50 great inventions Canada gave to the world

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Photo: istockphoto.com

Photo: istockphoto.com

It's Canada Day!

The greatest country in the world is turning 146. And while Canadians are generally considered to be polite, under-the-radar type folks, Canada has given the world some of its greatest inventions. In honour of Canada Day, here are 50 of Canada's greatest gifts to the world:

  1. Insulin (as a diabetes treatment) - invented by Frederick Banting, Charles Best and James Collip in 1922
  2. Superman - Created by Canadian-born artist Joe Shuster and American writer Jerry Siegel in 1932
  3. Basketball - invented by James Naismith in 1891
  4. Standard time - introduced by Sir Sandford Fleming in 1878
  5. Canola - created in the early 1970s by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson
  6. AM Radio - invented by Reginald Fessenden in 1906
  7. The snowmobile - invented by Joseph-Armand Bombardier in 1937
  8. Poutine
  9. Nanaimo bars
  10. Smarties
  11. Crispy Crunch
  12. Coffee Crisp
  13. Walkie-Talkies - invented by Donald L. Hings and Alfred J. Gross in 1942
  14. The prosthetic hand - invented by Helmut Lucas in 1971
  15. The snowblower - invented by Arthur Sicard in 1925
  16. The foghorn - invented by Robert Foulis in 1854
  17. SONAR - invented by Reginald Fessenden
  18. The goalie mask - invented by Jacques Plante in 1959
  19. IMAX - co-invented by Roman Kroitor in 1968
  20. Instant replay - invented for CBC's Hockey Night in Canada in 1955
  21. Trivial Pursuit - invented by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in 1979
  22. Lacrosse - codified by William George Beers around 1860
  23. Ice hockey - invented in Windsor, Nova Scotia
  24. The electron microscope - invented by James Hillier and Arthur Prebus in 1939
  25. Pablum - invented by Frederick Tisdall, Theodore Drake and Allan Brown in 1930
  26. Easy-Off oven cleaner - invented by Herbert McCool in 1932
  27. The cardiac pacemaker - invented by John Hopps
  28. The Wonderbra - invented by Louise Poirier
  29. The alkaline battery - invented by Lewis Urry in 1954
  30. The caulking gun - invented by Theodore Witte in 1894
  31. The Jolly Jumper - invented by Olivia Poole in 1959
  32. The garbage bag - invented by Harry Wasylyk in 1950
  33. The paint roller - invented by Norman James Breakey
  34. The Robertson screw - invented by P.L. Robertson
  35. The bloody Caesar - invented in Calgary in 1969
  36. Plexiglass - invented by William Chalmers at McGill University in 1931
  37. The explosives vapour detector - invented by Lorne Elias in 1985
  38. Five-pin bowling - invented by Thomas F. Ryan in 1909
  39. Computerized Braille - invented by Roland Galarneau in 1972
  40. The 56k modem - invented by Dr. Brent Townshend in 1996
  41. The pager - invented by Alfred J. Gross in 1949
  42. The McIntosh red apple - Developed by John McIntosh
  43. Peanut butter - first patented by Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884
  44. Key frame animation - invented by Nestor Burtnyk and Marcelli Wein in the 1970s
  45. The Java programming language - invented by James Gosling
  46. The telephone (invented by Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell in Brantford, Ontario)
  47. The BlackBerry - Invented by Mike Lazaridis
  48. The Canadarm (used on the Space Shuttle)
  49. Singer Justin Bieber.
  50. And, of course, celebrity astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield.