What is a spinning jenny? It is a machine that can spin cotton into multiple reels of thread at the same time. It revolutionized the textile industry and is one of the key machines of the Industrial Revolution. There is a story that the inventor, James Hargreaves, named the spinning jenny after his wife Jenny, […]
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What was the workhouse? It was a place where people who could not support themselves financially could live. They existed from 1388 to 1948. Every country and every city has people that live below the poverty line, for many different reasons. These days, we live in a society where there is some help for these
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What is tea? It is a drink made from pouring hot water over tea leaves, which come from the camellia sinensis shrub. There are many different kinds of tea available today, but most of them are not technically “tea”. It is a commonly held belief that a “tea” is a drink made from pouring hot
How old is Santa? He is either 1,753, 500, or 202 years old, depending on how you look at it. Many different traditions have been mixed to leave the Santa Claus we know today. Why 1,753 years old? Santa Claus is loosely based on Saint Nicholas, a Roman bishop who lived in Turkey. Our name
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Why did prehistoric insects grow so big? Because there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere and there were no birds. The largest insect in the world today is the Phryganistria chinensis, which is a stick insect. It is 64 cm long. The insect with the largest wingspan is the White witch moth, which
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When was the first air conditioning invented? It was invented on July 17th, 1902. The first electrical air conditioning, the predecessor of what we use today, was invented in 1902, but people have been using forms of air conditioning for thousands of years. The first methods to cool buildings relied on architecture. Ancient buildings have
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What do worms do? They break down organic matter in the soil and release the nutrients in their waste. Earthworms may all look the same to us, but there are 7,000 different species of them across the world. 150 of those species are the ones we commonly see. There are far more worms in the
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Do antibiotics kill all of the bacteria in the body? Yes, they do. Antibiotics kill bacteria in the body. They do not work on viruses. We use bacteria when we have an infection and they can be very effective. An infection is caused when we have a wound and bacteria get inside. This is very
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Who were Smith and Wesson? They were both inventors, gunsmiths, and businessmen. They obviously formed the Smith & Wesson firearms company. The Smith & Wesson company was formed in 1852. The original company was sold to a man called Oliver Winchester, and it became the Winchester company that still exists today. Smith & Wesson was
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Can a binary star system have planets? Yes. There are two types. There are circumbinary planets that orbit both of the stars and there are circumstellar planets that just orbit one of the stars. A binary system is where two suns are gravitationally connected to each other and they orbit around a common center of
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