SERU GM

19/03/2022

Humans have been cultivating rice plants—which are actually species of grass—for somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 years. All of our modern, domesticated rice can be traced back to a single crop in the Pearl River Valley of ancient China. The only other food that might be as old is corn, which was domesticated in Mexico between 7,500 and 12,000 years ago.

19/03/2022

You probably know that the phone you carry around in your pocket is light-years ahead of the technology of five decades ago. However, it's hard to grasp just how advanced it is. In terms of processing ability, your phone is millions of times more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that NASA used to send astronauts to the moon in 1969. AGCs cost $3.5 million each and were the size of a car, but even just the clock function of an iPhone 6 is comparable to sending 120,000,000 simultaneous Apollo-era spacecraft to the moon and back.

19/03/2022

Disclaimer: do not drink gasoline. Okay, now that we've got that covered, if you could drink gasoline, it would provide you with 31,000 calories of energy, the equivalent of 15 to 20 days' worth of food. Scientists figured this out when they were trying to compare the efficiency of a car to that of a human peddling a bicycle. By calculating how many calories it takes to bike for one mile at 15 mph, they found out that a person could bike about 912 miles on a single gallon of gas.

19/03/2022

Salt has been vital to human history and exploration, since—among other things—it allows people to preserve food and take it with them on long journeys. Salt was so important that the ancient Romans used it as money, paying their soldiers in rations of salt. In fact, that's where we get the English word "salary." It's also where we get the English word "salad," which was named not for leafy greens but for those same Romans who liked to sprinkle their greens with salt to improve the flavor.

19/03/2022

As it turns out, growing greenery inside your house is not only pleasant to look at; it's also good for your physical and mental health. Studies have shown that indoor rooms with plants have up to 60 percent fewer airborne molds and bacteria.

19/03/2022

That artfully wavy bit of toothpaste that sits atop toothbrushes in advertisements has its own name ("nurdle"), and its own lawsuit, as well. In 2010, Colgate Palmolive sued its largest toothpaste manufacturing rival, GlaxoSmithKline, for claiming that it owned the exclusive rights to use a picture of the nurdle on its packaging. Glaxo, makers of Aquafresh, countersued, and the matter was settled confidentially out of court.

19/03/2022

Imagine that every time you needed to read something, you had to lift a piece of glass the size of a mirror to your face. That was the best solution that humankind had come up with for vision problems before the 13th century, when some enterprising folks in Italy shrank the glass and heavy frames enough that they could finally be worn on the nose. A while later, Spanish eyeglass makers came up with the idea of attaching ribbons to the frame so that the glasses could remain on the wearer's face. Finally, in the 1700s, these ribbons were replaced with the "arms" that today's glasses have, allowing them to rest comfortably on the nose and ears.

19/03/2022

According to a UN report from 2015, 2.5 billion of the world's 7 billion people lack access to a toilet, particularly in areas of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Since another report put the number of mobile phone users at 6 billion, that means more than twice as many people have phones as proper plumbing. This is not to say there are too many cell phones but to say that we still have a long way to go when it comes to providing sanitation to everyone. And for more insight into this globe-spanning invention, check out 20 Amazing Facts You Never Knew About Your Smartphone.

19/03/2022

Legend has it that the four suites of a deck of playing cards come from the four pillars of the medieval economy: hearts for the Church, spades for the military, diamonds for the merchants, and clubs for the farmers. Each king is also said to represent a real historical ruler: the King of Hearts is Charles or Charlemagne, the king of Spades is the biblical King David, the King of Diamonds is Julius Caesar, and the King of Clubs is Alexander the Great.

19/03/2022

Sometime around the 10th century, some enterprising soul in a horse-riding culture figured out that your foot would stay more firmly in the stirrups if your shoe had a bit of a raised heel. The innovation spread quickly, and soon whole armies—of men—rode into battle wearing pumps.

19/03/2022

19/03/2022

19/03/2022

19/03/2022