The word ‘limey’ refers to a British person, in general, and a British sailor, in particular. It originated in the 19th century and was a derogatory name for sailors in the Royal Navy. In the 17th and 18th centuries, British sailors who were at sea for more than a month often suffered from scurvy. Dr James Lind, a Scottish physician,…
Peter Henlein, a 16th-century locksmith and clockmaker from Nuremberg, Germany, is considered to be the architect of the first ‘watch’. Devices for reading time, like sundials, obelisks, and hourglasses were used to measure the passage of time since ancient ages. The credit for the first mechanical water clock goes to the Chinese genius Su Song, for…
The Black Death, also known as Black Plague, is one of world’s worst pandemics. The disease entered European lands in around 1343 through Crimea, passing the Silk Route and beginning from Central Asia. One of the main causes is believed to be rat fleas hosted by black rats, of which trade ships used to be replete…
Ever wondered to what extent liquid mercury could inspire someone? A look at Cloud Gate might give you an idea. Cloud Gate is a public structure that stands at the Millennium Park in Chicago, USA. The sculpture is a seamless structure of stainless steel reflecting the city’s skyline. Made of 168 stainless steel plates, its highly-polished surface is as clear and…
Eminent physicist Albert Einstein was born in the year 1879. Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, was born in 1869 and Adolf Hitler, the epitome of terror, in 1889. Hence the expression that Einstein was born between peace and terror. Einstein admired Mahatma Gandhi. He even expressed this admiration in a letter written in 1931 addressed to the Indian…
American geologist Bruce Heezer and oceanic cartographer Marie Tharp were researchers at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, New York. In the 1950s, they expedited with a crew across the Atlantic to gather data about the ocean floor from the ocean surface. The observations proved that there was in fact a chain of mountains, as high as halfway till the surface, under the…
