Were the Dark Ages really dark? The Dark Ages were not dark in the way that we think. The Middle Ages lasted from roughly the 5th century to the 15th century. For centuries, much of this period was described as the Dark Ages, although modern historians generally avoid the term or restrict it to the
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How did Wilhelm Röntgen discover X-rays? He discovered that when he turned on a high-voltage electrical current in a cathode-ray tube, a nearby screen coated with barium platinocyanide began to glow with a green, fluorescent light. Wilhelm Röntgen was a German experimental physicist. He was born in Lennep, which was in Prussia at the time,
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How did ancient people move stone blocks? Ancient people had several methods to move enormous stone blocks. They could use water, wooden sledges, wooden rollers and levers, ramps and earthworks, scaffolding, machinery, or just by walking them. When we look at some of the monuments by people of the ancient world, it can make us
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What is a folly? A folly means something foolish, without lack of good judgment, foresight, or normal prudence. We are looking at architectural follies and they are the same, but with buildings. A folly is a building that was built solely for decoration rather than for purpose. Rich people have always built follies. If someone
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How did we discover viruses? Viruses were first theorized in the 1890s, but they wouldn’t be seen until electron microscopes were invented in the 1930s. The word virus comes from Latin and originally meant poison or poisonous liquid. It entered English in the late 14th century and was used by physicians to describe infectious or
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Is an air bubble in an IV dangerous? An air bubble in an IV can be dangerous, but it depends on how much air there is and how quickly it is introduced. We have all seen movies where people are killed when someone injects an air bubble into their IV line. But is this actually
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When did people discover that electrons carry electricity? People generally discovered that electrons carried electricity at the very end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. Electricity is a collection of phenomena involving electric charges. One of these is electric current, which is the movement of electric charge through a material. There
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Where did Halloween come from? Halloween is the shortened form of All Hallows’ Eve, and it probably originated with the Irish Gaelic harvest festival called Samhain. The traditions of Samhain and All Hallows Eve were carried across to the United States by Irish and Scottish immigrants. Modern Halloween probably has roots in the Irish harvest
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How did travelers exchange money before modern banks? Before banks, travelers had different ways of getting money at their destination. They could carry gold and silver; they could sell goods; they could swap coins; they could use a letter of credit, or they could use an early form of a traveler’s check. These days, if
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How deep could a space probe travel into Jupiter? No one knows for sure, but a space probe using modern materials could possibly get several hundred kilometers into Jupiter’s atmosphere before being destroyed by the enormous pressure and heat. The only probe that has been launched into the atmosphere of Jupiter was the Galileo probe
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