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Sharpen Your General Knowledge
Shamim Ansary:
What Great City “Disappeared�
Late in the 16th century, an architect building an underground water main in southern Italy came upon the buried ruins of an old city under 30 to 50 feet of ashes, stones, and mud as hard as concrete.
The city was Pompeii, a flourishing town during the days of the ancient Romans that had “disappeared†and had been forgotten through the Middle Ages. In 1748, workers began to dig out the ruins of the old town, and today Pompeii can be visited by anyone who wants to see what life was like in ancient Italy.
Pompeii “disappeared†after an eruption of the volcano Mt. Vesuvius on August 24, 79 A.D. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people perished, as volcanic dust and ash settled on Pompeii and the nearby town of Herculaneum, covering them to a depth of up to 20 feet.
When the city was dug out, many of the homes looked just as they had in 79 A.D., at the moment of the eruption. Some kitchens still contained food that had been buried by the volcano and remained untouched for almost 1,700 years!
Vesuvius erupted during an election campaign in Pompeii, and some houses still have election slogans on their walls!
Shamim Ansary:
How Many Volcanoes On Earth Erupt Every Year?
About 60 volcanoes in the world erupt somewhere on land every year.
Many others erupt on the ocean floor.
United States is third in the world in volcanic activity, behind Indonesia and Japan.
Volcanoes are usually found near tectonic plates that are diverging or converging.
The Pacific Ring of Fire is a good example an area with volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together.
The Ring of Fire has about 452 of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes.
Shamim Ansary:
How Did the Greeks Figure Out the Size of the Earth?
The Greek Eratosthenes, who lived around 250 B.C., was the first man we know of to figure out the size of the earth. Yet he never traveled around the earth, nor did he have any of today’s measuring equipment. How, then, did he do it?
Eratosthenes used Euclid’s principles of geometry to solve the problem. First he learned that at noon on the longest day of the year, the sun shone straight down to the bottom of a well in the Egyptian city of Syene.
At the same time, in the city of Alexandria, the sun caused an upright post to cast on the ground a shadow shaped like a right triangle, a triangle with one 90° angle. Eratosthenes then measured the other angles and found that one angle was equal to 1/50 of an entire circle.
He then determined that if the lines formed by the post at Syene and the well at Alexandria were extended downward, they would form two sides of another right triangle at the center of the earth. Again using geometry, Eratosthenes proved that one angle of the second triangle was equal to one angle of the first triangle or 1/50 of an entire circle.
Since the earth’s circumference between Syene and Alexandria formed an arc, that arc was also equal to 1/50 of the earth’s circumference. Eratosthenes knew that the distance between Syene and Alexandria was 5,000 stadia (a Greek measure), so he then multiplied it by 50, and found that the distance around the earth was 250,000 stadia, or 24,670 miles.
How close was Eratosthenes back in 250 B.C.? The circumference of the earth is now known to be 24,900 miles! Quite a feat for a time so long ago!
Shamim Ansary:
How Did Birthdays Come to Be?
Birthdays are one of our very oldest customs. We can suppose that prehistoric mothers and fathers noticed that their children grew up in stages. One day, the baby could only gurgle; then the next, he might repeat a word he heard his parents say.
One day, a baby could only crawl; then the next, he stood up and walked. All of these changes probably seemed mysterious and frightening to prehistoric parents. And they feared anything that was new or different.
To be certain that their children continued growing safely, these parents held ceremonies to scare off evil spirits who could harm their offspring. They offered gifts to the spirits so their children would be protected.
They also gave gifts to their children to encourage them to grow. At these ceremonies, the children played games and held contests to show how strong and skillful they were becoming with each new year.
The custom of testing a child’s strength at his birthday celebration continues today. The big breath needed to blow out the candles on a birthday cake is really a test of strength, a way for modern people to carry on an old custom!
Shamim Ansary:
What Is the Most Read Newspaper In the World?
Right now, there are more than 7,000 newspapers published around the world, and about a quarter of them are American papers. Each day, Americans buy some 61 million copies of their favorite papers!
The largest-selling paper in the United States is the New York Daily News, which sells about two million copies each day. The Wall Street Journal is second, with about 1.5 million copies sold daily. The Los Angeles Times is third, and the New York Times is fourth.
But of all the newspapers in the world, a Russian paper called Pravda has the largest circulation. About ten million copies of this newspaper are printed each day!
Sixty years ago there were more papers in America than there are today, 2,461 compared to 1,759 today!
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