1High Jump Transformation
The modern face-up technique in the high jump was invented by an American named Dick Fosbury and debuted at the 1968 Olympics. Reporters mocked him, saying he looked like a "two-legged camel," but he won the gold. It is now known as the "Fosbury Flop" and has become the dominant style in the sport.
2. Emerson Romero was a deaf silent film actor. When movies with sound were invented, deaf actors received fewer roles, and intertitle text was removed. This led him to develop an early form of movie captioning in 1947 to make movies accessible to deaf people.
3. The Red Bull energy drink was originally invented by a duck farmer from Thailand as a hangover cure (called Krathing Daeng in Thai) before being acquired by Austrian businessman Dietrich Mateschitz, who discovered it on a business trip in 1987.
4. Plastic injection molding was invented in the 1800s to manufacture billiard balls out of celluloid, primarily to replace ivory and save the lives of African elephants.
5. Aspirin and heroin were both invented within a two-week period by the same man, Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist who worked for Bayer under Adolf von Baeyer in the late 1880s.
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6Web Inventor
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He was frustrated with the need to personally ask his coworkers about the data on their computers, which led him to create an application that eventually became the World Wide Web.
7. The modern gas container, known as the jerry can, was invented in 1937 in Germany. At the start of World War 2, the UK used leaky and flimsy tin containers called "flimsies," but they soon captured jerry cans, and the Allies started copying the German design.
8. Basic oxygen steelmaking was invented by one man, the Swiss engineer Robert Durrer, in 1948. Durrer's technique accounts for 60% of all steel production as of 2000. Additionally, since 1920, the labor requirements to produce steel have decreased by a factor of 1,000.
9. William Stewart Halsted is considered one of the fathers of the modern "residency" program for doctors. He devised a system where doctors would work unending hours per shift, believing that immersion in patient care would lead to better outcomes. He also used cocaine and routinely worked over 100 hours per week.
10. Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the automatic machine gun, spent so much time test-firing his guns that he became completely deaf. His son, Hiram Percy Maxim, eventually invented the silencer, but it was too late to save his father's hearing.
11Bubble Wrap's Happy Accident
Bubble wrap was accidentally invented in 1957 by two inventors named Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes. They were attempting to create a three-dimensional plastic wallpaper, but when the idea failed, they discovered that it worked well as packing material.
12. Air conditioning was invented in 1902 primarily for drying ink, but it gained popularity after being installed in a movie theater in New York 20 years later.
13. Candido Jacuzzi invented the Jacuzzi to help his son's juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. His son developed arthritis after contracting strep throat, which caused continuous joint pain. Candido created the J-300 portable water pump for a bath at their house, as the boy benefited from hydrotherapy.
14. Crucible steel (Wootz) was invented in the southern part of India around 200 B.C. and was eventually exported to the Middle East and even Viking Europe over thousands of years. Today, it is more commonly known as Damascus steel.
15. French physicist Denis Papin invented the pressure cooker in 1679 for extracting gelatin from bones and reducing the cooking time of food.
16Sacrifice for Cervical Health
Andromachi Papanicolaou, the wife of the man who invented the Pap smear, volunteered to have her cervix sampled every day for 21 years to assist in his research. Their findings went on to save the lives of millions of women by enabling the early detection and prevention of cervical cancer.
17. The piano initially failed to gain popularity when it was invented in 1700. It was only after Johann Zumpe made improvements and J.S. Bach promoted the piano socially in 1768 that it eventually displaced the harpsichord as the preferred keyboard instrument.
18. Prior to the invention of refrigeration in 1851, ice had to be imported to Australia from Boston, Massachusetts. Ice blocks traveled through the tropics inside ships that were insulated with timber, straw, peat, and sawdust.
19. Aluminum foil was invented in Switzerland, and its first industrial use was to wrap Toblerone chocolate bars.
20. The invention of the modern American football helmet is credited to Joseph M. Reeves, a football player at the US Naval Academy (later Admiral). Concerned about potential head injuries, he had a shoemaker create a helmet after a Navy doctor warned him that another blow to his head could result in instant insanity or death.
21Congo Square and Jazz
If jazz was invented in New Orleans, its ground zero was Congo Square. This gathering spot allowed enslaved Africans to enjoy their mandated day off each week as early as 1803. They would drum, dance, sing, and trade, laying the foundation for Mardi Gras Indian traditions, the Second Line, jazz, and rhythm and blues.
22. The public toilet was invented by George Jennings and debuted at the Great Exhibition in 1851. It cost one penny to use the toilet, and the phrase "to spend a penny" became a euphemism for going to the toilet in the United Kingdom.
23. Sandwiches were invented by John Montagu in the town of Sandwich, England. Montagu, who was obsessed with gambling, often didn't have time for a sit-down meal. As a result, he ordered his valet to bring him a piece of meat tucked between two pieces of bread, giving birth to the concept of sandwiches.
24. It may come as a surprise, but traditionally, the Japanese did not eat salmon sushi. In the 1980s, Norwegians invented salmon sushi as a way to sell more of their abundant salmon.
25. The bidet, believed to have been invented by French furniture makers in the 1600s, has no exact date or known inventor. Historical antecedents and early functions of the bidet are thought to include devices used for contraception. However, it wasn't widely adopted outside of France until after WWII.
