| The first item sold on eBay was a __. |  |
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 | Numbers Don't Lie |
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 | | Population of Belgium | | 11.6 million |
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| | | Sale price of the Gigayacht, the most expensive item ever sold on eBay | | $168 million |
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| | Official languages in Belgium (French, Dutch, and German) | | 3 |
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| | | Listings on eBay as of 2021 | | 1.7 billion |
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 | We have a Belgian to thank for the Big Bang theory. |
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| Though sometimes attributed to Edwin Hubble, the Big Bang theory can more accurately be traced to priest, astronomer, and cosmologist Georges Lemaître. When Lemaître began working on his ideas in the late 1920s, most models of the universe showed it as static (non-expanding). Yet Lemaître was intrigued by data showing that other galaxies were speeding away from us — and the farther away from us they were, the faster they moved. In 1927, Lemaître posited that the universe's expansion could be the result of a single point exploding at a specific moment, an event he referred to as both "the primeval atom" and "the cosmic egg." His paper, which carried the rather lengthy title "Un Univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extragalactiques" (translated in 1931 as "A Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Increasing Radius Accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extra-galactic Nebulæ") initially drew little notice but eventually helped shape our ever-evolving understanding of the universe. | | |
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| You might also like | | 6 of the Strangest Items Ever Sold at Auction | | While some bidders have their sights set on buying a prized gem, others are more keen on bidding for quirky and unusual items that are once-in-a-lifetime finds — whether it's a decades-old pastry or a musician's tooth. |  |
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