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So I was just reading a "Stupid History" book, and I found out something totally unexpected O_O

The first version of the lightbulb was invented in 1802 by English chemist Sir Humphrey Davy, who made an arc lamp glow by passing electricity through a platinum wire. Davy, however, never pursued a use for it. Later in 1845, an American, J. W. Starr, developed a lightbulb using a vacuum bulb and a carbon filament. When he died at the age of 25, an Englishman, Sir Joseph Swan, continued to work on Starr's design. Use the word silly in your post if you read the whole thing. His problem was that for all his designs, the filament burned only for a short time, making it impractical. In 1877, Edison finally found a filament that would stay illuminated for a long time, a carbonized cotton thread. However, Joseph Swan discovered that carbonized cotton thread would work as well... ten months earlier. He filed a patent infringement suit against Edison and won. Edison, however, didn't give up; he made Swan a partner in his lighting company and later bought him out.

TL;DR: Edison didn't invent what we know as the lightbulb. Someone else did, he sued Edison and won, so Edison partnered with him and bought him out.

Discuss odd bits of history you know, as well as well-known history that is actually a lie.

That is silly...But also understandable...Like shakespeare stealing most of his works...All famous people are frauds...YAY! rofl

Silly. Why would you want to make sure that we have read the entire post?

well, seeing as no one else is actually discussing any history, I'll continue to add on more odd history.

Long ago, many rich folks were sitting around and decided upon a little contest amoungst them. They would all attepmt to write literary works, and in one years time, they would all decide whos was best, and publish the winner's book. Well, when it was time to decide, the winner ended up being one of the prostitutes who were there that night. The author was mary shelley, and the winning book was frankenstein!!!

There is actually a TV show devoted to interesting facts like these, and every episode they have about 5-10 minutes of general ignorance, dicussing well known facts that are actually lies.

Eg. People never really thought the world was flat, there is absolutely no record of people thinking it was.

Um, as far as I know, this theft you've mentioned is only a theory, and has not been proven. As the documents are very old, I think it would be extremely difficult to verify such a thing as well as the contrary of what you have said..



Actually, I doubt Mary Shelley was a prostitute. Her parents were both writers and philosophers, and she is also a writer (and does have books other than Frankenstein..) Also, she was married to Percy Shelley, which also makes it more unlikely for her to be a prostitute.. And also, I haven't found anything that said she was a prostitute in my rather rushed search. (And no, I didn't just look her up on Wikipedia..)



Well.. Lately, people have begun to think that the Illiad and the Odyssey were written by different people.. While some think that the two were written by two separate individuals, some others think that it was a group of poets..

sorry guys. I heard about mary shelly from a guy I know, who is usually reliable source, but he does, on occasion, make things up for entertainment purposes. guess he did make it up....too bad..... (or maybe Im thinking of a different author... not too sure.)

well, perhaps she wasnt a prostitute, but I think there was still a bit of a contest amongst such ppl, including them, yes. In fact, I believe there was another book or two from the contest which were eventually published as well.