110 Fun Facts About Safety

If your clothing catches fire, what three-step technique are children taught?

Stop, drop and roll has a step the slogan leaves out: once on the ground you cover your face with your hands, then roll over and over until the flames are out.

The fire triangle shows a fire needs heat, fuel and what third element?

Oxygen is the side a fire blanket removes: laid over a small blaze it starves the flames of air, and with any one side of the triangle gone the fire goes out.

Fires involving ordinary solids such as paper and wood fall into which category?

Class A fires are the ones water suits best, soaking in and cooling the fuel, which is why the number before the A on a US extinguisher label counts water in 1.25-gallon units.

Which consumer advocate's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed accused carmakers of resisting safer designs?

Ralph Nader's book rattled General Motors into hiring private detectives to dig into his life; its president ended up apologising to a Senate subcommittee, and Nader won $425,000 for invasion of privacy.

Household smoke detectors sense smoke either optically or by which other process?

Ionization alarms carry a speck of radioactive americium-241 that keeps a tiny current flowing through the air inside; smoke breaks that flow and sets off the alarm.

The gas that CO alarms detect is nicknamed the 'silent killer' because it is what?

Colourless and odourless, the gas gives no warning of its own, so the first clue is usually how people feel: a headache, dizziness and sickness that are easy to blame on something else.

Heart charities have taught CPR rescuers to push hard and fast to the beat of which disco hit?

Stayin' Alive was chosen because its beat falls inside the 100 to 120 chest compressions a minute that CPR calls for; ex-footballer Vinnie Jones fronted the British advert.

The Heimlich manoeuvre is used to treat what emergency?

Choking first aid no longer opens with the famous thrusts: most guidance now says to encourage coughing, then give five back blows, and only then five abdominal thrusts.

An AED's shock is meant to stop ventricular fibrillation, a state in which the heart is doing what?

Quivering chaotically, the ventricles pump no blood; the shock halts the chaos so a normal rhythm can take over again, which is why a true flatline, with nothing to reset, is not shocked at all.

The recovery position is used for a casualty who is unconscious but still what?

Breathing is the test: a casualty who is breathing normally is rolled onto their side, where the airway stays open and any vomit can drain away, while one who is not needs CPR.

Which Swedish carmaker introduced the three-point seat belt as standard in 1959?

Volvo then gave its invention away, opening the patent so that any rival carmaker could fit engineer Nils Bohlin's three-point belt for free in the interests of safety.

Classic car airbags inflate when a crash sensor ignites sodium azide, which breaks down to release which gas?

Nitrogen is made on the spot rather than stored: an igniter's heat breaks the chemical apart, and a handful of it yields enough gas to fill the bag in about three hundredths of a second.

Vince and Larry, who urged Americans to buckle up in 1980s adverts, were what?

Crash test dummies Vince and Larry carried the slogan 'You could learn a lot from a dummy'; the first real one, Sierra Sam, was built to test aircraft ejection seats, not cars.

US road-safety officials say reading a text at 55 mph is like driving blind for the length of what?

A football field slips past because a text holds the eyes for about five seconds; Virginia Tech's in-cab cameras found truckers who texted were 23 times likelier to crash or nearly crash.

Britain's 1865 law on steam road vehicles required a crewman to walk ahead of each one carrying what?

A red flag gave the Red Flag Act its nickname; the law also held road vehicles to 2 mph in towns and 4 mph in the country, and light vehicles were not freed from those limits until 1896.

The world's first traffic signal, gas-lit in 1868, stood outside which landmark?

The Houses of Parliament signal, worked by hand by a policeman, lasted about a month before a gas leak made it explode, injuring him and ending the experiment.

The black-and-white striped zebra crossing was first trialled in which country?

The United Kingdom laid the first in Slough in 1951, and the one the Beatles walked across for the Abbey Road album cover became such a landmark that it is now a protected heritage site.

America's first 911 call was placed in 1968 in Haleyville, a small town in which Deep South state?

Alabama got there first because a small independent phone company rushed its own 911 service into Haleyville's police station, beating the giant AT&T to the number AT&T had just announced.

Household bleach gives off a toxic gas when it is mixed with which other common cleaning chemical?

Ammonia and bleach react to release toxic fumes that irritate the eyes and throat and can seriously harm the lungs, which makes it a common and dangerous household mistake.

OSHA, the US workplace safety regulator, was created by a law signed in 1970 by which president?

