Page 6 - Technology Facts

An Azerbaijani billionaire decided to build an artifical achipelago!

The Khazar Islands, sometimes referred to as Caspian Islands, are a reminder of what mankind is capable of creating these days. The artificial islands, south of Baku, Azerbaijan, consist of 41 islands extending 11.6 square miles over the Caspian Sea.

The company responsible for this artificial archipelago is Avesta. The company has said publicly that the Khazar Islands is under construction to become a city to house 1 million residents, contain 150 schools, 50 hospitals and daycare centers, numerous parks, shopping malls, cultural centers, universities, a racetrack, but most importantly the island will contain the Azerbaijan Tower.

This tower is expected to be the tallest building in the world, and will cost approximately $2 billion. That amount is just pocket change, considering the entire city is going to cost around $100 billion to make. The buildings on the island are able to withstand magnitude 9.0 earthquakes.

The president of the company, Ibrahimov Ibrahim, told reporters that the city will be like a "new Venice". The project is expected to be finished between 2020 and 2025!

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Mobile Oil tested its synthetic oil by driving a car 1 MILLION miles on a treadmill!

In 1990, Mobil Oil decided to purchase a BMW 3 series as a test car. They wanted to test their new synthetic oil, and to do so, they put the BMW through it's paces. Overall, it spent about 40,000 miles being driven on the road. This is a normal amount.

However, the car then racked up about one million miles on a special treadmill-like dynamometer. Mobil ran it for four years at about 85 mph. It was stopped regularly for maintenance, but other than that, it drove on. After the four years, the car was stopped and disassembled to test the wear on the engine. It reportedly had tolerance levels similar to a new engine.

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There is no federal law banning US citizens from owning a flamethrower!

If you're a pyromaniac, chances are you've always wanted to own a flamethrower because they are one of the most terrifying weapons ever created. They're so terrifying, that the US military was only using them for a period of time because they were more of a psychological weapon against the enemy, than a physical one. A modern flamethrower can shoot just about 100 metres - yikes.

In 1978, the US military decided it was in their best interest to stop using flamethrowers in combat - because it was too dangerous for the soldiers to operate them. The soldiers had these big explosive tanks on their back and would be running through a field where bullets are whizzing in every direction.

An interesting little fact about flamethrowers for US citizens, is that they aren't actually banned at a federal level. Some states, like California, have opted to making flamethrowers illegal, but that only applies at the state level. According to some people, certain farmers need flamethrowers to burn down their fields in a controlled manner.

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There is a straw that helps prevent rape!

One in six women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime, and two inventors in Israel named Fernando Patolsky and Michael Ioffe are trying to lower that statistic.

The two chemists were fed up of women getting slipped date rape drugs when they weren't paying attention, and they wondered if they could do anything to stop this from happening.

Fortunately, they did. Frenando and Michael invented a straw that uses a tiny sample of your drink and mixes it with a testing solution, which causes a chemical reaction that makes the drink cloudy or colored, depending on the drug. The beautiful thing about this straw is that it's reusable until it detects the presence of a date rape drug, and it looks like a normal straw.

This straw is still increasing in potential, because Patolsky and Ioffe are working to make more drugs detectable, such as rohypnol or "ruffies". The two drugs that the straw can detect are Ketamine and gamma-hydroxybutryic acid or GHB

Learn more by clicking the source!

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Kid computers in the 80s and 90s came with programming language training!

These days, computer programming skills are reserved for computer science majors and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. The majority of personal computer users do not know how to program or even how to perform basic html coding for websites. This was not the case when personal computers were first becoming popular.

The more sophisticated children's computers sold in the 1980s and 1990s came with BASIC training built in. BASIC is a computer programming language, and it was part of the computer because, at this time, politicians, educators, technologists, etc. All believed that every citizen should learn computer programming. Otherwise, they would be left out of the computer revolution.

Today, due to sophisticated technology, we realize that you do not have to be able to program your own computer in order to tell it what to do. If you can program though, more power to you!

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