Morse code was developed by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail in the 1830s. Morse came up with an early system that used numbers and a codebook, while Vail appears to have played an important role in developing the much simpler system that used different combinations of signals for individual letters. Exactly how much each man
#1806 Where did Morse code come from? Read More »
Alfred Wegener realized that all of the continents had once been joined together, but he could not explain how they could move. It took the mapping of the ocean floor during and after World War 2, followed by the discovery of strange magnetic patterns in the seabed, for scientists to finally work out what was
#1805 How did we discover plate tectonics? Read More »
Was the Charge of the Light Brigade real? The Charge of the Light Brigade did really happen. It was during the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War. It happened on 25 October 1854. The Charge of the Light Brigade was made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same name. It was a
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Who was Otzi the Iceman? Otzi was a man who lived in the area where the Austrian Italian border is today in roughly 3250 BC. Otzi the Iceman was found in 1991 by two German tourists called Helmut and Erika Simon. They saw the top part of his body sticking out of ice. An unusually
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What are solar prominences? Solar prominence is a large, bright structure of plasma that follows magnetic fields and loops out from the surface of the sun. You may have seen images of solar prominence when you look at pictures of the sun. They are long twisting swirls that loop out from the sun and usually
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Why is tooth enamel so hard? Tooth enamel is so hard because it is made of about 96% minerals, which is more than anything else in the human body. Enamel is the thin layer that sits on top of our teeth. A tooth is made up of layers, and the job of enamel is to
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Why did Britain start the Opium Wars with China? Britain started the Opium Wars with China to force China into a trading and diplomatic system that was favorable with British interests. There are two basic causes of the First Opium War, which started in 1839 and lasted until 1842, but its causes go back at
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What is Botox? Botox is a drug made from the toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Its name comes from botulium toxin. We have most likely heard of Botox thanks to its role in plastic surgery, but there are several other uses for it as well. In plastic surgery, it is primarily used to
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Who discovered that the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy? Edwin Hubble was the first person to discover that there were other galaxies in space. When we are at school we learn that our Milky Way Galaxy is one galaxy in a possible infinite number of galaxies. We learn that the closest large galaxy to
#1798 Who discovered that the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy? Read More »
What is the largest diamond in the world? It turns out that this simple sounding question is slightly more complex. There are three different diamonds that vie for the title of largest cut diamond in the world, but each one of them is recognized for a different reason. The largest cut colorless diamond is called
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