Richard Nixon signed it after a three-year fight in Congress; Lyndon Johnson had proposed much the same law in 1968, calling job deaths 'the shame of a modern industrial nation', but his bill died.

America's first hard hat, a canvas design, was inspired by steel helmets worn in which war?

World War I showed cavalry officer Edward Bullard what a helmet could do, and back home he built a peacetime version from canvas shaped with steam, which is how his 'Hard Boiled Hat' got its name.

Lockout-tagout procedures ensure that dangerous equipment cannot be what during maintenance?

Restarted by surprise is the danger, so each worker fits a personal padlock to the shut-off power supply and keeps the key, leaving nobody else able to switch the machine back on mid-repair.

In the hierarchy of hazard controls, which two measures sit at the top as most effective?

Elimination and substitution lead the list because a hazard that has been removed, or swapped for something safer, no longer needs anyone to guard against it; protective gear such as gloves comes last.

A ground-fault circuit interrupter outlet, common in bathrooms, cuts the power to prevent what?

Electric shock is headed off early: the device compares the current flowing out with the current coming back, and if a little leaks away, perhaps through a person, it cuts the power in as little as a fortieth of a second.

A Dow Chemical engineer designed which symbol in 1966 to be 'memorable but meaningless' until people were taught it?

The biohazard symbol won a nationwide test of candidate designs: people could guess least about what it meant, yet a week later it was the one they remembered best.

The three-bladed radiation warning symbol was first sketched in 1946 at the radiation lab of which California university?

UC Berkeley's first signs were magenta on a blue background rather than today's yellow; the magenta was chosen partly because it was expensive, so nobody else would be tempted to use it.

Mr. Yuk, a sour green face, was created to replace which warning symbol?

Skull and crossbones was judged a poor warning for small children, so Pittsburgh's poison centre designed Mr. Yuk to look as unappealing to them as it could.

Chemist Stephanie Kwolek's 1965 discovery at DuPont, a fibre five times stronger than steel by weight, is sold as what?

Kevlar began as a thin, cloudy solution that looked like a failure, and colleagues feared it would clog the spinning machine; when Kwolek had it spun anyway, the fibre would not break.

Smokey Bear's slogan was updated in 2001 from 'Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires' to prevent what?

Wildfires replaced 'forest fires' after huge blazes in grasslands and other country outside forests, and to make clear that Smokey opposes unplanned fires, not the controlled burns foresters set on purpose.

The real bear cub who became the living Smokey was rescued in 1950 from a blaze in which Southwestern state's Capitan Mountains?

New Mexico firefighters found the cub clinging to a charred tree with burned paws; at the National Zoo in Washington he drew so many letters that the Postal Service gave him his own ZIP code.

Health authorities recommend scrubbing your hands with soap for at least how long?

20 seconds matters because the scrubbing itself is what lifts germs off the skin, and a handy timer is to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice through.

What does SPF on a sunscreen bottle measure protection against?

UVB rays are all the SPF number rates, which is why UK bottles carry a separate star rating for UVA and why 'broad spectrum' on a label means protection from both.

Hot skin that has stopped doing what can be a sign that heat exhaustion has turned into life-threatening heatstroke?

Sweating can shut down in heatstroke even as body temperature climbs past 40 °C (104 °F), which is why hot skin with no sweat, confusion or a seizure means calling an ambulance at once.

Which early sign of hypothermia stops as the body's temperature keeps falling, so its absence can mean the casualty is worse?

Shivering gives out once the body cools to roughly 32 °C (90 °F), three degrees below the 35 °C (95 °F) line where hypothermia begins; after that the casualty grows sluggish and can slip into a coma.

Food-safety agencies warn that bacteria multiply fastest in food kept between fridge-cold and steaming hot, a range nicknamed the what?

Danger zone is the US food-safety term for roughly 40 to 140 °F (4 to 60 °C), where bacteria can double in as little as 20 minutes, which is why food left out for over two hours should be thrown away.

Which naturally occurring gas, seeping from the ground into basements, is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States?

Radon forms as uranium in rock and soil breaks down, then seeps in through cracks in buildings; the EPA ranks it the leading cause of lung cancer among Americans who have never smoked.

The word 'asbestos' comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Inextinguishable is an odd name for a mineral prized because it won't burn: the Greek word first meant quicklime, and the Roman writer Pliny is said to have misapplied it to the fireproof fibre.

In the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, what anti-theft measure trapped New York garment workers?

