Peter Henlein, a 16th-century locksmith and clockmaker from Nuremberg, Germany, is considered to be the architect of the first ‘watch’. Devices for reading time, like sundials, obelisks, and hourglasses were used to measure the passage of time since ancient ages. He was one of the first craftsmen to fashion small ornamental clocks that one could …
The word ‘limey’ refers to a British person, in general, and a British sailor, in particular. It originated in the 19th century and was a derogatory name for sailors in the Royal Navy. In the 17th and 18th centuries, British sailors who were at sea for more than a month often suffered from a disease called scurvy. Dr James Lind, …
Cotton gets its name from the Arabic word ‘qutun’, which means fine textile or fabric. Archaeologists have found samples of cotton fabric, as old as 7000 years, at the sites of ancient civilizations, such as Mohenjo-daro, Egypt, and Mexico. Nonetheless, it is difficult to determine the exact period or place when cotton was first used for …
The year was 1938. World War II was about to begin. A wonderful invention, which only became ubiquitous with time, happened: The ballpoint pen. The biro, or the first ballpoint pen, was named after its inventor Ladislao José Biro (1899–1985). Biro was a Hungarian journalist and painter. On his visit to a newspaper printing press, he could not help …
A person’s DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule that functions as a storehouse of genetic information. The discovery of DNA was a major breakthrough in medical science. While Watson and Crick gave the actual structure of the molecule, the credit of its discovery and identification goes to Friedrich Miescher. In 1869, Swiss-born Friedrich Miescher …
The Mumbai the world knows today is the result of a series of tremendous changes. Whether geographically, politically, or even name-wise, the city has travelled quite a lot! The Portuguese ruled the city, which they referred to as bombaim – Portuguese for ‘good bay’ – from the year 1534 till 1661. However, things changed in the year 1662, …
