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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Who were Smith and Wesson? They were both inventors, gunsmiths, and businessmen. They obviously formed the Smith & Wesson firearms company. The Smith & Wesson company was formed in 1852. The original company was sold to a man called Oliver Winchester, and it became the Winchester company that still exists today. Smith & Wesson was
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How did a pterodactyl fly? By jumping 2.5 meters into the air and then flapping. These days, we use pterodactyl to refer to any of the flying dinosaurs that looked similar, but pterodactyl is only one species. The family is called pterosaur. In Greek, “pteron” means winged and “sauros” means lizard. Pterodactyl comes from “pteron”
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Why do we say “hack writer” and “quack doctor”? Hack comes from Hackney and quack comes from quacksalver, the Dutch for a seller of medicines. A hack has a negative image, but there is no reason why it should. The word was first used in about 1700 to refer to someone who is hired to
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