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When did the Spartans start military training?

Q&A When did the Spartans start military training? • SHORT ANSWER When Sparta expected their men to give everything to the army, they meant their sons too • LONG ANSWER The Spartans wouldn’t have got where they did if they hadn’t started training and preparing their warriors at a young age. At just seven years […]

What is Mayincatec?

Q&A What is Mayincatec? • SHORT ANSWER A pernicious media misrepresentation of the pre-Colombian civilisations • LONG ANSWER The vast majority of representations of indigenous peoples in Central and South America in film and television do not depict a single culture – say, the Maya – but a visual and societal hodgepodge of all of […]

Who were the Bevin Boys?

Q&A Who were the Bevin Boys? • SHORT ANSWER To keep the war effort supplied with coal, young conscripts served on the underground frontline • LONG ANSWER During the early years of World War II, coal production in Britain fell into decline, partly due to the large proportion of the mining workforce that had left […]

Did Molotov create the Molotov cocktail?

Q&A Did Molotov create the Molotov cocktail? • SHORT ANSWER First used in Spain, this explosive cocktail was an unwanted tipple for the Soviet foreign minister • LONG ANSWER Vyacheslav Molotov was Joseph Stalin’s right-hand man: an old Bolshevik and foreign minister. But while the simple-to-make incendiary device –a glass bottle filled with a flammable liquid […]

Who invented earmuffs?

Q&A Who invented earmuffs? • SHORT ANSWER An American teenager had a stroke of inspiration and the world was all ears • LONG ANSWER Although it is unlikely that Chester Greenwood was the first to cover the ears with something warm, he patented his design and so is remembered as the inventor of the modern […]

Did you know?

Q&A Did you know? NAME SHAMING When Iranian king Khosrow I captured the city of Antioch in AD 540, he had the population moved to a new city called Weh Antiok Khosrow, which translates as ‘Better than Antioch, Khosrow built this’. STONY FACED Judges in 12th-century China wore spectacles with lenses of dark quartz. It […]

When was Mensa formed?

Q&A When was Mensa formed? • SHORT ANSWER A meeting on a train led to its creation in 1946 • LONG ANSWER Australian barrister Roland Berrilld Berrill got chatting to British scientist Lance Ware on a train, and together they came up with a new society for those with a high IQ. This idea picked […]