First Color Photograph
The first color photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.
Gulliver's Travels Fact
When Jonathan Swift published 'Gulliver's Travels' in 1726, he intended it as a satire on the ferociousness of human nature. Today it is enjoyed as a children's story.
More Miscellaneous Facts
The oldest daily newspaper
The oldest surviving daily newspaper is the Wiener Zeitung of Austria. It was first printed in 1703.
The origin of the dollar
The $ sign was designed in 1788 by Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, using a combination of Spanish money symbols.
The $ sign is used in many countries other than the United States, including the use for the Argentine peso, Brazilian real, Cape Verde escudo, Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Cuban peso, Dominican peso, Mexican peso, Tongan pa'anga and Uruguayan peso. Other countries that trade in their currency as dollars are Australia, Bahamas, Canada, Liberia and others
If you stack one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton. A million dollars' worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb). One million dollars' worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.