When was the first department store? It was most probably Harding, Howell & Co’s Grand Fashionable Magazine, which opened in 1796 in London. The first department store came about with the growing Industrial Revolution. Before then, rural towns would have a general store and maybe a market. Cities would have general stores and probably markets, […]
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Why do we have capital letters? Because the majority of the letters in the alphabet we use came from Latin. This question is actually the wrong way round. It should be asking why we have lowercase letters. The majority of our writing these days is done in lowercase with the occasional capital letter thrown in,
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Why do many Americans drink coffee and many British people drink tea? Because Americans boycotted tea before, during, and after the War of Independence and because the British government gained more money from taxing tea. The two countries both started as polar opposites and have ended up as polar opposites. Tea was more popular than
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Why aren’t there flying boats anymore? Because landing and takeoff is rough, they are not very stable, engines became more powerful, more runways on land were built, and the sea is very corrosive. Before we start, let’s have a quick look at what a flying boat actually is. You are probably thinking of one of
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Why do British people say football and Americans say soccer? Britain used to call football soccer until about 1980 when they started to call it football. Before we start, this article is about the sport of two teams of eleven people trying to kick a ball into each other’s goal. Not the sport that is
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How thick is tank armor? It depends on the tank, the type of armor, and the location on the tank, but armor is roughly between 10 cm at its thinnest and over a meter at its thickest. The tank with the best armor is said to be the Challenger 2. However, for obvious reasons, the
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Why do some countries drive on the left? Because of the way carts were built and then not wanting to change. There are 56 countries that drive on the left-hand side of the road, which is approximately 30%. With the exception of Japan and a few other countries, they are predominantly countries that used to
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What is the Streisand Effect? It is when you try to hide something but end up bringing more attention to it than if you had just left it alone in the first place. The Streisand Effect is named after the American singer and actress Barbra Streisand. The effect has been around for as long as
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Why was the Manhattan Project called the Manhattan Project? It was named after the city where its headquarters were originally located. The concept for the Manhattan Project began when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann worked out how to make nuclear fission happen in 1938. Fermi had managed to make it happen in 1934, but he
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Who invented the slide rule? Willian Oughtred in 1622. I think, first, I need to look at what a slide rule is because not many people under 60 will have ever used one. These days, if we want to do complex calculations, we can just plug them in to our phone and get the answer
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