Saving the world from nuclear war is a good unique one:
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy
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It happened twice!
These are great examples.
I knew about Petrov. Great humans both of them!
Robert Liston performed a single surgery with a 300% mortality rate (probably).
I wonder how much is embellishment over the years.
If you sawed off your assistants fingers (hard to do with a hand saw); good chance they would also catch gangrene. Far more likely is that at the first sign of a saw hitting your finger, you move it out of the way.
The third person "died of fright", could have been heart attack. So definitely plausible.
Surgeons back then were basically professional limb amputaters. Note that he went through a whole leg in 2.5 minutes. He would have blown through some fingers in no time.
These surgeons were moving fast, I can see it.
I was sawing wood one night and barely touched my thumb webbing, split open like a mouth. Bet you could take 3 fingers an single forward and back stroke. You can for sure with modern blades.
(If anyone is considering a new saw, get the kind with this sort of edge: https://www.amazon.com/REXBETI-Folding-Camping-Pruning-Quality/dp/B07BLQBN8X/ Those are modern day light sabers.)
These surgeons were moving fast, I can see it
Everybody was limb-fu cutting (hiya!)
Those cats were fast as lightning (hiya!)
Can confirm, I cut down an entire small tree with one of those very easily when I was younger.
Thomas Midgley Jr. Invented putting lead in fuel and using CFCs for refrigeration. He died when he was strangulated by the machine he invented to help him get out of bed.
Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history"
Ouch.
I have often thought about who the person with the worst carbon footprint would be if you accounted for factors like inventions/policies/war etc. This answers my question, unless there are even worse contributors.
I don't think Midgley really did anything to increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere β just the amount of lead and CFCs.
I was wrong to say carbon footprint, I suppose I'm curious about who has contributed the most to polluting the environment and damaging our climate.
Born under a bad sign? This guy is the only officially recognized person to have survived two nuclear bomb detonations.
https://www.damninteresting.com/eyewitnesses-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
I remember reading about that guy a few years ago....unlucky / super lucky.
For length there is a Smoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot
Edit: it's 1.702 metres/ 5'7"
I love the Smoot; but for weird units of measure.... gestures vaguely in the direction of North America
Off the top of my head though I can't think of any that are based on a persons name. Rod, Chain, Peck, Hogshead etc.
atomic elements, there are 19 named after 20 people.
What do you mean? There's one named after two persons?
Curium is named after both Pierre and Marie Curie
Curieous!
Maria SkΕodowska-Curie
jk btw
Kurva!
*Toasts with pivo in the general direction of Poland/*
Ad hoc weapons (Vjatsjeslav Mikhajlovitsj Molotov)?
Probably played some golf on the moon.
There's a whole series of books about this lol
(Referring to Guinness)
True.
I haven't looked at one since I was a kid.
I know they do, tallest/fastest/biggest etc... But they are all things that always exist.
E.g. the biggest pizza in the world, well before that there was also a biggest pizza it was just smaller than the current one, and before that etc....
I guess anything with a single record, not just the latest in a long string should count.
Having a species named after you, even if you're a fictional character
Testudo Aubreii
Gary Larson has several species of animals named after him. He also named the spiked part of a stegosaurus tail in a comic (the thagomizer, βafter the late Thag Simmonsβ) and had that name adopted as the official name by paleontologists.
Absolutely fantastic people still know this and share it.
I loved that story; in my imagination paleontologist 1 (P1) sees the cartoon and wonders what the official name is. Gets to work and asks old and wise paleontologist 2 (P2) what the official name is.
P2: I don't know. I'll have to ask my venerable colleague (P3) about it next time we are together.
P1: ok cool, I'll just use "Thagomizer" until we find out the official name.
P2: seems reasonable.
a few months pass...
P2: hey P3 what is the official name of the Thagomizer?
P3: um, I have no idea. I should know, I'm a steggy expert, how about we just keep it as Thagomizer!
Being the first to do x, first man on the moon for example. Or be the 28th president
The first person to be the 28th President
He was number 1!
While true, I don't think it counts.
There are a huge number of firsts, that have subsequently had a lot of people do that thing.
However only 12 people have walked on the moon. So more unique than the elements.
We're about to see the three people who have gone the furthest from earth ever
be the 28th president
CΓ©sar Gaviria or Salvador Allende?