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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Why did Michelangelo hide in a cellar? He had been sentenced to death by Pope Clement VII. Michelangelo was born near Florence in 1475. At the time, Florence was a Republic and not part of Italy. Italy wasn’t unified until 1848 and between the fall of the Roman Empire and unification Italy was made up
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Why was the First World War fought in trenches but the Second World War wasn’t? Amongst many other reasons, because in World War 1, the armies were faced with weapon technology that had advanced too far, but they didn’t have the other necessary technology to counter that. World War 1 started on 28th July, 1914
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How was a mummy made? Along with many other steps, a mummy was made by emptying the body, preserving and drying it, and then carefully wrapping it. The mummies from Egypt are probably the most famous, but they were not the only people to make them. The Incans, some aboriginal Australian tribes, the Aztecs, some
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What are “Spaghetti Westerns”? They are Westerns that were filmed in Italy rather than the United States. Westerns are movies that are set in the Wild West of America, and they generally feature cowboys and gunslingers. Western movies appeared almost as soon as silent movies appeared. The first real Western was The Great Train Robbery
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What was the underground railroad? It was a network of routes and people in the United States of America that helped slaves escape to freedom. It started in the end of the 18th century and ran until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Slavery has existed around the world for as long as
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What is the Hudson Bay Company? It is a company that began when two French traders set up a fur trading post on Hudson Bay in 1670. The Hudson Bay Company was started to trade furs with Britain, but it was another example for Britain that they could use private enterprise to colonize parts of
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When did Britain become an island? It was connected to continental Europe by a land bridge that was destroyed 450,000 years ago. Some of the land bridge returned and that was submerged under the sea in about 6100 BC. If sea levels were a little lower than they are now, a lot more land would
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What happened at the Bay of Pigs? An American led attempt to overthrow the communist government of Cuba failed. The Bay of Pigs is on the southern coast of Cuba. It is 150 km away from the capital city of Havana. There are a lot of wild pigs in the area, which could be why
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When did ultra processed food start? Technically, humans have always processed food, but the modern style of processed food came into being in the middle of the 20th century. The literal definition of processing food is to “perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on food in order to change or preserve it.” That
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