What was the Cadaver Synod? The Cadaver Synod was the trial of the deceased pope, Formosus, in Rome in 897, demonstrating the level of corruption and politics that existed in the Roman Catholic church at the time. The pope is the head of the Roman Catholic and resides in the Vatican City. Today, he is […]
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What are electrolytes? Electrolytes are essential minerals that can carry an electric charge when they are dissolved in water. Our bodies need electrolytes because they serve a number of functions and the lack of those functions would shut us down. Electrolytes manage the flow of water in and out of cells to prevent dehydration or
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Why do we use so many Latin abbreviations in English? These abbreviations didn’t begin as English, but were abbreviations used in Latin writing to save time. They gradually took on meanings of their own and entered the English language. Today, a lot of people (myself included) don’t know what the original Latin expression was or
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How do sailing ships sail against the wind? To sail against the wind, sailing ships use a combination of techniques. They angle themselves to increase aerodynamic lift, they use an underwater keel, and they use a zigzag motion called tacking. No one knows when sails were discovered, but the earliest known image of a sail
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Was there anything the Germans could have done after D-Day? Not to win the war. Short of producing a working nuclear bomb, and probably not even then, there was no realistic way for Germany to secure victory after the Allies entered Europe on D-Day. What they could have done was make the Allied advance slower,
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How does grass break concrete? Grass breaks concrete by widening existing cracks until the concrete falls apart. Grass can’t actually break solid concrete, but it can exploit cracks that are already there. This is due to a property of concrete. Concrete has incredible compressive strength, which means it can support an enormous amount of force
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How do fish farms work? Fish farms work by raising fish from eggs to full sized fish in a carefully controlled environment. There are different ways to farm fish, and they all have their benefits and problems, but they are all trying to overcome a situation that we have created ourselves. The situation is that
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What was the first hotel chain? It depends how you look at it, but the first hotel chain was either Fred Harvey’s Harvey Houses or Ellsworth M. Statler’s Statler Hotels. Conrad Hilton’s hotels later became the first coast-to-coast hotel chain in the United States and one of the first major international hotel chains. These days,
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Why do waterfalls move upstream? Waterfalls gradually move upstream because they erode the rock beneath them. You might think a waterfall will always stay where it is, but waterfalls can gradually move upstream, sometimes to the point where they disappear forever. Take Niagara Falls, for example. Niagara Falls is probably the most famous waterfall in
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How did people make the first scales accurate? They made them accurate by using simple physics, careful craftsmanship, and agreed standard weights. Weighing scales are incredibly simple when they are looked at from the outside. At their simplest, there are two dishes hanging from either end of a bar. In the center of the bar
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