A while ago, Bryce (same Bryce responsible for this nifty Flickr infographic) sent me a link to a blog that looks at old stories from Omni magazine, and sees how the various predictions have panned out. Sadly, most of the gee-whiz technologies (cleaning robots, clothing and parachutes made from spider silk) were pipedreams, or are still stumbling along, but the site includes various fun factoids, I'm assuming gleaned from Omni, such as the following:

• A blowfish's toxin is 100 times more potent than cocaine; a lethal dose, about 1 mg, could fit on a pin head.
• Apollo 8 astronauts used a new adhesive to fasten down their tools in zero gravity -- silly putty.
• The oldest rocks retreived from the moon's surface are 4.72 billion years old -- older than any found on earth.
• It's only the female mosquito that bites.
• Studies of fossil coral suggest that 370 million years ago, a year was 400 days long.

LINK | 9:09 AM | TB

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