Why do woodpeckers peck wood? They are trying to find food, mark their territory, find a mate, or make a nest. There are 240 different species of woodpecker, and they live in most countries except for Australasia, Madagascar, and Antarctica. Other than their pecking and the adaptations they have to enable it, they are normal […]
#786 Why do woodpeckers peck wood? Read More »
How can opera singers sing so loud? By training their diaphragm, their lungs, using their mouths to amplify the sound as much as possible, and adjusting the frequency of the sound they are making. Opera singers are louder than the average person, but they also have a way of making their voices easier to hear,
#785 How can opera singers sing so loud? Read More »
How did a pterodactyl fly? By jumping 2.5 meters into the air and then flapping. These days, we use pterodactyl to refer to any of the flying dinosaurs that looked similar, but pterodactyl is only one species. The family is called pterosaur. In Greek, “pteron” means winged and “sauros” means lizard. Pterodactyl comes from “pteron”
#784 How did a pterodactyl fly? Read More »
Why do we say “hack writer” and “quack doctor”? Hack comes from Hackney and quack comes from quacksalver, the Dutch for a seller of medicines. A hack has a negative image, but there is no reason why it should. The word was first used in about 1700 to refer to someone who is hired to
#783 Why do we say “hack writer” and “quack doctor”? Read More »
Why did Michelangelo hide in a cellar? He had been sentenced to death by Pope Clement VII. Michelangelo was born near Florence in 1475. At the time, Florence was a Republic and not part of Italy. Italy wasn’t unified until 1848 and between the fall of the Roman Empire and unification Italy was made up
#782 Why did Michelangelo hide in a cellar? Read More »
How does cold reading work? It is a method of reading a person you don’t know in order to get information. It is the opposite of hot reading, where the person already either knows the target or has a lot of information about them to start with. Cold reading is a method employed by psychics
#781 How does cold reading work? Read More »
What is the steepest railway track a train can go up? The steepest track is the Calçada de São Francisco in Portugal, and it has an incline of 13.8%. This question has several parts because there are different ways that trains connect to a track. The most common type of train attaches to the track
#780 What is the steepest railway track a train can go up? Read More »
Why was the First World War fought in trenches but the Second World War wasn’t? Amongst many other reasons, because in World War 1, the armies were faced with weapon technology that had advanced too far, but they didn’t have the other necessary technology to counter that. World War 1 started on 28th July, 1914
#779 Why was the First World War fought in trenches but the Second World War wasn’t? Read More »
How was a mummy made? Along with many other steps, a mummy was made by emptying the body, preserving and drying it, and then carefully wrapping it. The mummies from Egypt are probably the most famous, but they were not the only people to make them. The Incans, some aboriginal Australian tribes, the Aztecs, some
#778 How was a mummy made? Read More »
What are “Spaghetti Westerns”? They are Westerns that were filmed in Italy rather than the United States. Westerns are movies that are set in the Wild West of America, and they generally feature cowboys and gunslingers. Western movies appeared almost as soon as silent movies appeared. The first real Western was The Great Train Robbery
#777 What are “Spaghetti Westerns”? Read More »
