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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 25, 2004 22:05:22 GMT 8
Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.
Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today.
Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 25, 2004 22:05:54 GMT 8
Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
Benjamin Franklin was also the first person to try to electrocute a turkey. This experiment didn't work. The bird lived and it was America's Renaissance man who ended up absorbing the jolt. "I meant to kill a turkey," said the shocked inventor, "and instead, I nearly killed a goose."
The horse race starting gate is a Canadian invention, designed in the early 1900s by Philip McGinnis, a racetrack reporter from Huntingdon, Quebec. The device proved popular because it prevented arguments caused when horses started prematurely.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 26, 2004 22:18:33 GMT 8
The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament.
Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.
Fifty years ago the B. F. Goodrich Company, the American corporation known for its automobile tires, thought it was really on to something. Its engineers came up with the prototype of an atomic golf ball. The ball, with a radioactive core, would be easy to locate with a Geiger counter if hit into the rough. But the company abandoned the invention as unworkable.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 26, 2004 22:19:10 GMT 8
The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.
American sculptor, Alexander Calder, rigged the front door of his Paris apartment so that he could open it from his bathtub.
The first prototype of the sound-proof phone booth was built in 1877. Mr. Watson, Alexander Graham Bell's trusty assistant, used a bunch of bed blankets around a box. He created the booth to prevent his landlady from listening in on his conversations.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 26, 2004 22:19:36 GMT 8
Some callers didn't like using the early phone booths because the doors would get stuck, forcing users to fight their way out.
The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech.
The first mobile car phones were located in the car's trunk, taking up nearly half of the space
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Post by atokENSEM on Feb 27, 2004 20:44:28 GMT 8
*Jutawan Microsoft, Bill Gates serta keluarganya berpindah ke kediaman baru mereka berhampiran Seattle, Amerika. Rumah yang menelan kos US$50 juta itu dilengkapi pelbagai peralatan elektronik canggih. Antaranya penghuni boleh mengawal suhu yang dikehendaki dalam rumah dengan menggunakan sejenis pin khas yang hanya dilekatkan di kocek baju.
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Post by atokENSEM on Feb 27, 2004 20:48:03 GMT 8
*Apabila panglima Sepanyol yang menawan Peru, Francisco Pizarro, menculik ketua suku kaum Inca yang bernama Atahualpa pada tahun 1532, beliau meminta bayaran tebusan yang amat "menggerunkan"- sebuah dewan yang dipenuhi emas dan perak bernilai $170 juta!
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 27, 2004 20:55:36 GMT 8
When Alexander Graham Bell died on August 4, 1922, millions of phones went dead. In Bell's honor, all phones served by the Bell System in the USA and Canada went silent for one minute.
One of the first telephone answering machines was developed in Switzerland during the 1950's. It took three days to install.
Two days before Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard in 1877, he gave her 99 percent of his company shares as a wedding gift. He kept a mere ten for himself.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 27, 2004 20:56:34 GMT 8
Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.
As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.
Madame Alexander dolls were the creation of Beatrice Alexander Behrman, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Mrs. Behrman, whose father operated New York's first doll "hospital," started making dolls in 1923, and her creations soon became famous for their molded heads and limbs, lifelike eyes, rooted hair and elaborate costumes. Mrs. Behrman sold the company to several New York investors in 1988, two years before she died at age 95. But America's first and only remaining doll manufacturer has not compromised her high standard of quality and unique craftsmanship. Today, most of the company's manufacturing is still done in Harlem, New York, and more than 500,000 dolls a year are sold.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 27, 2004 20:57:22 GMT 8
Dr. Samuel Langley was able to get many model airplanes to fly, but on December 8, 1903, Langley's "human carrying flying machine", the aerodrome plunged into the Potomac River near Washington D.C., in front of photographers who were assembled to witness the event. Reporters around the country made fun of the idea that people could fly and nine days later, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear to 1899.
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Post by atokENSEM on Feb 28, 2004 0:48:53 GMT 8
* Untuk kepentingan manusia, haiwan sentiasa dijadikan mangsa ujian dalam uji kaji sains dan perubatan. Kira-kira 30 ribu ekor monyet telah digunakan oleh pakar perubatan dan saintis sepanjang tiga tahun mereka menjalankan usaha mengenalpasti dan menjelaskan pelbagai jenis penyakit polio.
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Post by enigma on Feb 28, 2004 19:49:51 GMT 8
Erti anak bagi orang tua Setiap orang akan merasa bahagia apabila dikurniakan anak. Namun disebalik kebahagiaan ini tersimpan tanggungjawab yang amat berat yang harus dipikul. Anak amat bererti pada ibubapa, antaranya: 1. Anak sebagai rahmat Allah SWT 2. Anak sebagai amanat Allah SWT 3. Anak sebagai harta yang tergadai 4. Anak sebagai penguji keimanan 5. Anak sebagai alat untuk beramal 6. Anak sebagai saham di akhirat 7. Anak sebagai sumber kebahagiaan 8. Anak sebagai tempat bergantung di hari tua 9. Anak sebagai penyambung cita-cita 10. Anak sebagai makhluk yang harus diberi pendidikan
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Post by atokENSEM on Feb 29, 2004 2:51:17 GMT 8
* Kanggaru yang hanya di Australia sebenarnya tidak boleh melompat jika ekornya tidak menyentuh bumi. Ekornya bertindak sebagai topang semasa haiwan itu melompat.
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 29, 2004 14:37:18 GMT 8
Spacewar is generally considered to be the first video game. Programmed in 1962 by MIT student Steve Russell, Spacewar was a simple game with ASCII graphics where two players would blast lasers at each other. At the time, the game only ran on massive, million-dollar mainframes the size of a small house. Spacewar was circulated to other computer labs across the country, but only nerdy college students with access to mainframes could play it. 1962 was also the year in which University of Utah student Nolan Bushnell received his first exposure to video games, playing Spacewar in the University's computer lab. Bushnell spent the next seven years trying to reproduce Spacewar on a smaller, less expensive computer. When it was finally completed in 1971, Bushnell's Spacewar variation (dubbed "Computer Space"), bombed. For one thing, people found it too complicated. Bushnell gave up on it, quit his job at Ampex and founded Atari in 1972. Bushnell originally wanted to name the company Syzygy, but the name was already taken by a roofing company. That same year, Magnavox quietly released the Odyssey, the first home video game system. It had a game similar to Pong, and Magnavox later sued Atari for "copying" it (they won).
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Post by StRiDeR on Feb 29, 2004 14:38:02 GMT 8
Bushnell and Atari engineer Al Alcorn placed a prototype of their game in Andy Capp's Tavern, a Sunnyvale, California bar. Alcorn began work a home version of Pong. His project was code named "Darlene" after a female coworker that worked with Alcorn at the time. In the fall of 1974, Alcorn began developing the "Darlene" system. Several months later Atari released Home Pong.
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveal its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicates the annual moisture.
Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking. The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever.
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