History Facts About Inventions

The Landlord's Game, the predecessor to Monopoly, was originally designed with a circular board.

Leonardo da Vinci designed solar concentrators around 1515 to harness the sun's energy for industrial purposes, making him one of the earliest visionaries to imagine large-scale solar power.

The flushing toilet was invented in 1596, not by Thomas Crapper as most people think, but by Sir John Harington.

The first telephone book was one page long and had only 50 names in it.

The last time American Green cards were actually green was 1964.

Ancient India developed the decimal place-value number system around 500 CE, and mathematician Brahmagupta formally defined zero as a number in 628 CE.

Thomas Edison taught his second wife Morse code so they could communicate in secret by tapping into each other's hands when her family was around. He even proposed to her this way — tapping "Will you marry me?" into her palm during a carriage ride. She tapped back "Yes."

Speed dating was invented by a Rabbi in 1998.

Grenades were invented in China over 1,000 years ago.

Chainsaws were derived from a tool originally intended to help deliver babies

The dildo was invented at least 22,000 years before the wheel.

In the Victorian era, they had special tea cups that protected your moustache from getting dunked in your tea.

The first ever patent in the UK was Aaron Rathbone & Roger Burges, Map makers in 1618!

Contrary to popular belief, the first ironclad warships were built by Korea in the 16th century.

Dating back to the 1600's, thermometers were filled with Brandy instead of mercury.

Leonardo Da Vinci made a robotic lion in 1515 that would walk, sway, open its mouth and move its tail - it even had a compartment that opened to present flowers.

The small pocket in the larger pocket of your jeans was designed for pocket watches.

The Band-Aid was originally made for the inventor's wife, who often cut and burned herself while cooking.

Arthur Ehrat, a farmer who barely followed basketball, built the rim that bends on every dunk. In 1976, his nephew, a college coach, said players kept bending rims. Ehrat tried magnets in his shed. They failed. A coil spring off a John Deere field cultivator held instead. A player shattered two backboards in 1979, but the NBA didn't adopt the rim until 1981. Every dunk since traces back to a farmer's tractor spring.