Spam

The term spam is derived from a British comedy, Monty Python, sketch, set in a cafe where every menu item is made of SPAM luncheon meat. As the waiter recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus drowns it out with a song repeating the word "SPAM" thus "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned is a reference to SPAM being widely available in Britain during World War 2.

Video Games

The first video games were developed in the 1950s and 60s and ran on platforms such as oscilloscopes, university mainframes and EDSAC computers. The earliest computer game, a missile simulation, was created in 1947 by Thomas T Goldsmith Jr and Estle Ray Mann for which they received a patent on Dec 14th, 1948.

Chameleons

Chameleons have specialised cells- called chromatophores- that lie in layers under their transparent outer skin. These cells have different pigments on seperate layers. For example, the upper layer, contains yellow and red pigments while the layer immediately below contains a crystalline substance. There are several such layers that can rapidly relocate their pigments, thereby allowing change in colour.

Asteroids

The first few asteroids were named after figures from Greco-Roman mythology, but as such names started to run out, others were used: Famous people, the names of the discoverer's wives, children, and even television characters. Discoverers also began to give them increasingly eccentric names, such as 6042 Cheshirecat and 9007 James Bond.

Solar Energy

On a bright, sunny day, the sun shines approximately 1,000 watts of energy per square meter (10.7 square feet approximately) of the planet's surface, and if we actually manage to collect all of that energy we could easily power our power everythin for free.

Philips G7000

In 1978, light bulbs and electronics manufacturer, Philips, also launched a videogame console, the Philips G7000. The device used a black controller, held in one hand, with an eight-direction stick that was manipulated with the other hand. In the upper corner of the joystick was a single 'Action' button. The strongest point of the system was its speech synthesis unit, which was released as an add-on for speech and sound-effects enhancement.

Bottlenose Dolphins

Bottlenose Dolphins have to rise to the surface every 5-8 minutes to breathe. This makes sleeping difficult. Some scientists believe that the two halves of their brains take turns in sleeping and walking. It has also been suggested that they have tiny periods of microsleep (sleep lasting no more than a few seconds)

Pluto

Pluto was discovered after an extensive search by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona on February 18, 1930. The planet was named after the Roman god of the underworld and it was suggested by an 11 year old girl Venetia Phair whose grandfather worked at the Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

Orchids

Orchids are among the biggest and most diverse of the flowering plants, with over 800 described genera and 25,000 species. Orchids get their name from the Greek orchis, meaning testicle. The word orchis was first used by Theophrastos, a student of Aristotle considered to be the father of botany and ecology. He mentioned the flower in his book De historia plantarum.(The history of plants).

Atlantic swim

On Thursday, April 21, 2005, Jon von Tetzchner, the CEO of Opera Software proclaimed that if the download numbers of Opera 8 browser reached a million within four days of launch, he would swim across the Atlantic Ocean. The million was reached. On April 25 and April 26, the official Opera site described the non-serious Atlantic swim 'attempt' and its quick and comical 'failure'.

Plant seeds

There are about 6 million plant species stored as seeds in about 1,300 gene-banks throughout the world as of 2006. This amount represents a small fraction of the world's biodiversity, and many regions of the world have not been bio-prospected fully. The oldest seed that actually germinated into a viable plant was a 2,000 year old date palm seed, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great's palace in Israel.

Hitman

Hitman is stealth-action game series. Till date four Hitman games have been introduced, the first was Hitman: Codename 47 released in 2000, while the latest is Hitman: Blood Money, released this year. The game has also inspired a film, where Vin Diesel has been signed on as the lead, Agent 47. The film is expected to be released in 2007.

Percy Spencer

The fact that microwaves could be used for cooking was discovered by Percy Spencer-a scientist with US-based Radar manufacturers, Raytheon- in 1945. He was working on an active radar set when he noticed that a candy bar he had in his pocket started to melt. The first food to be deliberately cooked with microwaves was popcorn, and the second was an egg (which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters)

Philips Electronics

Philips Electronics was founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips in the Netherlands to manufacture light bulbs and other electro-technical equipment. However, during World War 2 the company's directors fled to the US and operated from there. They returned only when the war ended. The first Philips factory still remains in the Netherlands as a museum.

