When we think about important figures in the history of aviation, Orville and Wilbur Wright obviously spring to mind. However, they probably wouldn’t have been able to fly without the work of Otto Lilienthal, a German aviator, who was known as the flying man. Lilienthal wasn’t the first person to build heavier than air flying […]
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On the Shoulders of Giants #1 Euclid was an ancient Greek mathematician. He is most famous for his book “The Elements”. He probably lived in the City of Alexandria in about 300 BC, but there is not much reliable historical evidence for his existence. All of the records about him were written several centuries later.
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What is a Luddite? A Luddite is someone who is against new technology, but Luddites were a group of people who followed Ned Ludd, a person who was probably made up to support their cause. These days, we refer to anyone who is against new forms of technology or even new ways of doing things
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What are druids? Druids were members of a priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures. There is not a lot of evidence for druids because they don’t come from a people with a written culture. Most of the records about them were written down by the Roman invaders Gaul and Britain. The Romans suppressed the local
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Why did America lose the Vietnam War? Because the Vietnamese were experienced, were fighting on home ground, used guerrilla tactics in the jungle, were dedicated, had a lot of foreign support, the Americans employed unpopular tactics, and there was a lack of support for the war in America. Plus many other reasons. The Vietnam War
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What is a spinning jenny? It is a machine that can spin cotton into multiple reels of thread at the same time. It revolutionized the textile industry and is one of the key machines of the Industrial Revolution. There is a story that the inventor, James Hargreaves, named the spinning jenny after his wife Jenny,
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What was the workhouse? It was a place where people who could not support themselves financially could live. They existed from 1388 to 1948. Every country and every city has people that live below the poverty line, for many different reasons. These days, we live in a society where there is some help for these
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How old is Santa? He is either 1,753, 500, or 202 years old, depending on how you look at it. Many different traditions have been mixed to leave the Santa Claus we know today. Why 1,753 years old? Santa Claus is loosely based on Saint Nicholas, a Roman bishop who lived in Turkey. Our name
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Why did prehistoric insects grow so big? Because there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere and there were no birds. The largest insect in the world today is the Phryganistria chinensis, which is a stick insect. It is 64 cm long. The insect with the largest wingspan is the White witch moth, which
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When was the first air conditioning invented? It was invented on July 17th, 1902. The first electrical air conditioning, the predecessor of what we use today, was invented in 1902, but people have been using forms of air conditioning for thousands of years. The first methods to cool buildings relied on architecture. Ancient buildings have
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