Internet milestones

In little over 10 years, the internet has become a global phenomenon. In 1995 it was used by about 45 million people around the world. By 2006, the figure had more than doubled to 1,018,057,386. By the time you read this, the figures will have increased again.
During the 1960s scientists in the USA began trying to work out how organizations could keep in touch with one another after a nuclear attack. In 1965 ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) suggested linking computers. In 1969 computers at four US universities were connected and were able to ‘talk’ to each other for the first time.
The network was extended and in 1973 computers were connected between London and Norway. At the same time, electronic mail (e-mail) was being used more and more to send messages between computers. In 1976 Queen Elizabeth II became the first monarch to send an e-mail message. In 1979 the first Usenet newsgroups (online discussion groups) began.

Plucking up Mangoes

Mangoes are plucked when they are yet hard and green. Generally when a few semi-ripe fruits begin to fall naturally from the tree, others are plucked with a bamboo harvester without bruising their skin. After keeping them in the open for a day, mangoes are placed in single layers of straw or grass. Within a week, they are ready to be eaten. It is believed; artificially ripened mangoes taste better and have a better flavor than those ripened on trees.

Weighty words

Acre

An acre describes an area of land and comes for the old English word aecar, meaning a ploughed field. It was the area a team of oxen could plough in one day. In the UK in 1824, an acre was set as 4,840 square yards.

Celsius
A temperature scale invented in 1742by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius. A Celsius degree is 1/100th of the difference between the freezing and boiling points of water (0 degree and 100 degree).

Fahrenheit
This temperature scale was devised by German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit. On this scale the freezing point of water is 32 degree.

Foot
Foot originally meant the average length of an adult foot, and has been used since ancient times. Before France invented the metric system, the French foot was based on the length of the Emperor Charlemagne’s foot.

Gram/kilogram
Gram comes from the same ancient Greek word that gave us grammar, and means a marked-off division. A kilogram is 1,000 grams; kilo comes from the Greek chilioi, meaning one thousand

Big numbers

The terms used for big numbers differ between the UK and the USA and other parts of the world. Until recently, a billion was a million in the US, but a thousand million everywhere else. The UK has changed this definition to match the rest of the world, but other big numbers are still different. There are names for even bigger numbers, including a trigent- billion (60,000,003 zeros) and sextant-billion (1,800,000,003 zeros). In 1938, nine-year-old Milton Sirotta came up with the word googol, which means a one followed by 100 zeros. Mathematician called Edward Kasner (1878-1955). A googolplex is an even bigger number – a one with a googol of zeros, or 10 to the googol power. This number is so vast that, as Kasner explained,”…there would not be enough room to write it, if one went to the furthest stars, touring all the nebulae in the universe and putting down zeros every inch of the way.” There is no such number as a zillion – the word just means a huge amount.

Crazy inventions

There is no end to the extraordinary items dreamed up by inventors – a self-raising hat (1896) for the polite man with his arms full; spectacles for chickens to protect their eyes from other fowl that might attempt to peck them (1903); an automatic haircutter (1951); a motorized ice cream cone (1998) which rotates against the tongue. Here are some other examples.
Parachute fire escape
This invention was patented in 1879 by Benjamin B. Oppenheimer of Trenton, Tennessee, USA. It was made up of a parachute attached to a helmet and padded shoes that would allow a person to leap out of a blazing building and land safely – if he was lucky enough not to break his neck.

Spider ladder
This invention was perhaps not so crazy for people who are scared of spiders. British inventor Edward Doughney’s 1991 patent helps spiders to climb out of a bath.

Elephant springboard
A British patent was issued to E. Wulff in 1904 for a springboard that would make an elephant turn a somersault. The animal’s heavy landing was problem that Mr. Wulff failed to solve.

How can we measure things about the stars?

The distance from the earth to the nearest star is four and one half light-years. A light – year is about six million million miles – or 6,000,000,000,000 miles! Now, if the stars are this vast distance away from us, how can we measure how big they are, what they’re made of, and so on? At one time, the only instrument the astronomers had was the telescope. Today, a whole group of special instruments exists to help astronomers study the motions, brightness, color, temperatures, and composition of the stars. First of these is the camera, which is used to make permanent records of the stars observed. Another instrument is the spectrograph. This is used to photograph the spectra of the stars, or the rays of light coming from them. With the help of the spectrograph, astronomers have learned most of what they know about what the stars are made of, their temperatures, and the speeds at which they are moving.

Leonardo da vinci

Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is best known as a painter, anatomist, sculptor and architect. His paintings The Last Supper and Mona Lisa are among the most famous of all time. But he is also hailed as one of the greatest inventors who ever lived. Among his notebooks he left plans for countless advanced machines, often with descriptions written in secret mirror writing. Many of them were never built, but they anticipated modern inventions, often by hundreds of years. They include the following:
Air conditioner, Alarm clock, Ball-bearings, chemical and biological warfare, clock with minute and four hands, crane, diving suit and diving bell, double –hull ship, dredging machine, flying machine, gas mask, gears, giant catapults and crossbows, helicopter, lifebelt, magnetic compass, mechanical musical instruments, milometer, multi-barreled machine gun, one-person battleship, parachute, pedometer (for measuring walking distance), revolving stage, screw-making machine, shrapnel bomb, spectacles, steam engine, tank-like armored vehicle, telescope, water clock, water turbine