Fact

Ships & Boats
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• The world's oldest surviving boat is a simple 10 feet long dugout dated to 7400 BC. It was discovered in
Pesse Holland in the Netherlands.
• Rock drawings from the Red Sea site of Wadi Hammamat, dated to around 4000 BC show that
Egyptian boats were made from papyrus and reeds.
• The world's earliest known plank-built ship, made from cedar and sycamore wood and dated to 2600
BC, was discovered next to the Great Pyramid in 1952.
• The Egyptians created the first organized navy in 2300 BC.
• Oar-powered ships were developed by the Sumerians in 3500 BC.
• Sails were first used by the Phoenicians around 2000 BC.
Silicon Chip
A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied
a city block.
Skyscraper
The term skyscraper was first used way back in 1888 to describe an 11-story building.
Sound
Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
Telephones
There are more than 600 million telephone lines today, yet almost half the world's population has never made
a phone call.
Television
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in Soho, London.
Ten years later there were only 100 TV sets in the world.
Traffic Lights
Traffic lights were used before the advent of the motorcar. In 1868, a lantern with red and green signals was
used at a London intersection to control the flow of horse buggies and pedestrians.
Transistors
More than a billion transistors are manufactured... every second.
VCR's
The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.

Windmill
The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It was used to grind grain.
World Trade Center
The World Trade Center towers were designed to collapse in a pancake-like fashion, instead of simply falling
over on their sides. This design feature saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives on Sept. 11, 2001, when
they were destroyed by terrorists.