Usa
9 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- A man who couldn't read invented a writing system.
Sequoyah, a Cherokee, knew neither English nor how to read. From around 1809 he nonetheless developed a syllabary for …
- A town was invented to catch map copiers. Then it became real.
In the 1920s Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers of General Drafting put an anagram of their initials at a Catskills …
- How to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius without a calculator.
Exactly: Celsius equals (Fahrenheit minus 32) times 5/9; water freezes at 32 °F, boils at 212 °F. In your head …
- Jeans weren't patented as trousers, but as a rivet.
Tailor Jacob Davis in Nevada reinforced work trousers with copper rivets at the pocket corners, where they always tore. …
- L.A. is short for an entire Spanish dedication.
Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spanish settlers as 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles', 'The Town …
- The "first floor" is downstairs in New York and upstairs in London.
In Europe, most Commonwealth countries and much of Latin America the ground floor is 0 and the "first floor" is one …
- The Cuban Missile Crisis ended with a deal nobody could know.
From 16 to 28 October 1962, the USA and Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war over missiles in Cuba. Publicly …
- The first internet message was two letters long.
On 29 October 1969, student Charley Kline at UCLA typed "LOGIN" to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute, about …
- The first telegraph line read like scripture. It was.
On 24 May 1844, Samuel Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" from Washington to Baltimore over a line of …