Hangul

Hangul is the name of the Korean script. Its name literally means "great script."  There are 24 nbasic letters.  The consonant characters are formed with curved or angled lines. The vowels are composed of vertical or horizontal straight lines together with short lines on either side of the main line.  Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great.

Mary Anderson

Mary Anderson patented a device in 1903 to clear car and streetcar windows of rain, ice and snow.  Previously, drivers had to stop and get out to clear the windshield before moving on.  Others devised and patented wipers before her, but hers was developed and fit into cars.

UNIVAC and the Census

The thing I learned today is that UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), the computer developed by the  Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1951, was first used by the U.S. Census Bureau to tabulate and sample survey information.

Highway Gothic

The thing I learned today is that Highway Gothic is a popular name for the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) series of fonts.  This series is a collection of fonts used on road signs in over a dozen countries.  Originally developed during WWII by the Public Roads Administration, the sans-serif fonts have been modified over the years, such as the implementation of a lower-case set of letters.

Swanson frozen dinners

The Swanson & Sons company was not the first to introduce the frozen TV (re-heatable, later microwaveable) dinner --- that was most likely William Maxson, in 1944, who created them for serving on airplanes --- but popularized them, and trademarked the name, in 1952. The first Swanson TV dinner consisted of turkey, stuffing, cornbread, and buttered peas. What? No dessert?!

SpeedDating was invented in the 1990s by a Los Angeles rabbi named Yaacov Deyo.

The modern day trampoline was invented by an American gymnast called George Nissen who purportedly got the idea after seeing trapeze artists fall into safety nets. He named it after the Spanish word for diving board.

Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist, is credited with first proposing the emoticon on a Carnegie Mellon message board in 1982. He proposed :-) as a a "joke marker," because it warned reader that an email was not intended to be taken seriously.

Nathaniel Wyeth, who invented the recyclable PET plastic soda bottle, was the brother of painter Andrew Wyeth.

Pan-pan is a radiotelegraph call sign indicating a state of urgency with no immediate danger to life, which is one degree less urgent than a call of Mayday.

A lava lamp works because the colored wax inside liquid rises and falls as its density is changed by its light bulb's heat.

A neti pot is a device used to clear the nasal passage by causing a saline solution to flow through them. Older neti pots used spouts, while modern neti pots have bulb syringes.

Croakies

Croakies is a company that manufactures items such as lanyards and straps to help people keep track of glasses and keys. The company began in 1977, producing eyeglasses retainers.

Sofie Giraffe is a teething toy (in the shape of a giraffe, of course) for babies. It was developed by a French inventor in 1961. It is very popular in France, and was designated Product of the Year by a US toy association in 2009.

Play-Doh, that salty treat for children, was originally developed as a wallpaper cleaner.

Fighting Falcon

The F-16 is a jet, designated the Fighting Falcon, used by the US Air Force since 1974. Despite officially being the Falcon, it is also known by some pilots as the Viper.

The Hydra-Matic was the first fully automatic transmission, developed by General Motors for Cadillac and Oldsmobile in 1939.

The Compact Disc was pioneered by Philips Electronics, working with Sony, but using Philips' technology from as far back as 1977. The CD was introduced in 1982 and was 74 minutes long because that was the longest recording of Beethoven's Ninth in Sony's vaults.

7 Up was introduced in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg under the incredibly catchy name of "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." Why didn't he keep that winner?

Nolan Bushnell is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant chain. He is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is sometimes credited with inventing the first video game, because he oversaw the invention of Pong.