Tea (Camellia sinensis) is one of the most popular beverages in the world. Tea originated in China, and the modern form of tea taken with milk was developed by the British in India. The British started tea plantations in Assam and Darjeeling in the nineteenth century. Today, India is the second largest tea producer in …
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. …
The discovery of Teflon, a polymer chemically known as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), was sheer coincidence, and yet a revolutionary one. The man behind the discovery was an American chemist named Dr Roy J. Plunkett (1910–1994), who was then working for DuPont, an American chemical company. In the year 1938, Dr Plunkett was conducting a coolant gas …
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 …
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 …
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. Between the years 1346–53, plague had claimed around 200 …
