The “standard” gauge of 1,435 mm, or 4 feet 8½ inches, comes from horse-drawn wagons in the mines of northern England. George Stephenson adopted it for his early railways, which were copied around the world. This odd figure now covers about 55% of the planet's railway lines, but other gauges still force passengers to change trains at some borders.
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.