World Facts

There is a misconception that Europeans owe the invention of rubber to Columbus. In fact, the navigator only left a description of how the natives of the islands of Haiti played with a ball made of thickened milky juice that flowed from cuts on the bark of the Brazilian hevea. When the sap dripped from the tree, it seemed to the Indians that it was crying. Therefore, they began to call this plant a "crying tree– - from the Indian words kau ("tree") and uchu ("cry"). Much later, Europeans who visited America got to know rubber better and even learned, like the locals, to soak their raincoats with the juice of a rubber-bearing tree. But rubber came to the Old World only in 1751. A little frozen juice was brought by mathematician Charles La Condamine. He watched his "trophy" for a long time, but could not figure out what benefit rubber could bring to him personally and to humanity as a whole. Interesting facts about rubber Elasticity syndrome...

The ancient Vikings took on board several ravens, freeing them one by one. If the raven flew away in the direction of the ship's movement, then they sailed on, and if the raven turned aside, they changed course. Dublin was founded by Vikings in the ninth century. When marching to England around 1000 AD, the Vikings assembled a fleet of eighty ships, each with 100 soldiers on board. Vikings discovered a large icy island in 982 AD, Eric the Red named it Greenland. Interesting fact, Vikings founded settlements in North America almost 500 years before Columbus. In the tenth century, the largest slave market in the world was in Dublin, in the possession of the Vikings. Vikings served as guards for some Byzantine emperors. The Icelandic language is very similar to Old Norse. Icelandic schoolchildren easily read epics and sagas in Old Norse It took up to 80 oaks to build one (ship) drakkar. Viking means "pirate in Old Norse. The Scandin...

A liger is a hybrid cross between a lion and a tigress. Ligers are the largest of all cats, reaching the height of a lion and the length of a tiger. They carry characteristics from both parents, such as a love of swimming from tigers and social behavior from lions. Currently, Ligers can only be found in captivity, but there have been cases in history of finding them in the wild. Ligers were thought to be infertile for a long time, but this theory was disproved in 1953 when a 15-year-old liger successfully mated with a lion. The cub survived despite having poor health. On Jungle Island, a theme park in Miami, you can see Hercules. Hercules is a huge liger weighing 410 kg, who got into the Guinness Book of Records as the largest cat in the world.

The fork was first mentioned in the Middle East in the IX century. An interesting fact, a fork was used to prick fruit so as not to get smeared with juice. However, there is evidence that the fork was born in 1072 in Byzantium in the city of Constantinople in the imperial palace. It was made in one copy of gold, and its handle was decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl on ivory. This fork was intended for the Byzantine Princess Maria of Iver, who can be considered the inventor of the fork. Considering it humiliating for herself to eat with her hands, she invented it herself. But since the XVII century, the fork has become a necessary attribute at the meals of the Italian nobility and merchants. In Northern Europe, the fork appeared much later. For the first time in English, it was described by Thomas Coriet in a book about his Italian travels in 1611, but the fork was widely used in England only in the XVIII century. Interestingly, the Catholic Church did not welcome its use...

In 1946, engineer Percy Spencer, who worked at Raytheon Corporation, experimented with a magnetron tube. And suddenly he saw that the candy in his pocket had melted! This surprised him, and he continued experimenting with products by placing a magnetron in a metal box. Electromagnetic waves of small length (12 cm) cannot pass through metal and are absorbed by products, causing the latter to heat up. An interesting fact, the first commercial microwave oven was released in 1947, it cost $ 5,000 and had dimensions of about 2 meters. Microwave ovens have enjoyed great success in countries that have little gas, such as Japan.

Potato chips were invented in 1853 in Saratoga Springs, New York. Interestingly, a chef named George Cram invented potato chips by accident. The fastidious client did not like the thickly sliced fried potatoes, in retaliation, the cook cut the potatoes into thin slices and served them to the client after roasting. The harmful visitor came into a pig's delight from such a dish and the cook realized that he had made a new discovery in cooking. When George Crum opened his own restaurant, he put a basket of potato chips on every table and called them Saratoga Chips. An interesting fact is that chips based on dry mashed potatoes were the first to be produced by Pringles in 1969. They were of the same size and shape and were packed in airtight bags. The popularity of chips has reached such an extent that Potato Chips Day is celebrated on March 14.

Many have heard that rats and cockroaches can survive even a nuclear explosion. But the most viable organism on Earth is a slow-moving, tiny creature with a length of 0.1 to 1.5 mm. Tardigrades look like annelids, with 8 pairs of very primitive legs and a chitinous body. An interesting fact is that the slow-moving can resist temperature fluctuations from -270C (-273C is absolute zero) to 151C. The slow-moving boat is not affected by radiation 1000 times higher than the lethal dose and the pressure is 6 times higher than at the bottom of the deepest ocean (7000 atmospheres). Interestingly, tardigrades can remain in a latent stage for decades and be reborn when conditions become favorable. These animals can fall into a coma when their body size decreases by 85%. There are cases when they came to life after hundreds of years of hibernation in museum exhibits of mosses. However, with constant activity, tardigrades live only one year.   There are more than 1000 s...