter may have originated on a ranch. According to local lore, a man by the name of Henry Ruschmann from Bernardsville, New Jersey, invented glitter by accident in 1934 while working on a cattle ranch. The New York Times reports that in the popular origin story, Ruschmann, a machinist, was trying to find a way to dispose of scrap material by crushing it into tiny pieces. Plastic went in, glitter came out, and the rest is commonly accepted as history.
The Statue of Liberty used to be a lighthouse. About a month after the statue’s 1886 dedication, it became a working lighthouse for 16 years, with its torch visible from 24 miles away.
In 2014, there was a Tinder match in Antarctica. Two research scientists matched on the global dating app in the most remote part of the world – a man working at the United States Antarctic McMurdo Station and a woman camping a 45-minute helicopter ride away. What are the chances?!
Your heart beats 100,000 times a day. A fun fact for when you feel dead inside: your body is working hard to keep you from being dead on the outside.
Computer mouse speed is measured in “Mickeys.” The roller-ball device was first invented by a British scientist in 1946 while working for the Royal Navy. However, the word “mouse” was not coined until 1965.
The microwave oven was another accidental invention. The heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered when it melted a chocolate bar in 1945. Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer, was working on an active radar set when he noticed his chocolate melted in his pocket.
Sailors working for the Royal Navy need special permission to grow their beards. Once this is approved, they are given two weeks to grow a full set before presenting themselves to a Master at Arms. This person then decides if the beard looks presentable enough to keep.
Danish mothers are known to be the most hardworking moms in the world. According to statistics, 82% of mothers in Denmark are employed. Meanwhile, neighbouring countries like Sweden and the Netherlands only rate 50% working mothers.
A janitor invented the flaming hot Cheetos. One of the janitors working at the Frito-Lay plant in Southern California pitched the idea of adding chilli powder to the regular product. Top Brass liked the idea and so did many consumers. This leads the janitor to a generous promotion where he is now an executive for PepsiCo.
The average adult spends more time on the toilet than exercising. On average, an adult will spend over 3 hours on the toilet per week but only one and a half hours exercising. Maybe it’s time we start working out in the bathroom.
Large banks use computers to process checks and debit card charges by the highest amount first. This is because checks with higher amounts of value need to be thoroughly double-checked first before clearing. This explains why it may take a few working days before clearing can be issued.
In Japan, napping at work is honourable. In Japan, napping at your job is seen as a sign of diligence—you are working so much, that you get exhausted. The Japanese call it inemuri, which translates to “present while sleeping.”
The film’s screenplay went through multiple revisions. Screenwriter Steven Zaillian spent several years working on the script, refining and capturing the essence of the story.
The Statue of Liberty was once a lighthouse. About a month after the statue’s 1886 dedication, it became a working lighthouse for 16 years, with its torch visible from 24 miles away.
The Statue of Liberty was once functioning as a lighthouse. In 1886, the famous statue was a working lighthouse for years. You could see its light from 24 miles away.
The human eye is comprised of about 2 million working parts.
Working from home often involves balancing official duties with kids. Studies have found that kids can ask 300 questions a day on average. That is one question every 2.5 minutes!
Ancient Roman commoners went on strike by evacuating their cities, leaving the upper classes hopelessly fending for themselves. Secessio plebis (secession of the plebeians) is similar to a general strike but proved much more effective as the upper classes almost entirely relied upon the working classes. Pretty much everything in the city would close down, which proved to be incredibly effective at having the peasants’ demands met. Maybe this is something that we should try again in modern times.
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.
The hardest working muscle in your body is your heart—it pumps more than 2,000 gallons of blood a day and beats more than 2.5 billion times in a 70-year lifespan.
More than 200,000 robots are working in the Amazon warehouse, together with hundreds and thousands of human workers.
More people have cell phones than toilets. Out of all the 7.7 billion people in the world, over 6 billion of those have access to a cell phone. Meanwhile, only 4.5 billion have access to working toilets!
The first webpage is still running. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee was working on developing the World Wide Web. There are no graphics and no background, just plain text and links on how to use the Internet!
There are fake Apple stores in China. Some of the fake Apple stores are so convincing that even the employees thought they were working for Apple. They are usually selling real Apple products, and the employees even wear the same shirts that actual Apple associates wear. Sometimes the stores are shut down, but when that happens, more just pop up!
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.
Accidental invention. The microwave oven, invented in 1945, came about accidentally, after engineer Percy Spencer found radio waves emitted by a radar set he was working on melted a chocolate bar.
Because astronomical time and atomic time don’t always line up, every so often, we get a leap second. Earth’s spin speed can be a bit unpredictable. Atmospheric winds, Northern Hemisphere winters with heavy snow, and other big weather systems can affect how fast the planet rotates. To keep the difference between astronomical time and atomic time to less than .9 seconds, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service will occasionally announce the need for a leap second. Most people won’t notice a leap second, but they can be a huge pain for tech companies. Because leap seconds are added irregularly, developers have no way of working them into their codes, which has caused websites like LinkedIn and Reddit to crash in the past. A bug caused by 2012’s leap second created so much chaos on Qantas’s servers, more than 400 flights wound up being delayed.
Cybercrime has Increased by 600% Since Covid-19. According to a Cybersecurity Ventures report, there has been a staggering 600% increase in cyberattacks since the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some possible reasons include the rise in remote working, the rise in malware, and the rise in online activity.
On 25th August 1991, 21-year-old Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds announced that he was working on a new operating system which was ‘just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU’.
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.
Linus Never Intended to Make Money Out of Linux: As a strong advocate for open-source software, Linux never intended to commercialize Linux. In fact, as a hobby project, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, never envisioned making a profit from his groundbreaking operating system. When he started working on Linux in 1991, his primary motivation was to develop a free and open-source alternative to proprietary Unix systems. Torvalds released Linux under the GNU General Public License, ensuring that it would always remain open for anyone to use, modify, and distribute freely. This commitment to openness and collaboration led to rapid growth and popularity over the years to become one of the most essential operating systems in the IT world.
1,239,018 employees are working in cybersecurity in the U.S. as of September 2024. (Cyber Seek)
47 per cent of employees cited distraction as the reason for falling for a phishing scam while working from home. (Tessian)
White Hat Hackers Earning Significant Incomes (HackerOne): According to HackerOne, not all hackers are necessarily criminals. White hat hackers, the people responsible for checking the quality of security and data protection strategies for businesses, are helping companies reduce their risk status. The white hat hackers working within HackerOne in 2019 earned around $40 million in bounties. Even more impressive, there were around 6 hackers on the platform who earned more than $1 million in lifetime earnings by attempting to hack companies.
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.
The World Wide Web (WWW) was invented in England: The World Wide Web came to be in 1989 when it was discovered by Tim Berners-Lee, an English scientist. Berners-Lee began the project whilst working at CERN, The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and its main use was for scientists to share information and institutes across the globe. The WWW was used privately until 1993 when CERN released it to the public. It’s flourished since then, and you’re using it to view this blog right now!