Discovery Facts Generator

• [Discovery fact 1]  Coelacanths were thought to be extinct since the Cretaceous period, yet they were discovered alive in 1938.

  Animals, Discovery source

• [Discovery fact 2]  Eris, discovered in 2005, is more massive than Pluto and would have qualified as the 10th planet in the solar system until its discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union to formally define 'planet' with a size cutoff that also excluded Pluto.

  Discovery, Space source

• [Discovery fact 3]  The Wright Brothers hated the first director of the Smithsonian Institution, who claimed that he flew before them. If the Smithsonian ever gives credit to earlier claims of controlled and powered manned flight, the Wright Brothers' plane must be returned to Orville's estate.

  Discovery, People source

• [Discovery fact 4]  Bertha Benz successfully marketed her husband's invention, the motor car, when she took it for a 65-mile trip, overcoming mechanical problems and inventing brake shoes on the way, and proving that cars were suitable for long journeys. Her trip gained attention, resulting in Benz's first sale.

  Discovery, People source

• [Discovery fact 5]  In the 1920s newly hired engineers at General Electric would be told, as a joke, to develop a frosted lightbulb. The experienced engineers believed this to be impossible. In 1925, newly hired Marvin Pipkin got the assignment not realizing it was a joke and succeeded.

  Discovery, People source

• [Discovery fact 6]  The originator of the popular saying, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" was Grace Hopper, a United States Navy Rear Admiral and pioneer of computer programming who popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL.

  Discovery, People source

• [Discovery fact 7]  Biologists at Osaka University in Japan have discovered a new way to grow the many separate tissues that make up the human eyeball, including retinas, corneas, the eye's lens, using stem cells extracted from a small sample of adult skin.

  Discovery, Science source

• [Discovery fact 8]  Even though the wheel is often cited as man's original invention, it wasn't invented until after flutes, baskets, woven cloth, and even boats.

  Discovery, Transport source

• [Discovery fact 9]  Ole Rømer was a Danish astronomer who demonstrated that light has a speed, invented a precursor to the Fahrenheit scale, and invented the mercury thermometer. He also ran the police force in Copenhagen and once fired all the officers because morale was low.

  Discovery, People source

• [Discovery fact 10]  With the invention of the pendulum clock in 1656, a Dutch physicist named Christiaan Huygens increased the best accuracy of clocks from 15 minutes deviation a day to around 15 seconds a day.

  Discovery, Time source

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