Originally the top of the Empire State Building had a mooring mast that could be used by airships. The plan was for the airships to connect with the mast and have passengers load and unload by a gangplank. The plan did not work since the air currents around the top of the building were too strong to allow for secure and safe docking. Only once did an airship ever dock. In September of 1931 a small airship was able to dock for 3 minutes.

If you have ever wondered what YKK stands for on your zipper, wonder no more. Like most products, zippers are stamped with a brand name. Since Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha is a little long to fit on a zipper the shorted YKK will have to do. The company was founded in 1934 by Tadao Yoshida and registered the YKK trademark in 1946. YKK group is now the world’s largest manufacturer of zippers.

Mario of the Super Mario Bros/ Mario Kart fame made his video game debut in Donkey Kong. In that game he was simply known as Jumpman. When Jumpman was going to be put in a video game of his own the proposed name for the character was Mr. Video. The name was finally chosen when the Nintendo developers were working on the character in the US their landlord visited them and demanded back rent. A heated argument ensued and the landlords name was Mario Segale. Once the argument was resolved the developers decided to name the character after him.

By the time Squaw Valley hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics television had become a big part of the Olympic movement. CBS had the rights to broadcast the games and was taping a downhill ski event when there was a dispute over whether or not a skier had missed a gate. The officials asked CBS to look at their footage to see if there was proof either way. It is said that this gave CBS the idea to create instant replay.

Gander is a town in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It has a population of just under 10,000 people. The airport in the community has always been a major driver in the economy. Construction began on the airport in 1936 and it soon become one of the most important airports in the world. This was due to geography. Gander is located on the path that most planes take from the eastern United States and Europe. From the 1940s till the 1960s most planes needed a place to refuel on their way across the Atlantic Ocean, and many of the airlines chose Gander. After the development of longer range aircraft the importance of the Airport at Gander has declined.

The Q-tip was invented by Leo Gerstenzang. He originally called the product Baby Gays. Later he changed the name to Q-tip Baby Gays, and later the Baby Gays part was dropped all together. So the influential group A Tribe Called Quest almost had a member called “Baby Gays”. Not a great rap name.

Facebook takes its name from the “face books” that would be published by universities to help students get to know each other. The facebook website was created by Harvard students and originally only students at that school were allowed to have accounts. Availability of the service then spread to Boston area schools, the Ivy League, and then all colleges and universities, an then high schools. Since 2006 the site has been available to anyone over the age of  13 with an email account. There are currently more than 400 million facebook users, which equals a lot of event invitations from people you went to high school with and were never really close with, but accepted their friend request to be polite.

In 1982 Billy Joel released 52nd street. It marked an important moment in music history, since it was the first album released on CD (compact disc). This marked a major shift in the way consumers got their music. CDs could hold a lot more music than a vinyl record, so albums could be longer and releases that might previously needed two records could be one CD. The CD is now still the standard format for buying music physically, but more and more people are getting their music digitally. Think, when was the last time you went to a store and physically bought music?

Work began on the technology that would become Bluetooth in 1994. The name is the anglicised form of the Blåtand which is the name given to Harald I of Denmark. Harald I was able to unite many different clans to create what is now Denmark, the idea is that Bluetooth does the same thing by united different technoligical devices. Bluetooth also allows for people to look like idiots by leaving their wireless headset on even when they are not on the phone.

Almost everyone in the world is now familiar with a computer mouse and a graphical user interface like Microsoft Windows. Working with a computer was not always so easy and intuitive. The first computer mouse available commercially came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981, but it was not a big success. It was not until the Apple Macintosh computer came out in 1984 that the mouse became popular.