Large spacecraft in low orbit are often steered down near Point Nemo, the spot in the ocean farthest from any land, more than 2,600 km from the nearest coast. The Mir space station ended its days there in 2001. Geostationary satellites, too high to come back down, are instead pushed about 300 km higher into a “graveyard orbit”.
In 1843, inventor Alexander Bain patented a way to send images over telegraph wires using synchronized pendulums. By the 1860s, a commercial fax service was already linking cities. The telephone wasn't patented until 1876, more than three decades after that first fax patent. The fax is really a child of the telegraph age.
On 8 October 1958, in Stockholm, 43-year-old Arne Larsson received the very first implanted pacemaker. The device, designed by engineer Rune Elmqvist and implanted by surgeon Åke Senning, worked for only a few hours and had to be replaced. Larsson went on to receive more than twenty pacemakers in his lifetime. He died in 2001 aged 86, outliving both the engineer and the surgeon.