Learn One Thing A Day

Have you ever wondered how the months got their names? I did it and this is what I learnt. Crash course of calendar history ... To understand the origin, the etymology of these names, we have first to refer to Latin and to Roman culture. Indeed Latin names of months haven't changed since 8 AD! I will happily omit all changes, over the centuries, in the definition of months, I will consider only the names. If you want to know more, please check references. Let's start! In Latin,  the 12 Julian (and Gregorian ) months are: Ianuarius  Februarius  Martius Aprilis  Maius Iunis  Iulius (formerly  Quintilis ) Augustus (formerly  Sextilis ) September October  November December as you see, many of them sound quite familiar to their English, German or Italian versions! At the beginning,  there was the Ancient Roman calendar, introduced in 753 BC, according to tradition, by Romulus , the founder of ROME. It had only 30...

"Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten."  Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904 - 1990) was an American psyichologist, behaviorist, author and inventor and social philosopher.

I just found out that the name "Lego" came from the Danish phrase leg go dt which means "play well." Good to know :)

Chopping, cutting onions without crying is possible! Solutions like cutting onions under the water or next to a fan work but... are pretty lame, don't you think? I wanted something like, you know, cutting onions like a boss ... and here is! The problem with onions is in the roots , the roots are the root of all evil ... sorry, but the joke was pretty easy :) We have to remove safely the roots and the bulb that is attached to them. This can be done by cutting  a cone out of the bottom of the onion, where the roots are. The cone has to be quite "big".  About 1/3 of the diameter of the onion and 1/3 deep. When done, throw it away. And quickly! That's it. Now you are able to chop onions like a boss. Enjoy! Here is the video which I took this information from: If you still fails, you can do like the guys below (image taken here )!!!

We absorb radiation daily from different, very different, sources.About this, the numbers and scales in the graph below, taken from xkcd.com , are very interesting. However keep in mind that the risk of harm depends (but not only) on both the dose and the exposure time. From the chart:  "the same number of sieverts absorbed in a shorter time will generally cause more damage, but your cumulative long term dose  plays a big role in things like cancer risk." Note: the different color indicate the different scales ( muSv , mSv , Sv and "tens"(!!!) of Sv ) 

Why some countries drive on the left and some others on the right? I have always lived in countries with the keep-right rule, and if you look at the map below you'll see how in the majority of the world the keep-right rules applies (from wikipedia )! Red: Drives on right Blue: Drives on left Accustomed to the keep-right rule, I have always found strange that some countries like UK, Ireland or Australia had the opposite convention. Well, as I learnt today, for some reasons it made and still makes more sense the keep-left rule. Let's see why. Everything started in the Middle Ages or probably even earlier in the Roman empire. In those times (and partially still today...) roads were very safe, so meeting people coming the other way was something best done defensively. Indeed, by keeping the left side of the road, you could more easily protect yourself, by drawing your weapon (attached to the left side), with your right hand. This is even more evident if you were r...

Here are some interestig facts about the Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia) the symbol of the US military. Thanks Wikipedia (references below). It is the world's largest office building by floor area, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m 2 ), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m 2 ) are used as offices . Approximately 28,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. The site originally chosen was Arlington Farms which had a roughly pentagonal shape, so the building was planned accordingly as an irregular pentagon.  Concerned that the new building could obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington Cemetery, President Roosevelt ended up selecting the Hoover Airport site instead. The building retained its pentagonal layout because a major redesign at that stage would have been costly, and Roosevelt liked the design. Freed of the constraints of the asymmetric Arlington Farms site, it was mo...

This is really interesting! Do you know that at birth we have about 300 bones but as adult this number decreases to 206?! This happens because many of our baby bones "fuse" together. One noticeable and well known example of this process is the human cranium. At birth, the cranium three unfused plates, allowing for passage of the baby's head through the birth canal (yes, your head was squeezed a bit!). Within 18-24 months, these plates fuse into one piece, closing the "fontanelles". References: http://science.howstuffworks.com/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/bonegrowth/ http://en.wikipedia.org/

Just learnt that Hispania (the Latin name of Spain ) comes from the Carthaginian name (300 B.C. ) Ispania meaning " Land of rabbits " (form Sphan, "rabbit"). The Greeks, that arrived earlier in 600 B.C., had given another name, Hesperia, i.e. Land of the setting sun. Iberia was instead the name given by the original inhabitants (coming from the North Africa) and derives from the word Iber , meaning river . (image source here ) References: http://www.ctspanish.com/rabbits.htm

I have just read (thanks Wikipedia ) that the term checkmate derives from the Persian phrase "Shāh Māt" which means,  "the King is helpless" (or "ambushed", "defeated", or "stumped", but not "dead"). Interestingly, according to a common misconception, checkmate means "the King is dead", as chess reached Europe via the Islamic world, and Arabic māta مَاتَ means "died" or "is dead". For the record,  However, it is also interesting to notice that in Pashto , an Iranic language the word "mát مات" still exists meaning "destroyed, broken". Bye the way, chess is a very old game. It is believed to have invented in northwest India during the Gupta empire in its early form in the 6th century and it was known as chaturanga that means four divisions [of the military].

" The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future " Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900), Irish writer and poet.