A Japanese man named Jiroemon Kimura, who lived to 116, was born in 1897 when Queen Victoria still ruled and died in 2013, meaning a single human life personally overlapped with the invention of the airplane, the atomic bomb, the internet, and Instagram

Jiroemon Kimura was born in 1897 during Queen Victoria’s reign and died in 2013 at age 116, having personally lived through the invention of the airplane, the atomic bomb, the internet, and the smartphone he used to look at photographs in his final years.

The Hollywood sign originally read HOLLYWOODLAND when it was built in 1923 as a real estate advertisement for a housing development, and it was only meant to stand for 18 months, but nobody ever got around to taking it down and the city eventually adopted it as a landmark

The Hollywood sign began as a flashing 1923 billboard for a failed real estate subdivision called Hollywoodland. It was meant to come down after 18 months. A century later, here’s how a temporary ad became a landmark.

Almost all of the world’s internet traffic does not travel by satellite but through fibre-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, a hidden web of wires crossing the deepest parts of the sea to connect the continents.