What vegetables came from the New World? There are many, but potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, peppers, and vanilla are good examples. The foods that came from the New World into Europe ended up changing world cuisine in surprising ways. In the end of the 15th century, Spaniards and other Europeans first reached
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Did Shakespeare write the plays attributed to him? The available evidence shows that, in all probability, Shakespeare was a real person who wrote his own plays. William Shakespeare was definitely a real person. There is no record of his birth and his birthday of 23rd April was given to him by a much later biographer
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Where and when did language originate? This is an impossible question to answer, but, probably, in and around Africa between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago. Our ability to communicate is obviously one of the things that sets us apart from animals. Nearly all animals have the ability to make sounds, but their communication is limited
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Does being cold or wet increase your chance of catching a cold? Being wet doesn’t make much of a difference, but being exposed to cold air can increase your chances of catching a cold. And, if you are cold for a long period of time, it can lower your immunity. The common cold is caused
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Is a whale shark a whale or a shark? A whale shark is a shark and not a whale. The difference between whales and sharks is that whales are mammals and sharks are fish. What are the differences between mammals and fish? Mammals are “vertebrate animals in which the young are nourished with milk from
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Why does the Leaning Tower of Pisa lean? It leans because the ground under the tower is not hard enough and has settled. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is 55.86 meters tall, and it leaned by 5.5 degrees off center at its peak. It was stabilized in the 1990s and its lean was reduced to
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How fast could an electric car go? The current top speed achieved is 412 km/h. They could potentially go faster than that. Electric cars have the potential to be faster than combustion engine cars because of the way they apply power to their wheels. A combustion engine works by burning gasoline to make pistons move
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What is the smallest mammal? The Etruscan shrew is the smallest mammal in the world right now. Etruscan means “of Etruria”, which was an ancient group of people that lived in central Italy from roughly 900 BC until 27 BC when it was dissolved into the Roman Empire. Rome was heavily influenced by Etruria and
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What is a codex? A codex is a collection of ancient manuscripts in book form. The term originally just meant a book, but today we use it only to refer to books of ancient manuscripts. The word codex comes from the Latin “caudex”, which means “block of wood” or “book”. The codex marks the point
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Where did Freemasons come from? They are people who belong to an organization that has its origins in the local guilds of stonemasons that started in the 14th century. The Freemasons are a mysterious fraternity that includes some of the most powerful people in industry and governments. They have secret rituals, passwords, and rules that
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