Before 1948, LA's Power Grid Ran at 50hz
My mind always boggles at humanity's general inability to standardize on one thing without great pain and fighting. Whether it's Metric vs. Imperial, Beta vs. VHS, Blu-ray vs. HDDVD, OpenGL vs. DirectX, USB speeds, power connectors, instant messaging protocols. Nobody can just sit together and cooperate--we always have to go through that painful period with multiple incompatible standards that fight it out until (hopefully) one of them wins.