Today's useless fact - How do they lay cable across the ocean? Is it laid on the very bottom?

Very carefully ... and, yes, the cable is laid on the bottom of the ocean. The answer to this fascinating question is perhaps quite dull: "they" use submarines to lay cable across the ocean floor. Simple as that. A submarine communications cable is a cable laid beneath the sea to carry telecommunications between countries. The first submarine communications cables carried telegraphy traffic. Subsequent generations of cables carried first telephony traffic, then data communications traffic. All modern cables use fiber optic technology to carry digital payloads, which are then used to carry telephone traffic as well as Internet and private data traffic.

As of 2006, submarine cables link all the world's continents except Antarctica. Check out the links in our Submarine Communications Cable category for more.