Locked doors shut off a stairway, the building's one fire escape collapsed and many workers jumped from the windows; the outcry over 146 deaths brought more than 30 new health and safety laws in New York.

The great fire that Fire Prevention Week commemorates each October destroyed which city in 1871?

Chicago's fire began in or near the O'Leary family's barn, but the tale of a cow kicking over a lantern was never proved, and in 1997 the city council formally cleared Mrs O'Leary of blame.

Which inventor rode a lift high above an 1850s crowd as its rope was cut to prove his safety brake?

Elisha Otis had sold few of his safety hoists until that stunt at New York's Crystal Palace; the brake held, orders followed, and in 1857 he installed the first passenger safety elevator.

Japan's green 'running man' pictogram, now an international standard, marks what?

An emergency exit gets a wordless green figure in many countries because it reads in any language and green means go; American signs have mostly kept the word EXIT, often in red.

Titanic legally carried too few lifeboats because British rules went by a ship's what?

Tonnage tables drawn up in 1894 stopped at 10,000 tons and 16 boats, so the 46,000-ton Titanic's 20 boats beat the legal minimum; the inquiry urged counting the people on board instead.

The modern cork life jacket was created in 1854 for the rescue crews of which British institution?

The RNLI's cork vest proved itself at Whitby in 1861, when a lifeboat capsized in a storm and the one crewman who survived, Henry Freeman, was the one wearing the new design.

Coal miners once carried canaries underground mainly to detect which gas?

Carbon monoxide affects a canary sooner than a person, because the small bird, with its racing metabolism, takes the gas in more quickly, so miners who saw it sicken knew to get out.

Firedamp, the explosive gas that Humphry Davy's 1815 safety lamp let coal miners work beside safely, is mostly what?

Methane collects in pockets in the coal, and Davy tamed it with a chimney of wire gauze: the holes let light out, but the metal soaks up the flame's heat before it can set off the gas outside.

On American roads, which background colour is used for the temporary warning signs of a roadwork zone?

Orange tells drivers the hazard is temporary, because US sign colours work as a code: yellow carries everyday warnings, while red is kept for stop, yield and prohibition signs.

In Britain and most of Europe, warning road signs are mainly what shape?

Three-sided signs with a red border are the warning shape in most of Europe, whereas drivers in the United States and Canada get their warnings on yellow diamonds instead.

Walter Hunt invented the modern safety pin in 1849 to pay off a debt of how much?

$15 was all he owed: the design came to him as he twisted a piece of wire while worrying about the debt, and because he sold the patent outright he saw almost none of the fortune it made.

Which backyard game did the US Consumer Product Safety Commission ban in 1988 after three children's deaths?

Lawn darts had been sold for years as an adults-only game of skill with warning labels, a compromise that failed: children kept getting hurt, and the commission banned the pointed darts outright.

Safety experts model how accidents slip past several layers of defence using slices of which food?

Swiss cheese stands for safeguards that each have holes; psychologist James Reason's point was that harm gets through only when the holes in every slice line up, so blaming one person misses the rest.

The small liquid-filled bulb that keeps many fire sprinkler heads shut until a fire starts is made of what?

Glass gives way at a set temperature and frees the water from that one head, so usually only the sprinkler nearest the fire opens, not the whole ceiling at once as in films.

A tornado watch means conditions are favourable for tornadoes; a tornado warning means what?

Take cover now, because a warning means a tornado has actually been sighted or picked up on radar; a watch can span several states, while a warning covers an area about the size of a city.

Victims of a lightning 'side flash', current that jumps from a struck object, have most often been sheltering from rain under what?

A tall tree that is struck can pass part of the current to anyone within a foot or two; a hard-topped car, by contrast, is one of the safe places forecasters tell people to head for.

Where was the world's first compulsory seat belt law introduced in 1970?

Victoria, Australia acted in its deadliest year on the roads, with 1,061 killed in 1970; the rest of the country followed within three years, and by 2009 the state's annual toll had fallen below 300.

As of 2026, which is the only US state with no adult seat belt law?

New Hampshire, whose motto is 'Live Free or Die', has never passed a seat belt law for adults, although it does require belts for everyone under 18.

A swimmer caught in a rip current is advised to swim in which direction to escape it?

Parallel to the shore takes you out through the side of the rip, a narrow channel that can flow faster than an Olympic swimmer, so fighting it head-on only wears you out.

