As the dog days of summer wear on, many of us grow nostalgic for the hours spent blasting our friends with one of the best-selling toys of the early '90s: the Super Soaker. This pressure filled water blaster is all thanks to a nuclear scientist who worked for NASA and the Air Force. In 1982, Lonnie Johnson invented the Super Soaker while he was tinkering on something totally different in his basement. But his inventions don’t stop there: Johnson worked on everything from Nerf toys to a thermoelectric energy converter.

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