The Lumière Brothers Brought Cinema to the World in 1896

In 1995, Pierre Omidyar created 'AuctionWeb' (later renamed eBay) and listed a broken laser pointer as a test. It sold for $14.83. When he contacted the buyer to confirm they understood it was broken, the buyer replied: 'I'm a collector of broken laser pointers.' Omidyar called it the moment he realized there was an online market for everything.

In 1787, clockmaker Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, built the first known personal alarm clock. However, it could only ring at 4:00 AM — the time he needed to wake up for work. He never patented or commercialized the invention. The first adjustable alarm clock was patented in 1847 by Antoine Redier in France.

In 1989, British engineer Tim Berners-Lee proposed a hypertext information system at CERN to help scientists share data. The first website went live in 1991. Rather than patent the technology and become a billionaire, he and CERN released it into the public domain in 1993. Experts estimate his invention would have been worth trillions.

While English calls it the 'at sign', other languages gave it vivid nicknames: Italian and French call it 'snail' (chiocciola/escargot), Dutch and German say 'monkey tail' (aapstaart/Klammeraffe), Finnish and Swedish call it 'elephant trunk' (snabel-a), Russian uses 'dog' (sobaka), and Greek says 'little duck' (papaki).