Swiss physicist Walter Jaeger's failed 1930s poison-gas sensor reacted instead to what?

Cigarette smoke did what the poison gas could not: a frustrated Jaeger lit up and watched his meter drop, an accident that helped pave the way for the home smoke alarm.

In the PASS method for using a fire extinguisher, what does the P stand for?

Pull the pin unlocks the handle and breaks the tamper seal; after that you aim low at the base of the fire rather than at the flames, squeeze, and sweep from side to side.

Bell Telephone had some of the earliest CO2 fire extinguishers made to protect what?

Its switchboards needed an agent that would not conduct electricity, so carbon dioxide guarded Bell's exchanges from the 1910s, and in 1924 Walter Kidde sold the firm his first portable CO2 extinguishers.

Francis Upton, who patented an 1890 electric fire alarm, was which inventor's Menlo Park mathematician?

Thomas Edison had no formal schooling in mathematics, so he relied on Upton, whom he nicknamed 'Culture', to turn his hunches about lamps and dynamos into calculations.

Which chocolate treat is banned from sale in the US because a toy is sealed inside it?

Kinder Surprise falls foul of a 1938 law against sweets with a non-food object embedded in them. Its sister egg, which keeps the toy and the food in separate halves, is sold there legally.

Nobel physicist Arthur Compton designed which road feature in 1953 to slow cars near his university?

The speed bump began as what Compton called 'traffic control bumps', drawn up after he noticed how fast motorists drove past Brookings Hall at Washington University.

The distress call 'Mayday', coined in the 1920s at London's Croydon Airport, comes from which language?

French supplied 'm'aider', meaning 'help me', which radio officer Frederick Mockford chose because so much of Croydon's traffic flew to and from Le Bourget in Paris.

US highway officials in the 1920s gave the stop sign which shape, recognisable even from behind?

An octagon lets drivers who see only the back of the sign know that the other road has to stop. The earliest stop signs were only two feet across, smaller than the modern one.

Earle Dickson invented which first-aid staple in 1920 for a wife who kept cutting herself cooking?

The Band-Aid was slow to catch on, so Johnson & Johnson handed out free ones to the Boy Scouts of America to lift sales. Dickson ended his career as a company vice president.

A hard-topped car keeps the people inside safe from a lightning strike mainly because of which feature?

Its metal shell carries the current around the cabin and down to the ground. The tyres are no help at all: a strike commonly destroys one or more of them on its way to earth.

Ten-year-old Tilly Smith got about 100 people off a holiday beach after spotting the warning signs of what?

A tsunami was on its way to Phuket in 2004, she insisted, because the frothing sea matched film her geography teacher had shown two weeks earlier. Her parents doubted her at first.

Mary Anderson patented which car safety device in 1903 after watching a New York streetcar driver battle sleet?

The windshield wiper found no buyer: firms said it had no commercial value, and her patent expired in 1920, shortly before wipers became standard equipment.

School-bus yellow was picked at a 1939 conference because lettering in which colour reads best on it in dim light?

Black lettering on that shade was the most legible in semi-darkness, agreed a meeting called by Columbia professor Frank Cyr. Officials from all 48 states settled 44 bus standards there.

Which handheld firework, often handed to small children at celebrations, burns at more than 1,000 °C?

A sparkler burns hot enough to set clothing alight and cause severe skin burns. Some mixtures run so hot that they are used to ignite thermite.

Gas suppliers add the chemical mercaptan to household natural gas so that a leak smells like what?

Rotten eggs is how most people describe the stench. Texas ordered gas to be odorised after a 1937 leak went unnoticed and blew up a school in New London.

A child over one who swallows a button battery should be given which food on the way to hospital?

Honey is what America's poison control line says to give: two teaspoons every ten minutes, without delaying the trip. A battery lodged in the gullet can do severe damage in just two hours.

The hikers' rhyme 'Leaves of three, let it be' is a warning to stay clear of which rash-causing plant?

Poison ivy carries an oil called urushiol that brings most people out in an itchy, sometimes painful rash. Despite the name it is no true ivy: it belongs to the cashew family.

Which dog breed became the classic firehouse mascot after running ahead of horse-drawn fire engines to clear the way?

The Dalmatian gets on unusually well with horses, so crews trained the dogs to run in front of the carriage, clearing a path and guiding the team to the blaze.

The reflective road studs that Yorkshireman Percy Shaw patented in 1934 are named after the eyes of which animal?

