1. ‘The Watchmen’ is the only superhero comic to win the Hugo Award.
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2. The Republic of Kalmykia - a federal subject of the Russian Federation - is the only European state where the dominant religion is Buddhism.
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3. Umami - Japanese for ‘brothy’ or ‘savory’ - is the fifth of the 5 recognised basic tastes that the human tongue can sense. The other 4 are bitter, salty, sour and sweet.
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4. The term negawatt refers to power gained from adding efficiency to the electricity grid.
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5. Jazz legend Duke Ellington is the first African-American to appear solo on a circulating US coin.
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6. The word ‘gun’ for firearms is derived from ‘Lady Gunilda’- the name given to a missile-thrower/large crossbow used to defend Windsor Castle in the 14th century.
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7. Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb in history was named for its pilot Paul Tibbets’ mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.
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8. There are twice as many privately-owned tigers in the US as there are in the wild in the rest of the world.
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9. Creative Technology invented the NOMAD two years before the iPod was launched and received $100 million for patent infringment from Apple.
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10. Slavery was officially established in Virginia in 1654, when Anthony Johnson, a black man, convinced a court that his servant (also black) John Casor was his for life. The court ruled in Johnson’s favor, and the very first officially state-recognized slave was actually enslaved by another black man.
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About:
Iqbal Mohammed is Head of Innovation & Strategy at a digital innovation agency serving the DACH and wider European markets. He is the winner of the WPP Atticus Award for Best Original Published Writing in Marketing & Communication.
He blogs about #innovation, #technology and #marketing at misentropy.com. You can reach him via email or Twitter.