1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word chocolate entered the language in 1604. 2. At that time, chocolate was only consumed as a drink. We had to wait until 1847 before Joseph Fry invented the chocolate bar. 3. The Mayans in Mexico around 250AD are the earliest known […]
10 Facts
185 posts
1. “Outer Space” was used as an astronomical term by Alexander von Humboldt in 1845. 2. Space (or Outer Space) officially begins at the Karman Line, an invisible boundary 100km (62 miles) above the Earth. 3. It is named after Hungarian engineer Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963), who calculated that the […]
1. The earliest known use of the word “curry” in English was as a verb in the late 13th century meaning to rub down a horse with a comb. 2. The earliest known curry recipe, for a chicken or rabbit curry, was given in Hannah Glasse’s 1747 Art Of Cookery, […]
1. World Smile Day was inaugurated in 1999 by Harvey Ball, a commercial artist from Worcester, Massachusetts. 2. Harvey Ball was the man who created and popularised the two-dots-and-a-grin smiley logo. 3. A full smile, including wrinkling around the eyes, is known as a “Duchenne smile” after 19th-century anatomist Duchenne […]
1. According to legend, coffee was discovered in Ethiopia around 800AD through its effect on goats. 2. In terms of financial value, the two most traded commodities in the world are oil and coffee. 3. The world’s most expensive coffee is Sumatran Kopi Luwak, made from beans eaten and excreted […]
1. The name pasta came from the Latin word for dough. 2. Pasta was known in Ancient Greece and China thousands of years before the Italians had it. 3. There are more than 600 named pasta shapes. 4. “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a […]
1. Sugar cane has been cultivated for at least 10,000 years. The people of New Guinea are known to have done so around 8000BC. 2. A study in 2012 reported that eating too much sugar makes rats stupid. 3. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of sugar cane with almost […]
1. The spring and autumn equinoxes (from the Latin for “equal” and “night”) occur when there is 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. 2. To be precise, that means 12 hours from the moment the centre of the Sun moves over the horizon to the moment its centre disappears again. […]