The Roman-Persian wars are the longest in history, lasting over 680 years. They began in 54 BC and ended in 628 AD.
100 Mind-Blowing Began Facts
May 20, 1873, is the “birthday” of blue jeans. According to the Levi Strauss company, this was the day that Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, the innovators behind the sturdy blue jeans we all love, got a patent on the process of adding metal rivets to men’s denim work pants. The pants were called waist overalls until 1960 when baby boomers began calling them jeans.
Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different. One of the more mind-blowing fun facts: no two tongue prints are alike. The use of tongue prints as a forensic identifier began fairly recently.
The longest-running primetime animated series is The Simpsons, which began in 1987. Before the reign of The Simpsons, there were the Flintstones. However, towards the end of the 90s, a new family was in town. Matt Groening’s The Simpsons quickly overtook the Flintstones in terms of profit. The show is currently in its 19th season, with a running total of 672 episodes.
England and Portugal still maintain their alliance until today. This is also known as the longest unbroken alliance in world history. This treaty began in 1386 between the two countries and they remain strong allies today.
Originally, carrots were a purple colour. When carrots were cultivated in Afghanistan 1000 years ago, carrots were described as yellow or purple roots. Once carrots were exported into Southern Europe during the 14th century, they began to widely grow around the country.
French fries were invented in Belgium. Historians claimed that the first instances of potatoes being cut and fried began in the late 1600s. Street vendors would often sell this before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Hitler was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1939, Adolf Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He received the nomination the same year that WWII began. A member of the Swedish parliament only nominated Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize as a satiric criticism of another historical figure who was nominated. The nomination was promptly withdrawn.
Snapple’s 1001 “Real Facts” aren’t true. In 2002, the manufacturers of Snapple began printing “Real Facts” inside the bottle caps. However, most of this information is outdated or simply myths.
The longest hiccup in history lasted for more than 60 years after it began.
Chainsaws began to be used for woodchopping at the start of the 20th century. But before then, chainsaws were used for childbirth to speed up the widening of the pubic cartilage.
Plants were formed before seeds. Moss-like plants most likely reproduced with single-celled spores. Then 150 million years later, multicellular seeds finally began to evolve.
Babe Ruth began his career as a pitcher: Ruth was both a left-handed pitcher and a left-handed batter.
In 1962, a laughter epidemic broke out in Tanzania. The outbreak began in a girls’ school and spread to other communities, ultimately affecting 1,000 people and causing the temporary closure of 14 schools.
The FBI had a 1,427-page file on Albert Einstein. When Albert Einstein moved from Germany to the US in 1933, he was already an internationally renowned physicist. One year before that, the FBI began keeping tabs on him because he was outspoken against various social issues, such as nationalism and racism. Later, Einstein took a stand, particularly against the US nuclear ambitions, which led the head of the FBI to become deeply suspicious of him and even label him as a communist.
J. R. R. Tolkien invented the languages of Middle Earth before he even thought of writing stories in the fictional universe. Tolkien was without a doubt a natural polyglot, learning more than 35 languages throughout his life. When he was a teenager, he invented his first language, which would inspire the 20 or so languages he ultimately created for Middle Earth. Once he began inventing the languages, he realized that he needed people to speak them, and it was only from this point that he thought to write The Lord of the Rings and his other works.
The United States of America’s longest-standing unbroken treaty is with Morocco. It began with the Sultan of Morocco, who officially opened the nation’s ports to the US in 1777. This made Morocco one of the first nations to recognise the US as a country. By 1786, the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship was drafted and signed by the Sultan of Morocco and Thomas Jefferson.
8th-grade students from a town in Alaska must spend two nights on an uninhabited island as part of their science exam. The tradition began forty-six years ago when a school teacher in Ketchikan, Alaska, made it his goal to educate the town’s youth on how to survive in the harsh climate of Alaska. He also just wanted kids to have more fun at school, as there wasn’t much fun going around back in his schooling days. Despite not being mandatory, most of the town’s grade eights eagerly make the trip each year.
Our modern interpretation of Santa Claus with a red outfit and white beard is due in large part to holiday Coca-Cola ads that began in 1931.
The First Computer Mouse. Colleagues at SRI Built The First Computer Mouse. Douglas Engelbart began the development of the computer mouse in the early 1960s. Bill English, a colleague of Engelbart at SRI, built the original prototype in 1964. By 1967, Engelbart filed a patent for the mouse, which was issued in 1970. SRI licensed the technology to other companies, but the computer mouse didn’t reach widespread commercial production until 1984. The original mouse relied on one or two wheels to record motion and a single button for clicking.
The original name of Microsoft Windows was “Interface Manager”. In 1981, Microsoft began the development of a program called “Interface Manager”. Most people won’t recognise that name because Interface Manager became Windows in 1983. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 in 1985, and it’s now the most common operating system in the world. It’s hard to believe the OS would be successful with its original name. Interface Manager perfectly describes what Windows would become. In the marketing department, making that name sound interesting or useful would have been impossible. Everyone recognises Windows, and millions of computers run on Windows 10 today. Interface Manager should be considered a work-in-progress name and something best left in the past.
