![]() Besides learning about the SOS meaning, here are some other words you never realized are the same forwards and backwards. When carved into a snowbank, say, or spelled out in boulders on a beach, SOS still looks like SOS no matter which way the rescue chopper approaches. Not only is SOS a palindrome (a word that reads the same backwards and forwards, like civic, deified) it’s also an ambigram, a word that looks identical whether read upside-down or right-side-up. While the same series of dots and dashes could also just as easily translate to the Morse code sequences for VTB, SMB, and others, SOS had an instantly-recognizable symmetry. Transmitted without pause and repeated every few seconds, the SOS meaning was unmistakable, specifically because it didn’t form any known word or abbreviation. The sequence of triplet dots and dashes proposed by the German government soon became the international favorite for its elegant simplicity. Don't miss these other acronyms you'd never figure out. Britain, for example, favored CQD as the Titanic sunk into the ocean in April 1912, it broadcast a mix of CQD and SOS calls (the resulting confusion helped take CQD out of use for good). ![]() At first, different nations used different codes. At a time when international ships increasingly filled the seas, and Morse code was the only instantaneous way to communicate between them, vessels needed a quick and unmistakable way to signal that trouble was afoot. Translated to Morse code, SOS looks like this: “. ![]() Unlike WD-40, CVS, and TASER, SOS is not even an acronym: It’s a Morse code sequence, deliberately introduced by the German government in a 1905 set of radio regulations to stand out from less important telegraph transmissions. ![]()
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