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We were hesitant to write about this for fear of being labeled “geeky”, but whatever, we hear that girls are into geeks nowadays (Editor’s note: This is a total lie.). We can’t say why we find this as cool as we do—it might have something to do with our love of trivia that makes our friends think we’re smarter than we actually are.

Anywho, researchers at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California have discovered a recording of the human voice that predates Thomas Edison’s “Mary had a little lamb” phonograph by nearly 20 years. “This is a historic find,” said Samuel Brylawski, formerly the head of the record-sound division of the Library of Congress. “The earliest known recording of sound.”

[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville]’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered.

It only took 150 years, but his recordings were finally deciphered. While it may be too little too late for Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville—he died convinced Edison had stolen his mojo—elementary school science books nationwide will now be forced to update their chapters on the creation of recorded sound.

There is this pseudo-scientific theory that the continents didn’t drift apart, but that the Earth actually was a lot smaller long ago. The resultant, smaller surface area of the old, small Earth was the reason that all the continents were fitted together – not continental drift.

Pretty much nobody believes this nowadays, but here’s a cool animation showing what would happen if the volume of the Earth decreased but the visible landmasses were the same.

Best pseudo-scientific argument accompanying the theory: dinosaurs were big because when the Earth was smaller, there was less gravity. True!