By: Lucas Wantuck Welcome to another edition of “Ten Interesting Facts Around the World!” This edition will cover the wonderful world of technology! I hope you enjoy it! 1. The world’s most famous video game company didn’t start with video games! Though Nintendo, the popular Japanese company, is most famous for its consoles and games, they originally sold Japanese card games back in 1889! They made the switch to video games 90 years after they started making card games! 2. Nokia didn’t start off selling phones. The Finnish phone-making company known for its practically indestructible devices didn’t originally make phones. They started with making, believe it or not, toilet paper! While this might seem crazy to think about, it actually makes sense if you know their origins. You see, Nokia started as a paper mill company in 1865, and, after producing toilet paper, tires, televisions, and rubber boots, they finally created their famous, durable, Nokia phones! 3. The first photograph took eight hours to make. Taken from Niépce’s estate in the Burgundy region of France, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took a picture using one of the first cameras ever made, and it took him over eight hours just to take one picture! 4. A man accidentally threw away over 226 million dollars! In 2009, James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive with 8,000 bitcoins. In today’s money, that would be about 226 million dollars, but back then it was only 30 thousand. James was a computer programmer and a crypto miner. When he was getting rid of some old computer parts in a metal recycling facility in Wales, he accidentally threw away the hard drive that had the money. 5. The Gameboy actually went to space. In 1993, Soviet cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov brought his Nintendo Game Boy and a copy of Tetris with him to his space mission. When it was brought back, it sold at an auction for $1,220! Along with that, it was also said to have orbited the Earth over 3 thousand times. 6. The name for spam mail didn’t come from where you’d think. "Spam mail" was named after the processed meat brand Spam, but its origins can be traced back to a Monty Python sketch. The sketch features a restaurant where customers realize that everything contains Spam, leading to a group of Vikings singing about Spam. The repetitive nature of Spam in the sketch led many people to call the messages they got constantly "Spam mail." 7. You can still access the oldest website in the world. Created by Tim Berners-Lee in the United Kingdom in 1989, the CERN, or European Council for Nuclear Research, was the first website in the world. The purpose of the website was to work on the World Wide Web project, which served as the backbone of the Internet. The coolest part is that you can still access it and see how it looked back when it was first created! 8. The first electronic device was made over 100 years ago. Created by the father of electronics, Sir John Fleming, the vacuum tube was created in the United Kingdom as a way to control the flow of electrons in a vacuum. This device led to many breakthroughs and new technologies such as digital computations, radios, televisions, radar equipment, and even telephones. 9. The first search engine wasn’t Google. Though Google is the most popular search engine, it wasn’t the first. Archie was the first search engine, and it was created by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The search engine was a lot like Google and was just as simple, though the Internet wasn’t nearly as good back then. 10. Someone accidentally cut off the internet in two countries. Back in 2011, a Georgian woman was scavenging for copper, and she accidentally sliced through a cable running to Armenia. Because of this, both countries suffered major power outages and couldn’t use the internet! It is crazy to think that one cable is responsible for maintaining the internet in two countries! Sources:
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By: Lucas Wantuck 1. Did you know that the first candy was made over 3,500 years ago? The first candy was made in ancient Egypt at around 1,500 to 2,000 BC using honey and fruit; the candy looked something like the hard candy we eat today! 2. The world’s largest chocolate bar was over 13,000 kilograms! Made by Frits van Noppen in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the world’s largest chocolate bar weighed in at 13,079 kilograms, and came in at an area of 383.24 square meters. This made it the largest chocolate bar in both area and weight! 3. The first gummy candy was made 100 years ago. In 1922, a German candy maker by the name of Hans Riegel created a new candy to popularize his company. The candy was made of sugar and gelatin, and it later became known as “Gummibärchen” or Gummy Bears! And, as a bonus fact, Hans Riegel is the CEO of Haribo, which is a combination of the first two letters of his first name, last name, and hometown! (Hans Riegel of Bonn - Haribo) 4. In Europe, during the Middle Ages, the cost of sugar was high, which meant that most candies were considered a delicacy, and were only available to the wealthiest of people; unlike today, where anybody can buy a candy bar or pack of jelly beans for under a dollar! 5. Tootsie Rolls accidentally saved Marines during WW2. During the Korean War, when the Marines were running out of ammunition during freezing weather, they called in for mortar ammo, which was given the code name of “Tootsie Rolls”. Because the radio operator didn’t have any code sheets to find out what “Tootsie Roll” meant, he called in for pallets of Tootsie Roll candy to be brought in! While it didn’t seem very helpful, it was actually a blessing in disguise, giving the troops nourishment and plugs for bullet holes, helping them win the war. 6. The oldest candy company is still in operation to this day! The candy company NECCO, or “New England Confectionery Company,” has been making candies since it was founded in Massachusetts all the way back in 1847! That’s 176 years of making candy! 