facts-i-just-made-up:

i-am-the-egg:

facts-i-just-made-up:

hilarioushumorfromouterspace:

The phrase “Harder than finding a needle in a haystack” must have been coined before magnets were invented.

-Hilarious Humor from Outer Space

Okay but you actually stumbled on one of the coolest bits of history- This phrase was coined by the inventor of the electromagnet.

William Sturgeon worked for the East India Company in the 1800s. He was self taught and notorious at the time not as an inventor but as a bar patron who would take up all kinds of bets. In 1822 he made a bet with Stuart Abercrombie that he could eat ten pounds of hard cheddar in one sitting. In 1823 he bet Markus Hellenschneidersen that he could punch a hole through one foot of lead. In early 1824 he bet Erskine Hamlet that he could sneeze with enough force to blast the Earl of Liverpool off his horse. Needless to say he failed every bet, and was generally out of money.

In late 1824, he bet Charles Grafton Page that he could find a needle in a haystack in under a minute. Being certain he could do so but being completely broke, he bet for one million pounds of Page’s money against his own life. Page accepted.

Sturgeon was scared half to death. On the appointed day he would have 59 seconds to find a needle in a modest haystack of one cubic meter. Or he would die. He had only two days to prepare, and in those days he studied. He studied metals. He studied hay. He studied methods of finding anything in the world. And on the Friday of the decision, he arrived at the barn with the world’s first electromagnet.

Unfortunately, electricity would not be invented by Georg Ohm for another three years and unable to use it to find the needle, Sturgeon was executed by a single gunshot to the head.

BUT. His invention, agreed by all to be a brilliant idea, became useful those three years later and he was awarded a posthumous patent (the first in England). Had he lived another few years, Sturgeon would have owned the rights to the electric motor, and would have lived as one of the richest men in British history.

His last words were recorded as follows: “I accept my fate for I have failed a bet against my life. I shall die now, but the afterlife troubles me not- For whatever Sisyphean ordeal awaits me in hell, it can’t be harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

(Source)

Okay, but … did you just make that up?

I assure you that facts-i-just-made-up would never just make up facts.