What was the Mongol postal system? The Mongol postal system was called the Yam and it was extremely fast and reliable. The Mongol Empire was one of the largest empires in history and at its peak it covered 17.8% of the world’s land area. At its greatest extent, it spanned from the edge of Europe […]
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Why did Gilbert and Sullivan fall out? W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan fell out badly after Gilbert challenged a £500 carpet expense in 1890. The carpet is usually given as the cause of their breakup, but there were many other reasons, and the split had been building for a long time. You may never
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Why is there a market day? There is a market day because it used to be difficult to get food and goods to a market, so it made sense to have one day when suppliers and buyers would all come together. Thanks to supermarkets, refrigeration, and globalized distribution networks, it is easy to forget how
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How did people wake up before alarm clocks? Before alarm clocks, people woke up naturally or were woken by outside noises. In cities, they might have used candle clocks, been woken by church bells, or paid a professional knocker-upper. The idea of needing to be awakened by an alarm clock is a relatively recent problem.
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What is the rarest coin in the world? There are several possible candidates for the rarest coin in the world, but the most widely recognized contender is the 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle. This is a difficult question because there have been so many different coins over the thousands of years since coins were first used
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Why did it take so long for papermaking to reach Europe? It took so long for papermaking to reach Europe because they had materials that they thought were superior, they were resistant to Islamic influence, not many people could read or write, and the world was not as small then as it is now. Writing
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When and why did public libraries start? Public libraries started in the mid-19th century as a way to give democratic access to information and education to the working classes. A library is a purposefully assembled collection of books or manuscripts, and the first libraries were literally that. The Babylonians wrote on clay tablets, and these
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When were streets first named? Nobody can pinpoint exactly when streets were first named, but, presumably, people started to give streets names from the very earliest cities. Among the world’s first cities were Jericho and Çatalhöyük. They were both formed in about 7500 BC and began as a collection of a few hundred people, before
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When did people stop using canals? Canals began to die out in the early 1900s as they were replaced by faster railways and more powerful trucks. The building of canals in many countries peaked in the mid 19th century. Britain had a denser network of canals than any other country, and at the peak, there
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Why did people start using wallpaper? People first started using wallpaper to insulate their houses, but only the rich could afford it. Later on, wallpaper became cheaper and people used it because they couldn’t afford tapestries to cover their walls. Wallpaper, along with paper itself, was invented in China. The earliest known wallpaper was used
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