7. The First chocolate bar was made over 170 years ago! While he didn’t invent chocolate, Joseph Fry, head of Fry & Sons Chocolate Company from Bristol, England, did invent chocolate’s most popular and recognizable form all the way back in 1847. 8. Chocolate dates back as far as Mesoamerican civilizations. In ancient Mesoamerica, located in present-day Mexico, the Olmec, who were one of the oldest civilizations, found cacao plants and harvested their beans to make a simplistic version of the chocolate we eat today. This chocolate was used more as a drink than as a food, and was mainly used for rituals and medicinal purposes. Many years later, the Mayan civilization learned about this chocolate, and praised it as a drink of the gods. The Mayans also made some additions to the drink. They mixed the roasted ground cacao beans with chile peppers, water, and cornmeal, making a bitter drink they called “xocolatl.” As a bonus fact, the word “xocolatl,” is actually the word that inspired the name: chocolate! 9. Chocolate was once considered a currency. This fact once again follows the Mayan civilization, as they once made cacao beans an official currency, and considered it to be worth more than gold. To make sure that people didn’t make tons of money and crumble the value of the cacao, the Mayans restricted the farming of cacao trees. So, there was a time when money literally grew on trees! 10. Switzerland consumes the most chocolate out of every other country! With the average person consuming approximately 8.8 kilograms or 22 pounds of chocolate every year, Switzerland consumes the most chocolate in the world; they barely topped Austria, whose average person consumes 8.1 kilograms of chocolate, and Germany, who is at 7.9 kilograms per person. I hope you enjoyed this sweet October edition of “Ten Interesting Facts About the World!”
By: Lucas Wantuck The first edition of “Ten Interesting Facts Around the World” will be all about schools! 1. A school in Tibet is one of the schools with the highest elevation in the world! A primary school in Phuma Changthang, Tibet, was constructed at a record-breaking altitude of five thousand three hundred and seventy-three meters above sea level; however, it’s only because it’s located on Mount Qomolangma, better known as Mount Everest! 2. There is a school in a remote part of Colombia where kids arrive by zip line! In Los Pinos, Colombia, there is an area where zip lines are the only mode of transportation, so children get to ride zip lines to school! 3. France has both the shortest school years and the longest school days. In France, schools have thirty-six-week-long school years, while most other countries have forty-week-long school years. France also only has four days of school, instead of five. To make up for this, they leave school one hour later, meaning they have the longest school days. 4. There is a school in Germany that’s made to look like a cat! For kindergartners attending school in Karlsruhe, Germany, there is a school designed to look like a cat, whiskers and all! To make things even better, there is a tail on the back that’s used as a slide for kids to exit the school! 5. In France, mealtime is a class that all students take. In France, mealtime is a part of every student’s curriculum. They learn about local food suppliers, different foods and where they come from, and displaying proper manners/etiquette at the table. 6. In the Netherlands, all kids start school on their fourth birthday. All children start school on their fourth birthday, meaning that every day there is a new student! This is good because it allows older kids to have more time to settle in. Though it does have some positive effects on learning, it’s not all good. You see, because new kids are coming practically every day, the learning process is much slower than in other countries because the teachers have to help the newer students learn what the older students were taught, which makes it harder on the teachers. 7. There was once an elementary school with only one teacher and one student. In 2014, an elementary school in Italy had only one student and one teacher. This was because the school was very small, but officials kept it open because there was at least one student in the class. 8. The largest school in the world has tens of thousands of students! The City Montessori School in Lucknow, India currently has fifty-six thousand students attending, making it the largest school in the world! It even won itself a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records! 9. There is a school in the Philippines made entirely of recycled plastic. The school in question is called the “Bottle School” and is almost completely made of recycled pop bottles (there is some cement and concrete to hold things together). The whole school is made of approximately nine thousand bottles! 10. The oldest school in the world is over 1,800 years old! The Shishi High School in Chengdu, China was founded in 194 AD, making it the oldest school ever! Despite its ancient history, the school is equipped with the high-quality equipment and tools that most modern schools have. And so, with all said and done, I hope you enjoyed the first edition of Ten Interesting Facts About the World!
Sources: https://www.discoverwalks.com/blog/world/20-fascinatings-facts-about-schools-education-systems-around-the-world/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_line https://snippetsofparis.com/facts-about-french-schools/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kindergarten-wolfartsweier https://www.findingdutchland.com/dutch-school-culture-mediocrity/ https://cntvna.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/worlds-smallest-school-with-1-pupil/ https://inhabitat.com/asias-first-school-made-of-plastic-bottles-is-3x-stronger-than-concrete/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishi_High_School |