Netscape Communications Corp

'Netscape Communications Corp' was founded as 'Mosaic Communications Corp' in April, 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, and was the first company to capitalise on the birth World Wide Web. It released a Web browser called Mosaic Netscape 0.9 in October, 1994. This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator, and the company took on 'Netscape' as its name in November, 1994.

Dog food

The expression "eating our own dog food" is used by Microsoft to describe the policy of using their latest products inside the company in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. Only pre-release and beta versions of products are considered dog food.

Stephen Hawking

Since he is severely disabled, thoeretical physicist Stephen Hawking uses a voice synthesiser to communicate. Also, the computer system attached to his wheel-chair is operated by him via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, research papers, browse the Internet and write e-mail. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office.

Citizen Watch Co

Shokosha Watch Research Institute was founded in 1918 and was later in 1930- renamed to Citizen Watch Co to reflect their company mission statement, which is "to provide the best products and services to all 'citizens' of the world." Citizen is also credited with creating Eco-Drive watches that run on solar power and kinetic (movement) energy of its wearers.

Giant pandas

The low numbers of Giant pandas in the wild is fuelled by the destruction of their habitat and by their two year interval between births. In addition, the female Giant panda abandons one of her cubs soon after birth. The cubs are extremely fragile at birth and she can give her undivided attention to only one cub at a time, the other cub usually dies.

Phishing

The Oxford English dictionary defines 'phishing' as the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online.

Anthony Fadell

Anthony Fadell is considered by many to be the father of the iPod. During the 1990s, Fadell envisioned a small hard disk-based music player. However, he failed to find funding and, therefore, approached RealNetworks in 2000. The second company he approached was Apple... The rest -as they say-is history.

Dell Computers

In 1984, when Michael Dell was just 19 and still a student at the University of Texas, he founded "PC's Limited" with just $1000 to sell computers built from stock components. The venture was so successful that today, the company, which was renamed to Dell Computers in 1987 is by far the largest PC manufacturer in the world.

Space travellers

Space travellers are known by various names. Americans prefer 'astronaut', while the Russians prefer 'cosmonaut'. An 'afronaut' refers to African space travellers while the French use the term 'spationaut'. As for the Chinese, they settle for 'taikonaut'. As on date, more than 440 'humans' from at least 35 countries have gone into space.

Walkman

The first Sony Walkman, called the Soundabout, was sold in 1979. The name Walkman however, was the brainchild of Sony co-founder Akio Morita, who until recently was also credited with the device's invention. Sony has now recently acknowledged the claims of German, Andreas Pavel, who created and patented a similar device, the stereobelt, in 1977.

Leonardo Da Vinci

One of the first recorded designs of a robot was made by Leonardo da vinci in around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks contain detailed drawings of a mechanical knight able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design is said to be based on his anatomical research recorded in the Vitruvian Man.

Gray's Anatomy

Way back in the 1850s, an English anatomist Henry Gray (1825 or 1827-1961) produced the first edition of the de-facto book on anatomy under the name 'Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical.' Generations of medical students have since called it "Gray's Anatomy." Today, the latest edition of Gray's Anatomy is the 39th edition.

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating that uses the naturally occurring isotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to 60,000 years old is considered within archaeology to be an absolute dating technique. The technique was discovered by Willard Frank Libby and his colleagues in 1949 for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1960.

Ask.com

Search engine, Ask.com was originally known as Ask Jeeves, where Jeeves, a valet, was supposed to be the person who fetches the answers of any query you ask. The character was based on Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's fictional valet from the works of P G Wodehouse. On 23 September 2005 the company announced plans to phase out the character and finally did so on 27 February 2006.

Mona Lisa

Dr Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait by Da Vinci. She supports this theory with the results of a digital analysis of the facial features of the artist's face and that of the painting. When flipping a self-portrait drawing by Leonardo and then merging that with an image of the Mona Lisa using a computer, the features of the faces align perfectly.