Watch on YouTube How was the meter (metre) defined? In 1791 it was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. The word “meter” comes from Greek and means “to measure” or “to count.” That’s why the “meter” in speedometer and altimeter doesn’t mean the unit of distance. The […]
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Watch on Youtube Why is 0 longitude in London? It was used by more than two-thirds of the world’s ships and the USA had decided to use it. The line that runs through Greenwich in London is known as the prime meridian, meaning it is zero degrees longitude. The Earth is divided up into 360
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Watch this on YouTube When did cave paintings first appear? The oldest cave painting found so far is from 50,000 years ago but the oldest known prehistoric art was from 73,000 years ago, painted on a rock. There is a lot more cave art to be found than art outside caves because the caves protect
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Watch on YouTube When did people start wearing wedding rings? Wedding rings have been found dating back as far as 4000 BC. Rings were first used in Egypt by the pharaohs to represent eternity. A ring has no beginning and no end. It also reflects the circular shape of the sun and the moon, both
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What are the Dead Sea Scrolls? They are a series of ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. The first of the scrolls were found in 1946 by Bedouin shepherds. They were discovered in a cave near to the Dead Sea. The story is that a
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Do the gulags still exist? Technically no, but actually yes. The gulag is not actually a place. We use the expression gulag to refer to a Russian prison, but it is really the name of the government agency that was in charge of the forced labor camps during the Soviet era. The word gulag is
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When did people start using soap? In 2800 BC in Babylonia. Archaeologists have found soap-like materials in clay cylinders that have been dated to 2800 BC. The tablets are inscribed with “fats boiled with ashes”. Soap is first mentioned on a Sumerian clay tablet, which has a formula for how to make it. It says
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Where did the Democratic and Republican parties come from? The come from one party called the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson. Everyone that watches the news knows that America has two political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. They take turns being in charge. The Democratic Party is generally considered to be
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When did people start using nails? Bronze nails were used in Ancient Egypt in about 3,400 BC. Before people had nails, there were different ways of joining wood together. Some of these techniques are still used today. The most basic way of joining wood to wood was with wood glue. Animal glues have been used
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Why do we say eleven and twelve, and first, second and third? Why do we say eleven and twelve? All languages have words for the numbers one to ten. However, a large number of languages then go on to count the numbers after ten by saying number plus ten. So, for example, in Chinese twelve
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