Curated from: mentalfloss.com
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Mikhail Kalashnikov designed the rifle for the Russian army. It was a simple and cheap automatic rifle that caused more deaths than any other assault rifle.
Kalashnikov later wrote in a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox church, "If my rifle claimed people's lives, can it be that Iโฆ, an Orthodox believer, am to blame for their deaths, even if they are my enemies?"
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290 reads
Tim Berners Lee developed HTML and created the World Wide Web, but his major regret relates to the '//' at the beginning of every web address.
"Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //," he said.
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402 reads
Working as an employee of web host Tripod, Ethan Zuckerman wrote the code to launch the pesky pop-up add.
In an essay entitled "The Internet's Original Sin," he took full responsibility for the hated tool. He later explained that he was sorry. Their intentions were good.
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274 reads
Flappy Bird was a crude and simple game that proved to be hugely addictive. After 50 million downloads and advertising revenue of around $45,000 a day, creator Dong Nguyen had enough and withdrew it from the app stores.
The game attracted the press and Nguyen was besieged with calls, tweets, and emails. He tweeted, "I cannot take this anymore."
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292 reads
Bob Propst introduced America to the open-plan office along with the office cubicle.
Companies saw his invention as a way to save money. Propst came to regret his creation, saying cubiclizing people in modern corporations is "monolithic insanity."
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Vincent Connare, the designer of the font Comic Sans, said, "If you love it, you don't know much about typography. If you hate it, you really don't know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby."
Connare's point is that Comic Sans is overused and misused. It was designed for a Microsoft application aimed at children to replace Times New Roman in speech bubbles.
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283 reads
Tom Karen designed the Raleigh's Chopper, one of Raleigh's best-selling bikes in the 1970s. It was loved for its comfortable saddle, laid-back seating, and Harley Davidson-Esque handlebars.
However, Tom Karen describes it as "terribly heavy so you wouldn't want to ride it very far."
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240 reads
Kamran Loghman worked for the FBI and helped turn pepper spray into weapons grade material. He also wrote a user guide for police departments.
In 2011, police sprayed pepper spray on docile protestors. Longman's reaction was, "I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents."
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226 reads
John Sylvan's invention of coffee pouches gave rise to systems like Nespresso and Tassimo and make it very easy to grab a caffeine fix.
"I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it," he said a few years ago. "It's ... a single-serve delivery mechanism for an addictive substance."
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294 reads
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