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 […]
#1034 What languages became English? Read More »
Why do shoes smell? Shoes smell because bacteria break down the sweat and dead skin cells from our feet, producing waste products that smell bad. Bacteria live all over our skin, not just on our feet. These bacteria are called the skin microbiota. You may have heard of the gut microbiota, which is the name
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Why are the police called cops? Police officers are called cops because “to cop” meant to arrest someone. There are many expressions used to refer to the police in English speaking countries. Probably the most famous expression is cop. It is so common that many police officers even refer to themselves as cops or coppers,
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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 are more plane crashes survivable? Because of technology, training, the way the planes are laid out, and the materials the planes are made of. Many people have a fear of flying and a lot of people have an image that flying is very dangerous. This couldn’t be further from the truth. This fear is
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What is Zipf’s Law? It is a statistical distribution in a data set where the first item is twice as big as the second item, three times as big as the third item, four times as big as the fourth item, and so on. Zipf’s Law is called a law, but it is not really
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What is talcum powder? It is a mineral found in clay. When we think of talcum powder, most of us think of the powder we put on a baby’s bottom after they have been changed to prevent nappy rash (diaper rash), or something we put on our nether regions after a tough game of squash.
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Does a tugboat tug? They do pull, but they also push, too. In the very early days of sea travel, boats were not big enough to need something like a tugboat. They could usually be sailed right into the dock. If the wind wasn’t right, they usually had oars and oarsmen who could get the
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How can a baseball player possibly hit the ball? They have to swing at where they think the ball will be because they cannot actually see it. There are different types of baseball pitches, and they travel at different speeds, so let’s just look at the fastball, which is a simple and straight pitch. The
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Are plexiglass and fiberglass actually glass? Plexiglass is a type of plastic and not real glass, but fiberglass has glass fibers in it. Let’s look at plexiglass first. Plexiglass is a registered trademark because it is the name of a product. It was originally written in all capitals as PLEXIGLASS®. It was invented by a
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