What languages became English? A Germanic language brought by the Anglo-Saxons, then Norse brought by the Scandinavian Vikings, and then French brought by the Normans. No language really has a starting point, but you can often see the languages that combined to make them. For example, French, Italian, and Spanish all evolved from Latin, which […]
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Why are mince pies called mince pies and why are puddings called puddings? Mince pies are called mince pies because they used to contain minced meat (ground beef) and puddings are called puddings because they used to be encased in some kind of skin and steamed. Mince pies are a traditional food eaten at Christmas
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What is the Mercator projection? It is a map projection that tries to put the countries from a sphere onto a rectangle. Almost all world maps you see, and all of the ones we learned about at school, use the Mercator projection. Because of this, we all have a distorted view of how big countries
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What were punks rebelling against? They were rebelling against the establishment, the commercialization of music, hippie culture, and the general economic hardship in the UK and Europe. The word punk probably started as an insult that the punk movement took control of and owned. Punk meant “something worthless”, “inferior”, “bad”, “a worthless person”, and “a
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Why did the Louvre become a museum and art gallery? It was decided that the Louvre Palace should become an art gallery during the French Revolution. There is some argument as to why the Louvre is called the Louvre. There are four competing theories. It could be because the Louvre was built on an area
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Why are the Secret Service in charge of protecting the president of the USA? They were the only agency capable of doing it at the time. The Secret Service was tasked with protecting the president of the United States in 1901 after the assassination of President McKinley. McKinley had just been elected for his second
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Who were Sotheby and Christie? Sotheby was John Sotheby, the nephew of Samuel Baker. Christie was James Christie. If you want to sell anything rare or valuable at auction, the best places you could sell it are Sotheby’s or Christie’s. They are the two largest and most famous auction houses in the world. There is
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Why are Adidas and Puma rivals? Either because the brother’s wives didn’t like each other or because one brother thought the other brother was the reason he was conscripted into the German army. When you think of famous sports brands, you probably think of Nike, Adidas, Puma, Asics, and many Reebok. I’m sure you can
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Why did knights start wearing armor? Technological advances in metallurgy and changes in society made it possible. Soldiers have always used some type of protection, be it a shield or a helmet. Very few people want to go into battle with only a sword and nothing to protect them. The first type of plate armor
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What caused the Great Vowel Shift? It was a very large change in pronunciation that happened in England between 1400 and 1700. Nobody knows exactly what caused it. If you try to read Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, you will be able to string the letters together into words and you can probably understand what quite a
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