"We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles" - Thomas Edison

269th day of a non-leap year occurs on the 26th of September (26/9).

In 2022, there were only four electric cargo ships in China; by 2025, this figure had increased by 950%, to 42.

Volkswagen is recalling 2.86 million VW and Audi vehicles over a steering screw that can corrode and fail. Affected models: • VW: Tiguan, Touran, Golf, Golf Variant, Caddy (built Sept 2013–July 2024) • Audi: Q3 (built Oct 2017–May 2024)

Titanium is approximately 45% lighter than steel, has comparable tensile strength, and does not corrode in seawater, body fluids, or most industrial environments, but costs roughly 30-40 times more per kilogram to produce, because extracting it from ore requires the Kroll process, a complex batch operation that has not been significantly improved since 1940. Every aircraft, medical implant, and submarine that uses titanium is paying a premium for a manufacturing process invented 86 years ago.

A software engineer named Ken Kocienda designed software-assisted typing for the first iPhone keyboard that all phones now use. After typing letters such as T other letters commonly used after T such as H (the, that) look the same on-screen but have a larger hitbox making it easier to click.

The Great Wall's purpose is widely misunderstood. Large armies do not need walls - they can siege, flank, or wait. The real threat from northern nomads was cavalry raids: fast, unpredictable, devastating to crops and villages. Horses cannot climb walls. The Great Wall was a barrier to mounted raids, not to armies. This is why it was built with watchtowers spaced a signal-fire apart and garrison troops stationed along its length - not to stop an army, but to detect and respond to fast-moving raiding parties. The Wall was a military communications and response network as much as a physical barrier.

Water boils at 100 degrees C at sea level because that is where its vapour pressure equals atmospheric pressure. Inside a pressure cooker at approximately 2 atmospheres, water boils at 121 degrees C, and this higher temperature (not just the pressure) is what cooks food significantly faster by accelerating chemical reactions. At 121 degrees C, the same cooking reactions happen roughly 4 times faster than at 100 degrees C.

you don’t see your nose because your brain ignores it

Past, present and future is just an illusion. Time is relative.

5 tips to support children's science learning: 1. Value your child's questions. 2. Explore and find the answers together. 3. Give children time and space to explore. 4. Accept that explorations are often messy. 5. Learn from mistakes together.

Blocking electromagnetic interference (EMI) and concealing infrared heat signatures are two completely separate engineering problems. Currently they require separate materials and separate solutions. On September 21 2026, researchers announced a film thinner than a human hair that does both simultaneously. The film blocks electromagnetic waves, protecting electronics from interference or detection. It also suppresses infrared emission, making a surface appear thermally invisible. Potential applications: ultra-thin EMI shielding for electronics, thermal camouflage for military hardware, combined heat management and interference shielding for satellite components. Two engineering problems. One material.

Wrought iron contains less than 0.08% carbon and is tough and ductile, you can bend it without breaking it. Cast iron contains 2-4% carbon and is hard but brittle, a sharp impact will shatter it. Two percent of carbon, the difference between a material that absorbs blows and one that fractures from them, is one of the most consequential compositional differences in the history of engineering.

Germany was technically the first nation to send the first human-made object into space during WWII: the V2 rocket

Number of Employed Engineers: Los Angeles: 69.8K Detroit: 60.7K New York: 53.1K Houston: 51.9K Boston: 47.8K Dallas: 45.8K Washington DC: 41.0K Chicago: 39.4K San Jose: 39.3K San Francisco: 36.8K Seattle: 35.8K Denver: 30.2K Minneapolis: 29.2K San Diego: 28.3K Philadelphia: 27.5K Phoenix: 26.3K Atlanta: 24.3K Austin: 22.4K Portland: 18.6K Baltimore: 18.3K Miami: 18.2K Huntsville: 17.3K Cincinnati: 16.3K Pittsburgh: 14.3K Kansas City: 14.0K Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Meeting in 1931. Einstein: What I most admire about your art, is your universality. You don't say a word, yet the world understands you! Chaplin: True. But your glory is even greater! The whole world admires you, even though they don't understand a word of what you say.

Mathematical puzzle. Find the missing number.

Multipurpose sharpener

Biologists are just a bunch of cells talking about other cells.

Pipe beading (swaging / crimping a male end).

Verify before spending time on a precise calculation. Estimate the answer. Enrico Fermi could estimate the number of piano tuners in Chicago in about a minute. Not because he had a directory. Because he knew how to chain plausible numbers. The method: 1. Break the unknown into factors you can estimate. 2. Estimate each factor within a factor of 10. 3. Multiply. Accept an answer within a factor of 2–3. Example: how many piano tuners are there in Chicago? Population ~3 million.
Households ~1 million.
Pianos that actually get tuned: maybe 1 household in 20 → ~50,000 pianos.
Each tuned about once a year. 
One tuner does ~3–4 jobs a day, ~250 days a year → ~800–1,000 tunings a year. 50,000 / 900 ≈ 55 tuners. A range of 30–150 is defensible. Trade listings and guild chapters land in that band. The estimate is good enough. This skill tells you instantly whether a quoted figure is plausible. Most inflated statistics fail a 30-second Fermi test.