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...
