The printing press is widely regarded as one of the most important inventions in human
history. Over the centuries of its existence, the techniques for printing has dramatically
changed. One technique that is now becoming more and more obsolete but was heavily used
during the 1900s is called "letterpress printing". This technique involves using what's known
as "movable types" which are small metal plates embossed with specific alphabetical letters
and characters. Now to easily organize these metal plates, they were usually stored in
something called a "type case". A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box with sections
for each letter and character to be stored within. Traditionally, these type cases where
design in such a way that upper-case letters where stored in a separate upper case above
all the lower-case letters. And that's why we literally called them UPPER-CASE and lower-case.
In a similar fashion, the shift key on your keyboard is named as such because typewriters
actually had to mechanically shift the metal hammer assembly to instead strike with an
upper-case letter.
How many people in the world share the same birthday as you? Well, most statistics from
countries across the globe show that, on an annual scale, people are born at more or less
a frequent rate with only slight variations. Most estimates suggest that every day of the
year will have roughly the same amount of births. So if we take all 7.3 billion people
in the world today and divide them by 365, not counting leap years, we get exactly
20 million people who share the same birthday as you. But remember that's a very rough estimate.
Some days and months are indeed more popular than others. For example, in the US there
are more people born on September 16 than any other day of the year. In fact, September
has 10 of the most common birthdays overall. And given that it's the ninth month of the
year, I guess Santa Claus and New Years Eve really makes people want to have a baby. The
least common birthday is the 29th of February. But that's kind of cheating given that the
day only occurs during leap years. The second least common birthday is the 25th of December.
If your birthday is in fact the 29th of February, then there's not 20 million of you, but instead
only around 4.8 million.
In 1963, an underwater volcanic eruption occurred off the southern coast of Iceland and continued
until 1967 when the eruption finally stopped. This eruption lead to the creation of the
small island now known as Surtsey. During this time the island was heavily monitored
by various geologists and botanists as life forms gradually colonized the barren island.
But in 1969, they found something rather strange. Namely, a tomato plant. Not exactly a plant
you would expect to find near Iceland. So how did it get there? Well, they soon discovered
that it seemed to be growing out of peculiar brownish pile on top of the hardened lava.
It suddenly dawned on them that the plant was growing out of a pile of human feces that
must have contained a tomato seed.
What will happen between now and, oh I don't know say, 8.4 million years from now? Maybe
we're the most advanced civilization in the galaxy cruising around in our very own enterprise-class
starships. Maybe humankind has gone completely extinct, self imposed or not. Maybe we've
been replaced by some other intelligent beings. Whatever ends up happening to us, what will
happen in 8.4 million years from now is that the tiny satellite LAGEOS-1 will crash land
somewhere on Earth. Hopefully not the ocean though because that would be a long wait for
nothing. You see, what's interesting about this particular satellite orbiting our planet
as we speak, is that it contains a plaque designed by Carl Sagan. The plaque will tell
the humans or beings of that time when and where the satellite was launched and the number
1 through 10 in binary. It also carries images of the arrangement of Earth's continents from
268 million years ago, the present, and their estimated arrangement in 8.4 million years
from now. Just imagine if such a satellite crash landed on the planet today, containing
proof of other intelligent beings that once existed on the planet but are now long extinct.
Antarctica is probably the last place on Earth you would expect to go on a date. Sometime
last year, an American scientist conducting research on Antarctica opened up a dating
app on his phone to see if he could find anyone within his region. To his surprise, he did
so he tried to contact her. A few minutes later, they matched and the woman turned out
to be located a couple of kilometers away working with her own separate team. A few
weeks later they met for the first time and who knows what happened after that. You know,
you really come to terms with how bad your game is when someone in
god damn penguin land goes on more dates than you do.
One of, if not the longest work of fiction ever written is a Super Smash Bros. fan fiction
at over 4 million words long. As a comparison the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy is only
481,000 words long and the entire Harry Potter book series is around 1.1 million words long.
The longest series of works of fiction is a German science-fiction series known as Perry
Rhodan and first began publication in 1961. The total word count for all the novels combined
is estimated to be around 150 million. But the title for the largest collection of books
ever written goes to an encyclopedia called Siku Quanshu. It was a Chinese encyclopedia
written and scribed between 1773-1782. Once completed, it contained roughly 800 million
Chinese characters. Though it's not really fair to compare it this way as Chinese characters
are very different from for example Germanic languages like English.
Most people seem to have a strong fear for sharks while others simply find them very
interesting. Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week is only one but many examples of this.
This public fascination as well as fear of sharks has lead many to believe that these
creatures are pure killer machines and that they kill anywhere from hundreds to thousands
of people every year. This really couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, if sharks
could think like we do they would be absolutely terrified of us. Since we began recording
shark attacks in 1580, only 548 people worldwide have reportedly been killed by a shark. 232
of which occurred in Australia alone. For example, last year 3 people in total where
killed by shark attacks. Meanwhile humans kill 11,415 sharks every single hour. Roughly
In 1969 the first information ever transmitted across the ARPANET, which would eventually
become the Internet, was to be the message "LOGIN". But once they had sent the letters
"L" and "O" the receiving system crashed. So once they got the system up and running
again, they had to start the process all over and began sending the message "LOGIN" once
more. This means that the first information ever sent across the internet was "LOL".
Ever wondered why you often see birds, like geese for example, fly in these V shaped formations?
It's something called vortex surfing and they do this because their wings basically create
upwards lifting twisting coils of air behind them called vortices. This has also been tested
by several military air forces around the world using various kinds of airplanes. The
benefit of doing this is that it's 10-30% more fuel efficient during long-distance flights.
The planes and birds basically hitch a ride upon the vortex caused by the plane or bird
in front of them.
Right now your face, everyone's face, are covered with mites. You can't see them of
course as they are indeed microscopic, but they are quite fascinating. To them, your
face is their everything. They are born, they eat, they sleep, they mate, and they die on
your face. You can wash your face, scrub your face, or even burn your face. These suckers
will keep coming back like a clingy lover. We don't really know why these tiny face-conquering
maggots love our faces so much but we do know that they have no anus, yet still very much
have a need to poop. Basically, they spend every waking moment screaming in agony wishing they had a butt.
I ask upon the, thy magnificent face-maggot god. Please, Please! I beg you! Give us a butt!
NEIN!!!
Said thy god (because he was German apparently) and tightened their non-existent keisters even more.
When they finally can't take it anymore, you'll receive an explosive hot load
of poop right on your face. I know it sounds ridiculous but that's actually happening. And you'll
be happy to know, it's happening right now.
On your face...
Right now...