discovering what we consider mundane

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Ever wonder who discovered of first came upon certain things that we are familiar with today?

For example, who discovered the whale and how long ago was it?

the can opener was invented only 50 years after the can.

I think teabags were invented as late as the 1930s or 1940s.

Trepanning, a form of surgery, cutting out a piece of the skull to access the brain, was invented by and practiced by the Egyptians, 3,000 years ago. Sylkat

The disposable diaper was first marketed in 1961.

Sometimes I wonder who bore the first ocular appendage to perceive the sky. The nautilus? The lobopod? Krill?

The first person to wonder about wondering is a curiosity. In antiquity, it is purported to be Odysseus. The first mote of self consciousness, recorded in the oral tradition of the Aoidi, in "The Iliad," as recorded by Homer.

Oh, and Diogenes was credited with inventing the form of humor known as sarcasm. Hard to imagine a world without sarcasm, sweet and innocent as such a world might be.

mmm small hard objects.

More often I wonder how someone came up with an idea or discovered something. I wonder if they were trying to do that and put a lot of effort into it or was it accidental. I try to picture a scenario how it could have happened. Things like that.
Usually I'm not that interested in when and who.

wireless internet amazes me

Glass was invented/discovered by the Phoenicians, when they built their bonfires on beaches and noticed that the sand melted into pretty, shiny blobs....they had quite a good thing going, until other cultures figured out how it was made...Sylkat

How modern U.S military was created after the escape from british colonies

In Japan, they paid the local Samurai to slice the lid off with a single swing of his sword

In France, they laid the can on the Guillotine and lopped off the lid as if it were uh, you know...

Celullose mononitrate was used commercially as Celluloid, a highly flammable plastic used in the first half of the 20th Century for lacquers and photographic film

the first experimental stereo audio recordings were made in the early 30s, on both sides of the atlantic- at bell labs with leopold stokowski [an early audio bug] and in england with alan blumlein and the beeb. the first stereo surround-sound movie in general release [roadshow engagements] was disney's "fantasia." the experiment wasn't repeated again until 1952's "this is cinerama." both glenn miller's and tommy dorsey's bands were recorded in stereo in the early 40s, for several films' soundtrack masters, on 4-channel optical soundtrack mastering recorders. they were not heard in stereo until the 1990s on CD.