Wall socket voltage

The thing I learned today is that a standard wall socket in the US has 110-120 volts of current.  The voltage varies considerably by country.

The people who have walked on the moon

The thing I learned today is that twelve men have walked on the moon.  Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, followed immediately by Buzz Aldrin; this was on July 21, 1969.  The next two moon walkers were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, who trod the dusty surface of Luna November 19 and 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 12 mission.  And the fifth and sixth on the moon were Alan Shepherd and Edgar Mitchell, who walked the moon in February of 1971.  The last person to have walked on the moon (for now!) is Eugene Cernan, in 1972.  Here is a mnemonic: Arm All Conquering Bears; Sheep Might Scamper.

Vostok 1

Vostok 1 was the first human space flight, in 1961; Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth once during the two-hour mission.

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.

Cyber Monday

The term Cyber Monday was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation and Scott Silverman, and made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled "Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year."  Cyber Monday takes place the Monday after Thanksgiving

Elwood Edwards was a voice-over actor most famous for voicing AOL notifications, including the most famous "You've got mail!"

Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler was a writer and futurist, best known for his works Future Shock and The Third Wave. He predicted how technology will shape how people feel and interact in a post-industrial society.

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.

A manometer is a device that measures pressure, usually air against liquid. (A barometer is a type of manometer; it measures atmospheric pressure.)

RenderMan is a digital imaging software used by Pixar to create realistic imagery in movies such as 'Jurassic Park,' 'The Incredibles,' 'Forrest Gump,' and many others.

The Bugatti Veyron, produced by Volkswagen subsidiary Bugatti Automobiles SAS, was first produced in 2005. Reaching 62 mph in 2.5 seconds, with an average top speed of 253 mph, it is the fastest-accelerating street-legal car in the world. At 1.1 million Euros pricetag, it is also the most expensive.

Car batteries

Car batteries are made up of plates of lead and lead oxide, which are submerged into an electrolyte solution of about 35% sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and 65% water.

The Sting Ray (later one word, Stingray) was a car introduced in 1963 by Chevrolet as part of its Corvette line. The Stingray name was discontinued after 1979.

Electric wiring was installed in the White House in 1891 under Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President. Allegedly, he and his wife were afraid to touch the fixtures.

Chester Carlson was an American physicist and patent attorney who invented instant copying, which was later named xerography (whence the company name Xerox). See also Joseph C. Wilson.

The Dole Light was an early name for the "center high mount stop lamp" on cars, named for Elizabeth Dole, who as Secretary of Transportation oversaw their implementation.