Curiosities
October 2026
Every article published in October 2026. 37 articles · Back to full archive
Curiosities
Swiss engineer George de Mestral came home from a hunting trip in 1941 with burdock burrs stuck to his trousers and his dog's fur, put them under a microscope, saw tiny hooks, and had Velcro patented by 1954.
Curiosities
The patent for the modern stud and tube LEGO brick was filed at 1:58 pm on 28 January 1958 in Copenhagen. LEGO says bricks made 60 years apart still clip together, and six 2x4 bricks combine in more than 915 million ways.
News
OPPO launched the Find X10 Pro Max in Mallorca on 21 October 2026 with 200MP on all three rear cameras, a setup it calls an industry first.
Curiosities
A physicist gave 176 consoles from the Air Force's PS3 supercomputer a second life inside a refrigerated shipping container
Curiosities
Standing on Sixth Avenue in New York on 3 April 1973, Motorola's Martin Cooper made the first public handheld cell phone call on a DynaTAC prototype, and he dialled his rival Dr Joel S. Engel at AT&T.
News
Google Play Store version 53.7 replaces the percent progress on app downloads with an estimated time remaining or the download size still to go, on phones.
Curiosities
A 1,680-ton boring machine that arrived from Germany in about 100 pieces has started chewing into the Palisades cliffs in North Bergen, New Jersey, digging the first train tunnel toward the Hudson in nearly 120 years at about 30 feet a day
Curiosities
The world's first traffic light stood 6 metres tall outside the Houses of Parliament from 9 December 1868, and after a gas leak exploded and seriously injured the constable working it, London had no traffic lights again until 1926.
News
Valve opens Steam Next Fest on 19 October at 10:00 PDT, a week of free demos and developer livestreams that closes 26 October at the same hour.
Curiosities
David Bradley wrote Ctrl+Alt+Del into the 1981 IBM PC as a soft reboot for developers, and at the machine's twentieth anniversary in 2001 he said of Bill Gates, "I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous"
News
WhatsApp will only support iPhones on iOS 15.5 and newer from 30 November 2026, and it warns affected users inside the app before support ends
News
Turn on Theft Detection Lock under Settings > Google > All services > Theft protection and your Android locks itself when a thief runs off with it
Curiosities
Otto Rohwedder's bread slicer cut its first commercial loaf at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri on 7 July 1928, and the machine that made Kleen Maid Sliced Bread fell apart after about six months of heavy use.
News
A 100,000-ton aircraft carrier running four years behind schedule caught its first F-35C on a wire off Virginia on the Navy’s birthday, the jet Congress ordered it fitted for in the first place, while a second F-35C flew the test with inert bombs mounted under its wings
Curiosities
Cambridge researchers built a camera system to check their coffee in 1991 — two years later, it became the world’s first webcam
News
Arduino raises the VENTUNO Q from its $299 introductory price to $399 on 19 October, blaming a sharp rise in memory module costs.
Curiosities
Clyde Dawson picked a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit for the first UPC barcode scan in 1974 because nobody was sure a barcode could be printed on something that small, and Sharon Buchanan scanned it at a Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
How-To Guides
WhatsApp can hide your IP address in calls through Settings, Privacy, Advanced, Protect IP address in calls, at some cost to call quality.
News