Technology

The first YouTube video is 18 seconds long.

It is called 'Me at the zoo', was uploaded by Jawed Karim (a co-founder), and shows him talking about elephants at a…

The Bluetooth logo is a Viking rune.

It combines the Nordic runes Hagall and Bjarkan (initials of King Harald 'Bluetooth'), famous for uniting Danish and…

The word 'Google' originated from a spelling error.

The idea was based on the mathematical number 'Googol' (1 followed by 100 zeros), but the founders registered the…

90% of the world's emails are spam.

The overwhelming majority of daily email traffic consists of unsolicited messages, scams, misleading advertising, or…

The first computer ENIAC weighed 30 tons.

Created in the 40s, it was composed of thousands of valves and switches, occupying an entire room of about 167 square…

There are more cell phones than people in the world.

The rapid global adoption of smartphones has caused the number of active devices to surpass the total human…

Wi-Fi uses the same frequency as a microwave.

The 2.4 GHz frequency of routers is standard for wireless communications, being the same used by ovens to excite…

Monopoly was created against monopolies.

It was called 'The Landlord's Game' and was invented in 1903 to demonstrate the economic and social dangers of…

The 'Play' symbol indicates tape movement.

The arrow points to the right because, in the first reel and cassette recorders, the physical tape ran from left to…

Disney is the largest buyer of fireworks in the world.

The various theme parks around the world consume industrial quantities of pyrotechnics for their daily nighttime…

The shortest song in the world is 1.3 seconds long.

The song 'You Suffer', by the band Napalm Death, entered the Record Books as the shortest, consisting of a single…

The first emojis were created in Japan.

In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita designed 176 pictograms of 12x12 pixels to be used on a Japanese mobile internet platform.

Facebook was once exclusive to Harvard.

It was called 'TheFacebook' and access was restricted to university students, expanding to the general public only…

The first computer mouse was made of wood.

Invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1964, it was a block of solid wood with a single red button and metal wheels on the…

The first computer virus was called 'Creeper'.

Created in 1971 as an experiment, it moved between computers displaying the taunt: 'I'm the Creeper, catch me if you…

The first computer 'bug' was a literal moth.

In 1947, engineers found a moth trapped in a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer, causing a malfunction. They taped…

'Typewriter' is the longest word using only one row of keys.

You can type the word 'typewriter' using only the letters on the top row of a standard QWERTY keyboard.

The inventor of the Pringles can is buried in one.

Fred Baur, an organic chemist, was so proud of his design that his ashes were interred in a Pringles can after his…

The inventor of the Frisbee became a Frisbee.

Walter Morrison, who invented the modern plastic flying disc, was cremated after his death in 2010 and molded into…

The dot over an 'i' has an official name.

The tiny dot over the lowercase letters 'i' and 'j' is officially called a 'tittle' in typography.

The first webcam was invented to monitor a coffee pot.

In 1991, Cambridge University researchers pointed a camera at their office coffee pot to avoid wasted trips to a…

The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow typists down.

In the 1870s, fast typing on mechanical typewriters caused keys to jam. The layout placed common letter pairs apart…

The '@' symbol is officially called the 'commercial at'.

Historically, it was used in commerce to mean 'at the rate of'. It only became popular for email addresses in 1971 by…

The first Apple computer was sold for $666.66.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak priced the Apple I at this number because Wozniak liked repeating digits, and $666.66…