A cat on a roadside fence reflected his headlights and kept him on a dangerous road, in the best-known version of Shaw's story. He also said a reflective road sign gave him the idea.

Indiana state police captain Robert Borkenstein invented which police device in 1954?

The Breathalyzer followed the 'drunkometer' of 1931, an earlier Indiana machine that collected a motorist's breath in a balloon. Borkenstein's brand name became the everyday word for every such tester.

Which salesman popularised the safety razor in the 1900s by fitting it with thin, throwaway steel blades?

King Camp Gillette had been selling bottle caps when his boss urged him to invent something that is used once, thrown away and bought again. The disposable blade was his answer.

Bert the Turtle taught American schoolchildren in a Cold War civil defence film to do what on seeing an atomic flash?

Duck and cover is what Bert does in the cartoon opening, tucking himself away as a monkey dangles a lit firecracker over him. The blast finishes off the monkey and leaves Bert unharmed.

Nineteenth-century inventors patented 'safety coffins' fitted with bells to guard against which fear?

Being buried alive was a dread that peaked in the cholera epidemics, when fear of contagion meant hurried funerals. The phobia has its own name, taphophobia.

Seven deaths in 1982 from poisoned capsules of which painkiller led to tamper-evident seals on drug packaging?

Tylenol capsules had been laced after they reached store shelves, so the scare ended powder-filled capsules for over-the-counter drugs and produced federal anti-tampering laws.

Safety matches moved which chemical off the match head and onto the striking strip of the box?

Phosphorus in its red form sits on the box, so the match lights only there. The white form once used in match heads rotted factory workers' jawbones, a disease nicknamed phossy jaw.

The 'safety bicycle' of the 1880s earned its name by replacing which machine, notorious for headfirst falls?

The penny-farthing pitched riders over the front wheel whenever it stopped dead, a fall known as a 'header'. Once lower bikes took over, the old design was renamed the 'ordinary'.

Garrett Morgan, who patented a traffic signal in 1923, wore which earlier invention of his in a 1916 tunnel rescue?

A smoke hood of his own design let Morgan reach workers trapped 50 feet beneath Lake Erie. Its air tubes trailed near the ground, where the air under the rising fumes was cleaner.

Which doctor, later called the 'saviour of mothers', showed in 1840s Vienna that handwashing cut maternity-ward deaths?

Ignaz Semmelweis cut deaths in his clinic from 18% to under 2% with a chlorinated lime wash. Offended colleagues mocked the idea that their own hands were to blame.

Dr John Snow traced an 1854 cholera outbreak in London's Soho to which source on Broad Street?

A water pump was put out of action when the parish took off its handle on Snow's evidence. He later plotted the cases as dots on a map, clustered around the spot.

The 'Radium Girls' of the 1920s were poisoned at work while brushing glowing paint onto what?

Watch dials needed a fine line, so the women were told to point their brushes on their lips, swallowing radium with every stroke. They had been assured the paint was harmless.

English felt hat-makers once suffered 'mad hatter disease' from the fumes of which metal, used to treat animal fur?

Mercury vapour rose from the fur as it was felted and attacked the hatters' nervous systems. Sufferers turned irritable, painfully shy and forgetful.

The world's worst industrial disaster, a 1984 gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant, struck which Indian city?

Bhopal woke to a cloud of methyl isocyanate that reached more than 500,000 people living around the plant. Union Carbide paid $470 million in 1989 to settle the claims.

The 1986 explosion at Chernobyl's Reactor 4 happened while its operators were carrying out what?

A safety test of the cooling system, run as a simulated power cut, was under way when the reactor ran out of control. Three earlier attempts since 1982 had all failed.

Whose fatal 1935 motorcycle crash moved neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns to begin the research that led to crash helmets?

T. E. Lawrence, the Lawrence of Arabia of the Arab Revolt, died six days after his crash with Cairns among his doctors. The surgeon went on to study head injuries among army dispatch riders.

Engineer Béla Barényi developed the crumple zone, patented in 1952, while working for which carmaker?

Mercedes-Benz backed Barényi as he questioned the long-held view that a safe car had to be rigid. His design let the ends of the car deform around a strong passenger cell.

Which actor inside Darth Vader's suit also played the Green Cross Man, Britain's road-safety superhero for children?

David Prowse, a British weightlifting champion, teleported in from 'Green Cross Control' in the television adverts whenever children needed a lesson in crossing the road.

