I learned this today. People stormed the Bastille during the French Revolution not to free political prisoners but to get at its stores of gunpowder and weapons. The storming of the Bastille is taken to be the start of the French Revolution, but the revolution technically started on May 5th when a number of different […]
#116 Why did people storm the Bastille on July 14, 1789? Read More »
I learned this today. Nuclear pasta is a theoretical matter that might exist in the crust of a neutron star. It would be the strongest material in the universe and would be ten billion times stronger than steel. A neutron star forms when a supergiant star collapses. Stars are made up of hydrogen and helium.
#115 What is nuclear pasta? Read More »
I learned this today. Smallpox was responsible for as many as 500 million deaths in the 20th century, but it was completely eradicated by December 1979. Smallpox is a disease caused by four orthopoxviruses. They are variola, vaccinia, cowpox, and monkeypox. Variola only infects humans while the other viruses can infect other animals as well.
#114 What happened to smallpox? Read More »
I learned this today. Thomas Edison used thin strips of bamboo in his early light bulbs because carbonized bamboo has a very high electrical resistance. When Edison started trying to improve the light bulb, there were two basic forms of light available: arc lights and incandescent lights. An arc light is one that makes light
#113 Why did Thomas Edison use bamboo in his light bulb? Read More »
I learned this today. The first evidence for a wedding ceremony between a man and a woman is from Mesopotamia in 2350 BC. In the time of hunter-gatherers, people lived in small groups, probably of about thirty people. Each group would have several male leaders who shared the women. They would all care for and
#112 When did people first start getting married? Read More »
I learned this today. Evergreen trees keep their leaves for longer because they have evolved to survive in colder areas with less yearly sunlight. An evergreen tree is a tree that doesn’t lose its leaves all at once in the way a deciduous tree does. The leaves do fall off, but when they are old,
#111 Why don’t evergreen trees lose their leaves in the winter? Read More »
I learned this today. The Malthusian theory of population doesn’t apply today because we can basically produce more food than was previously possible. Thomas Malthus lived from 1766 to 1834 and he was an English cleric, scholar, and economist. Malthus did a lot of work, but he is primarily remembered for the theory on population
#110 Why doesn’t the Malthusian theory of population apply today? Read More »
I learned this today. Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. It is incredibly thin and incredibly strong. In 1859, Benjamin Brodie noticed that graphite oxide contained lots of layers. In 1947, P. R. Wallace published a paper on the band structure of graphite and theorized that a single
#109 What is graphene and why is it so important? Read More »
I learned this today. The International Prototype of the Kilogram, kept in Paris, is not accurate enough to be the standard for all kilograms around the world. Different measures for different things have been used around the world since people began measuring things. These measurements were usually related to the human body or common things
#108 Why is the official kilogram in France no longer used? Read More »
I learned this today. Adolf Hitler had three brothers, two sisters, one half-brother, and one half-sister. Because of the things he did, it is difficult to see Hitler as a real person, but of course he was, and he has a family. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, to Alois Hitler and Klara
#107 Did Adolf Hitler have any brothers or sisters? Read More »
