Tag Archives: inventions

FACT: chia pets are very nutritional

By Ryan | Published: December 2, 2009

Ch-ch-ch-chia! The Chia Pet is deeply rooted in the popular culture of North America so much that it is part of the Smithsonian Institutions permanent collection. It started as an authentic bit of Mexican culture before becoming an “As Seen on TV” sensation. It is a small animal figurine made of terra cotta pottery. You [...]

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FACT: a CD track is five kilometers long

By Ryan | Published: November 23, 2009

I’d like to start off by saying that a CD (compact disc) works very much like a vinyl record, but I’m afraid it would be almost as current to say a CD works much like a telegraph machine. Still, I’ll soldier on with my record analogy, since they both store music (data) in a very [...]

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FACT: your Chapstick has the power to kill you

By Ryan | Published: November 17, 2009

Chapstick is a trade-marked brand name for lip balm, but the name has become so popular to use with any kind of lip balm that they could be in danger of losing their trade-mark. (like what happened to the Yo-Yo) The one and only Chapstick was invented in the 1870s by Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, [...]

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FACT: penicillin owes everything to the cantaloupe

By Ryan | Published: November 9, 2009

Penicillin remains one of the most significant medical advancements, umm, ever. Before its first use in 1940, infections from a skinned knee or a shaving cut could prove fatal. There was nothing doctors could do to fight bacteria. Until the P-bomb came along. Alexander Fleming is credited as the one who discovered penicillin while working [...]

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FACT: with an incense clock you could smell what time it is

By Ryan | Published: November 1, 2009

Throughout history our clocks and watches have really been our best guess of what time it really ought to be. Throughout the ages, we’ve just been getting more accurate with our means of estimation. In China, around the year 960 to 1279 you could tell the time by following your nose. They used incense, which [...]

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FACT: the hammock has a history of work, rather than relaxation

By Ryan | Published: August 26, 2009

Hammocks, the ultimate sign of summer relaxation, have a long history of work-related use. Today’s post is a little late being published only because I was in the back yard doing some last minute research. Not counting one man’s crazy idea for a swinging bed in Athens (around 450 BC), the origin of the hammock [...]

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FACT: Newton invented ridges on coins to prevent theft

By Ryan | Published: August 24, 2009

Whilst dodging apples, Sir Isaac Newton had a few other good ideas in his career. The second one that we see in our daily lives is the small ridges along the edge of coins. These days they only serve in identifying coins by feel, but originally they prevented thievery! For the first few thousand years [...]

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