19th July 2016
The construction workers’ hats were invented by E.W. Bullard, who was inspired by the steel helmets he wore during World War I. He devised what is now known as ‘hard hats’. They were called so because they were made by steaming canvas and glue to make a hard material, which were then fashioned into hats. When the Hoover Dam was being constructed in 1931, the companies insisted on their workers wearing these hats for safety.
15th July 2016
The Tonlé Sap River is attached to a freshwater lake also known as the Tonlé Sap Lake. It connects the lake with the Mekong River, which is the world’s twelfth longest river. It flows north from November to May feeding the Mekong River with water from the lake. However, with the arrival of the monsoon season, the Mekong River swells up, pushing the waters of the Tonlé Sap River back into the freshwater lake. The Tonlé Sap River has been designated as an ecological hotspot.
8th July 2016
The unit pound is abbreviated ‘lb’ which comes from the constellation Libra. The word libra means ‘balance scales’ in Latin. The ancient Romans used the term libra pondo to refer to weight. Libra meant ‘weight’ and pondo meant ‘pound’. This was eventually shortened to libra which came to be abbreviated as ‘lb’.
7th July 2016
The inability to identify familiar people by their faces is called prosopagnosia. The term ‘prosopagnosia’ is derived from two Greek words prosopon meaning ‘face’ and agnosia meaning ‘not knowing’.
7th July 2016
The name dinosaur is derived from two Greek words: deinos meaning ‘fearfully great’ and sauros meaning ‘lizard’. It was coined by the English anatomist Richard Owen in 1842. Owen recognized that the huge fossilized bones unearthed at several places in nineteenth-century England were markedly different from the bones of the other existing reptiles.
6th July 2016
Antarctica has four bases with their own city dialling codes. The city code of Davis Base is 10, Mawson Base is 11, Casey Base is 12 and Macquarie Base is 13. The international telephone dialling code for Antarctica is 672. To dial Antarctica, say from India, you will have to dial the international exit code, which is +91 for India, followed by 672, the city code and the phone number in Antarctica.
