I learned this today. The first fire extinguisher was patented in 1723 by Ambrose Godfrey. For thousands of years, the only way to fight fire was to bring water to it. If you lived too far from a water source, then your house was going to burn down. Friends, family, or anyone available would rush […]
#157 When did we start using fire extinguishers? Read More »
I learned this today. Reuters is an international news agency that started in Germany 150 years ago. Reuters was started by Paul Julius Reuter in 1851 and he could have had no idea what he was starting. Paul Reuter was born in Germany as Israel Beer Josaphat. He moved to London in 1845 and changed
#155 What is Reuters? Read More »
I learned this today. The Bronze Age started because people discovered that combining copper and tin made a stronger alloy called bronze. In the three-age system of the world that we use, the Bronze Age technically follows the Stone Age and is in turn followed by the Iron Age. However, it isn’t quite that clear
#147 Why did the Bronze Age start? Read More »
I learned this today. The Portuguese royal court moved to Brazil in 1807 to avoid being deposed by Napoleon. Spain and Portugal both started exploring the Southern Americas from the late 15th century. Portugal claimed the area that is now Brazil for the King of Portugal in 1500. The Portuguese explorer who claimed Brazil for
#145 Why did the Portuguese royal family end up in Brazil? Read More »
I learned this today. The first drink put in a can was beer in the 1930s, but it took a while before drink canning could be perfected. The process of canning was invented by Nicolas Appert in France in 1809. He was responding to a challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte for anyone that could come up
#143 When did people start putting drinks in cans? Read More »
I learned this today. The different rocks of Stonehenge came from three different places. Stonehenge was probably built between 3000 and 2000 BC. Originally, it was constructed with wood. Wooden posts dating from 8000 BC have been found there, suggesting that it has been a place of significance for a long time. The first Stonehenge
#141 Where did the stones of Stonehenge come from? Read More »
I learned this today. There have been six mass extinctions on Earth that experts know about. The Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction 440 million years ago. The Devonian Extinction 365 million years ago. The Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago. The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction 210 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary
#139 What are the six great mass extinction events? Read More »
I learned this today. The Jolly Roger was the flag used by pirates, but nobody really knows why it was called the Jolly Roger and there were many different versions of it. We generally think of pirates as being people like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd and most of these pirates operated in the Caribbean. The
#138 Did pirates really use the Jolly Roger flag? Read More »
I learned this today. A letter of marque was a license from a government for a private citizen to attack and capture vessels of an enemy nation in order to gain reprisal for that country’s actions in a war. It was very expensive for a country to have a standing navy and a lot of
#136 What is a letter of marque? Read More »
I learned this today. The first account of a crime syndicate that was an American Mafia was published in the New Orleans Times in 1869. It could be argued that the Mafia started in Italy during the end of the 16th and the start of the 17th centuries. Its vertical structure, with a don at
#132 When did the Mafia come to America? Read More »
