Tag: pkar

Why is it called Westward Ho!?

Q&A Why is it called Westward Ho!? SHORT ANSWER A bestselling novel inspired the only place in Britain with punctuation in its name LONG ANSWER The small Devon coastal village got its name from the title of an 1855 novel by Charles Kingsley. Set in nearby Bideford, the bestseller led to a rise in visitors […]

Was there a real spy called James Bond?

Q&A Was there a real spy called James Bond? SHORT ANSWER Author Ian Fleming was less inspired by the real-life Bonds than he was a bird expert LONG ANSWER There has been an ongoing discussion about the real spies that may have inspired the character of James Bond. ey were men Ian Fleming worked with […]

Who invented the bikini?

Q&A Who invented the bikini? SHORT ANSWER A French engineer unafraid of causing a scandal LONG ANSWER Combine a greater sense of liberation and freedom after World War II, the first summer in peacetime for years, and continuing short supplies of materials, and you have the perfect mix for a daring new outfit. On 5 […]

What were ‘Boomers’ and ‘Sooners’?

Q&A What were ‘Boomers’ and ‘Sooners’? SHORT ANSWER This is not a case of “OK Boomer”, more a matter of Boomers in OK LONG ANSWER By signing the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889, President Grover Cleveland opened up nearly 2 million acres of Oklahoma territory for settlement. (The Native American peoples living there had conveniently […]

What is the world’s oldest museum?

Q&A What is the world’s oldest museum? SHORT ANSWER The Capitoline Museum has been around the longest… but not actually open the longest LONG ANSWER Ennigaldi-Nanna, daughter of a neo-Babylonian king in modern-day Iraq, is often credited as the first museum curator in history, building a collection of artefacts and presenting them, complete with explanatory […]

When was the term ‘vegetarian’ coined?

Q&A When was the term ‘vegetarian’ coined? SHORT ANSWER Until the mid-19th century, non-meat eaters were named after Pythagoras LONG ANSWER The Vegetarian Society Kent, in 1847. at may not seem like a momentous landmark – seeing as people all over the world had been going meat-free since antiquity – but it may have been […]

Were there any non-Japanese samurai?

Q&A Were there any non-Japanese samurai? SHORT ANSWER An African slave would have stood out in the ranks of the elite Japanese warrior class LONG ANSWER A handful of foreign visitors to Japan were honoured as samurai, including Englishman William Adams and his Dutch shipmate Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn, who were both granted the title […]