These Billion-Dollar IT Companies Started In A Garage. The tech industry is unique compared to other industries. Some of the largest names in tech originated in founders’ garages. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen worked from their garage space to launch Microsoft. Google began as a side project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage they rented in 1998. Other companies like Apple, Amazon, and countless others began in garages as well. Perhaps there’s something about garages that spark creativity or productivity. Either way, the tech industry’s giants often come from humble beginnings. Now they’re worth billions of dollars each and counting.
The Firefox logo isn’t a fox. Well, sort of. There is a common misbelief that because the browser is named Firefox, the logo must be a fox. This is both correct and incorrect at the same time, and it’s all Mozillas fault! The cute furry creature in the logo was originally a red panda. Over time, though, the team behind the browser changed their tune and began to call it a fox after all. So is it a fox or a red panda? Depends on who you ask!
Graffiti as it’s known today began in the late 1960s in Philadelphia. It was primarily used to make political statements and mark street gang territory.
The Style Wars began in the 1970s and introduced the concept of bombing. Graffiti artists created bigger and bigger pieces in an attempt to achieve fame. They would often “bomb,” or “hit,” one area, which meant painting many surfaces in an area. For the sake of time, they often threw up tags instead of complex pieces.
Oll Korrect. The origin of the phrase ‘OK’ dates back to a fad for intentionally misspelt abbreviations in 1830s Boston. When witty Bostonians began spelling ‘all correct’ as ‘Oll Korrect’, newspapers picked up on the joke. In 1840, US President Martin Van Buren, originally from Kinderhook in New York, adopted the phrase for his re-election campaign and his supporters set up ‘Old Kinderhook’, or ‘OK’, clubs across the country. The term quickly made the transition from slang to legitimate use.
Dancing mania. In July 1518, Frau Troffea began dancing in chaotic fervour on the streets of Strasbourg. She danced for a week straight, and soon others joined her. Within a month, the Dancing Plague of 1518 claimed between 50 and 400 victims. Historical sources make it clear the victims danced, but why they did so remains unexplained. Mysterious outbreaks had occurred before: in 1020s Bernburg, Germany, a Christmas Eve service was disturbed when revellers inexplicably danced around the church. In Aachen, 1374, a large-scale outbreak was recorded that spread to Cologne, Flanders, Hainaut, Strasbourg, Utrecht and other towns. In 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk even danced himself to death.
Luckiest man in the world? Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip when the first atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. Despite being only three kilometres away from the blast, Yamaguchi survived, though was seriously burned and temporarily blinded. The following day, he began the journey back to his hometown of Nagasaki, arriving on 8 August. On 9 August, he was a little over a mile from the epicentre of the second atomic bomb when it dropped on Nagasaki. He survived but was injured again, along with his wife and infant daughter.
‘Groaning ale’. In early modern Europe and colonial America, a ‘groaning ale’ would be brewed when a woman became pregnant. The ale would mature throughout the pregnancy, imbibed by the mother and midwife as labour began, and then the remnants of the sterile, 8% liquid washed over the newborn.
We can thank the railroad industry for standardising our time zones. Until the 19th century, towns and villages synchronised their clocks to the local solar noon. This created thousands of local times that all varied and made scheduling transportation a major headache. Train schedules in different cities had to list dozens of arrival and departure times for each train to account for all the mini-time zones. On November 18, 1883, railroad companies in the United States and Canada began using a system very similar to the standardised time zones we still use today. In the UK, the railroad companies began using a standard London-based time in 1840.
Winchester was the first capital of England: We’re beginning this collection of interesting facts about England by uncovering some insights into the country’s history. It’s a well-known fact that the bustling city of London is the country’s capital, however, it hasn’t always had this status! Over 1,150 years ago, in 871, the Hampshire city of Winchester was the country’s capital. This came to be when King Alfred began his reign as King of Wessex and chose the city to be his capital. During the 10th century, all seven of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, including Wessex, merged to become England. This led to London becoming the capital and the new base for the government, thanks to its fantastic trading opportunities.
The World Wide Web (WWW) was invented in England: The World Wide Web came to be in 1989 when it was discovered by Tim Berners-Lee, an English scientist. Berners-Lee began the project whilst working at CERN, The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and its main use was for scientists to share information and institutes across the globe. The WWW was used privately until 1993 when CERN released it to the public. It’s flourished since then, and you’re using it to view this blog right now!
The Longest-Running Show in the World Is in London: The longest-running performance in the world is being performed at St. Martins Theatre in London’s West End. Considering that Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap debuted in 1952, the show has been airing for over 70 years to this day. The plot of the show, which began as a radio play named Three Blind Mice, centres on seven strangers who become stuck at a rural house due to snowfall.
Paper money enabled international trade: Once the shift to paper money had occurred, international trade began to increase. Currency value began to depend on the strength of a particular country’s government or monarchy and before long, currency wars had started.
The first paper money appeared in the Chinese Empire during the reign of the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 BC), but these were private banknotes. The issuance of money at the state level began in the next Song era (970 – 1278).