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Did You Know...?

"… bridge builders in the mid-1960's riveted the plates together, which required many more holes than bolts would have. More holes weaken steel, said Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a professor of structural engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, who compared them to Swiss cheese". … "The rivets also tend to slip more than bolts and can lead to more cracking. Bolts are preferred in modern bridge construction, and were used in more recent repairs."

Source: "Metal Plates Examined in (the Minneapolis I35W) Bridge Collapse" - Martiga Lohn, AP

In the US, the length of a nail is designated by its penny size. It is commonly believed that the origin of the term "penny" in relation to nail size is based on the old custom in England of selling nails by the hundred. A hundred nails that sold for six pence were "six penny" nails. The larger the nail, the more a hundred nails would cost. Thus the larger nails have a larger number for its penny size.

Source: Wikipedia

The Penny Black, issued in England in 1840, is the world's first adhesive postage stamp. This innovation allowed postage to be paid by the sender instead of the recipient, which was the system utilized at the time. Because postage was expensive, deliveries were often refused.

Source: "James Chalmers - Inventor of the Adhesive Postage Stamp" - W.J. Smith, Ed.

Across ten platforms the average total number fasteners and number of fastener part numbers was 1400 and 260, respectively; a ratio of about 5.4:1. On an individual platform basis the variation in number of parts and part numbers was up to 30% while the ratio of the two stayed within 10% of the mean.

Source: Automotive OEM Study