Which Montreal Canadiens goaltender began wearing a mask in NHL games in 1959 after a shot broke his nose?

Jacques Plante had worn his mask only in practice, because coach Toe Blake feared it would spoil his vision, until an Andy Bathgate shot caught him in the face against the Rangers.

The Plimsoll line painted on a merchant ship's hull, named after a Victorian MP, marks the safe limit for what?

Cargo loading was Samuel Plimsoll's cause: he campaigned against 'coffin ships', overloaded and heavily insured vessels whose owners gambled with the lives of their crews.

A 1994 US jury award over third-degree burns made which McDonald's product the subject of a famous lawsuit?

Hot coffee served at 180 to 190 °F put 79-year-old Stella Liebeck in hospital for eight days of skin grafts. McDonald's had logged more than 700 burn reports in the previous decade.

Which band's 1980s hit 'The Safety Dance' was written as a protest against bouncers who banned pogo dancing?

Men Without Hats singer Ivan Doroschuk wrote it after being thrown out of a club for pogoing, a jumping style that bouncers thought put the disco dancers at risk.

Which silent-film comedian dangles from a skyscraper clock in the 1923 comedy Safety Last!?

Harold Lloyd did some of the climbing himself, despite having lost a thumb and forefinger in a film accident four years earlier.

The 1883 Victoria Hall disaster, where 183 children were crushed on a staircase, inspired which safety fitting?

The push bar followed an inquiry into the Sunderland tragedy, where children racing down for free prizes piled up against a door bolted almost shut. The law soon required doors that open outward.

Which three-digit number, launched in London in 1937, is the world's oldest emergency telephone service?

999 was picked because coin-operated payphones could easily be altered to dial a 9 for free. Within days of the launch, a call from Hampstead caught a burglar in the act.

Sid the Seagull's 'Slip-Slop-Slap' jingle, first aired in 1981, was written to protect people against which disease?

Skin cancer was the target: slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat. A 2010 revival of the campaign added 'seek' shade and 'slide' on sunglasses.

Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911 after fitting which device in place of a riding mechanic?

A rear-view mirror caused a row because the rules called for a mechanic on board, but it was allowed. Harroun later said it shook so much on the brick track that it was largely useless.

The earliest patents for which firefighting fixture were lost when the US Patent Office burned down in 1836?

The fire hydrant in cast iron is credited to Frederick Graff, chief engineer of the Philadelphia Water Works, in 1801, but the blaze took every hydrant patent filed before it.

George Westinghouse made his name in 1869 by patenting which safety device for trains?

The air brake became fail-safe in his later automatic design, where every car stores its own compressed air: if the pressure in the line is lost, each car applies its brakes by itself.

A safety cap that Canadian doctor Henri Breault helped create in 1967 was designed to keep children out of what?

Medicine bottles fitted with the 'Palm N Turn' cap cut accidental poisonings, which had been running at over 1,000 a year, by 91 percent. Breault ran his hospital's poison control centre.

Which railway pioneer built a miners' safety lamp in 1815, sparking a priority row with Humphry Davy?

George Stephenson was an engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery when he built his 'Geordie lamp'. Davy and his supporters never accepted that he had worked the idea out by himself.

Resusci Anne, the CPR training mannequin, has the face of an unknown woman said to have drowned in which river?

The Seine gave her death mask its name, L'Inconnue de la Seine. Toymaker Asmund Laerdal picked a woman's face in 1960 because he thought male trainees would balk at kissing a man's.

Allied aircrews of the 1940s nicknamed their inflatable life vests after which Hollywood star?

Mae West lent her name because an inflated vest gave its wearer a silhouette like the film star's famous curves. The nickname doubled as rhyming slang.

Which famous 'law' is generally traced to a mishap during US Air Force rocket-sled tests in the late 1940s?

Murphy's law was popularised by project head John Stapp, a flight surgeon who rode the sled so often that he twice broke a wrist and cracked his ribs finding out what pilots could survive.

Which Upton Sinclair novel about meatpacking stirred Americans into demanding the Meat Inspection Act of 1906?

The Jungle set out to portray the poverty and harsh working lives of immigrant labourers, yet it was the filthy meat that moved the public. The Pure Food and Drug Act followed the same year.

Which computing pioneer proposed the 'cowcatcher' in 1830 to sweep obstacles off the track ahead of a locomotive?

Charles Babbage had the idea while working for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, but his version was never built, and later makers may not have known of it.