The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

In early April, Takuo Toda, chairman of the Japan Origami Airplane Association, set the world record for the longest flight by a paper airplane: he bested the previous record of 27.6 sec. by 0.3 sec. Toda's record-breaking design, called the Sky King, was made from a single sheet of paper, with no cuts and no gluing. He aspires to launch his planes one day from space — and then retrieve them once they've sailed to Earth.