History MundaneUtility / RealLife

*** Soviet aviators used one of the first mass produced rockets with time fuses to this end. Vasiliy Stalin (yes, Uncle Joe's son) was demoted after an incident when he and a deputy commander were wounded and their weapons engineer killed while rocket-fishing (not all timers are equally precise).

* UsefulNotes/{{UNIX}} and its descendants form the backbone of nearly every computer operating system running on every conceivable form factor today, aside from [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows the desktop PC market]]. Its ''raison d'etre'' back in 1969? To allow Ken Thompson of Bell Labs to continue developing [[http://www.informationweek.com/whats-the-greatest-software-ever-written/d/d-id/1046033?page_number=4 "shoot 'em up]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_%28video_game%29 games"]] on his own personal system after the ''Multics'' platform went under.

* Whenever an aircraft carrier is transferring to another port, the crew will use the flight deck as a glorified parking lot to carry their cars to their new port. This is justified, since this method of vehicle transportation is far cheaper than looking for smaller ships to do the job. As for the aircraft that normally take up all that space, [[BoringButPractical those are just flown directly to their new base.]]

** And there's another device that reads your brain waves so it can manipulate animal ears. Like a cat.

** All of known human history. Books. Photos. Radio. Music. Television. Mobile Games. Web Browser. Images. Social Media. Encyclopedias on ''every'' topic, [[TheWikiRule regardless of relevance to the world at large.]] Podcasts. Blogs. Homemade Videos, by the world for the world, via Streaming. ''Virtual Reality''. '''Augmented Reality'''. '''''[[http://pgslab.com/ Full PC Games!]]''''' Give it another 5 years and the face of personal computing will be unrecognizable thanks to high-performance mobile hardware components.

* Using liquid nitrogen to rapidly make ice cream is both a popular activity in cryo labs, and a popular demonstration in science classes. Or, in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS7n4kVL5kA this case]] liquid oxygen is used to light a grill.

* Modern services providing Cloud Gaming. No, not simple game-streaming like [[CloudGaming OnLive.]] The new generation of cloud gaming sets up an entire virtual machine in a datacenter which you access with a login/streamer program or app, enabling you to play games the computer you're ''actually'' on can't. Of course, it does mean that you'll be using loads of bandwidth and it needs to be high speed. Just to play AAA titles where you're not supposed to be able to. Only works with good fiber connection though, the ''[[CuttingTheKnot other]]'' method is to [[JustEatGilligan just buy the required upgrades or Consoles]].

* [[OrionDrive Project Orion]] turns nuclear weapons into what is essentially gas for spaceships. You take a ship, put a big plate of metal armor below it, and then start [[RocketJump hurling nukes behind it]] and [[ExplosionPropulsion blowing them up to generate thrust]]. Rinse and repeat every second until you're in Earth orbit. An Orion spaceship would have been able to put on a man on Titan by 1970. Unfortunately, all the natter about "environmental collapse" and "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty interplanetary nuclear wars]]" put a kibosh on the project.

* This is the reason why the Eiffel Tower wasn't torn down as it was originally scheduled to be. It was controversial when it was first built for the 1889 World's Fair, and it was originally meant to be a temporary structure to be removed twenty years later. However, when radio was invented, it turned out that the gigantic steel tower in the heart of France's largest metropolis was perfect for hosting a radio transmitter, which it still does (along with TV broadcasting) to this day.