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penicillin
  • Without Dr. Howard Florey, Dr. Alexander Flemming might never have been credited with the discovery of penicillin, as it was Florey who supplied Flemming with a working dose of penicillin
  • Of the first 3 patients who received penicillin, only 1 survived. That is a 60% mortality rate

can
  • The can opener was only invented 50 years after the invention of the can. The first can was made of solid iron, the weighed more than the food. Instructions read:  “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.” Only after cans switched to steel cans was the can opener invented. Talk about necessity…

xylophone
  • Xylophones(Greek xylon,”wood”; phone,”sound”) were actually developed in South East Asia in the 14th century. Thanx Gwynovere C

women
  • Women blink nearly twice as much as men
  • Women can hear better than men
  • On average, women say 7000 words a day. Men manage only a quiet 2000 words
  • Among many women inventions, include: the windshield wiper, the dishwasher, the Maritime signal flares, and the kevlar armor vest!

Nobel
  • Nobel, actually invented dynamite, (Dynamite no.1 and Ballistite) but when he saw the destruction it caused, he decided to do something benevolent with all the money he made. Hence the Nobel Prize. Thanx ‘a girl named Ryan’

Da Vinci, Leonardo
  • Leonardo Da Vinci could also draw with one hand and write with the other
  • He ALSO wrote his notes backwards, going from right to left, just as a mental exercise.Thanx De Composed
  • He was the first to record that the number of rings in the tree trunk revealed its age and that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture

Honda
  • The Honda Accord has the highest stolen rate in the US according to NCIB. thanx jon cook
  • The founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda, actually tried to sell his new piston design to Toyota in 1938, before finally starting his own company after World War II
  • Honda was the first company to build a robot (ASIMO) that could walk up and down stairs

Emails
  • E-mails started in 1971. Ray Tomlinson is it’s DADDY!! and the first e-mail was sent WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN UPPER CASE
  • 294 billion emails are sent every day

Edison, Thomas
  • Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark
  • He also helped create the electric chair
  • The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, “Mary had a little lamb.”
  • The first sound recording was recently discovered to be made 17 years before Edison’s phonograph. It was recorded by French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville who recorded it visually on smoked paper

electric chair
  • The electric chair was first thought up by a dentist and was later commissioned to be built by Thomas Edison


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