Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

"Back in the Wild West, people had to get creative when it came to bathroom business. Toilet paper wasn't a thing for a long time, so they resorted to using corn cobs, torn pages from magazines, and catalogs. It wasn't until 1857 that Joseph Gayetty introduced "medicated paper," but it was sold individually, not on rolls. Roll-style toilet paper didn't arrive until 1890, along with the invention of the toilet paper holder.

It wasn't until the 1920s that proper toilet paper became widely available. The Wild West truly had its share of unhygienic bathroom practices."

https://news.dailyddt.com/en/best-hygien...native_one

"All of us have heard the adages “Time waits for no man” and “A stitch in time saves nine” but have you ever thought who created the concept of time? Of course, none other than the Babylonians, who devised a system of dividing time into 60 sections.

The current system of time has been in use for four millennia now.

The number 60 was chosen as the dividing factor as it was divisible by 6. The Babylonians estimated that the earth moved around the sun one degree in a day and took 360 days. This number was again divisible by 6. Astrologers used the sexagesimal system of numbering which took 60 as its base. They noted the frequency and duration of the full moon and saw that this was also divisible by 6."---
https://www.ancienthistorylists.com/meso...babylonia/

Who invented wine-making?

"Georgia is generally considered the 'cradle of wine', as archaeologists have traced the world's first known wine creation back to the people of the South Caucasus in 6,000BC. These early Georgians discovered grape juice could be turned into wine by burying it underground for the winter. Some of the qvevris they were buried in could remain underground for up to 50 years.

Wine continued to be important to the Georgians, who incorporated it into art and sculpture, with grape designs and evidence of wine-drinking paraphernalia found at ruins and burial sites."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/trave...e%20winter.

"The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903,[1] when American anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie created a game that she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George. It was intended as an educational tool, to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. She took out a patent in 1904. Her game, The Landlord's Game, was self-published, beginning in 1906.[6]

Magie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.[7]

Several variant board games, based on her concept, were developed from 1906 through the 1930s; they involved both the process of buying land for its development, and the sale of any undeveloped property. Cardboard houses were added, and rents increased as they were added to a property. Magie patented the game again in 1923.[8]

According to an advertisement placed in The Christian Science Monitor, Charles Todd of Philadelphia recalled the day in 1932 when his childhood friend Esther Jones and her husband, Charles Darrow, came to their house for dinner. After the meal, the Todds introduced Darrow to The Landlord's Game, which they then played several times. The game was entirely new to Darrow, and he asked the Todds for a written set of the rules. After that night, Darrow went on to utilize this, and distribute the game himself as Monopoly.

The Parker Brothers bought the game's copyrights from Darrow.[10] When the company learned Darrow was not the sole inventor of the game, it bought the rights to Magie's patent for $500.

Parker Brothers began marketing the game on November 5, 1935.[12] Cartoonist F. O. Alexander contributed the design.[13] U.S. patent number US 2026082 A was issued to Charles Darrow on December 31, 1935, for the game board design and was assigned to Parker Brothers Inc.[14] The original version of the game in this format was based on the streets of Atlantic City, New Jersey."----
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

"In 1561, Glaser, a Nuremberg artist and publisher, produced a broadsheet to report on a “dreadful apparition” that occurred just above the city on April 14. Accompanying his account of an aerial battle between objects shaped like globes and crosses was his illustrative, almost buoyant woodcut depicting the multi-colored UAPs (to those of you who are new to ufology, that is short for unidentified anomalous phenomena) swirling across the sun. While skeptics today reckon the phenomenon was down to parhelia, an atmospheric optical occurrence, or perhaps an early use of fireworks, Glaser deemed it—what else?—a “high sign” from God."

"The Stonewall Riots, also called the Stonewall Uprising, began in the early hours of June 28, 1969 when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world."

"When we first learned to cook food is one of the most important evolutionary moments of our species. It’s what transformed us into modern humans.

"Around 1 to 2 million years ago, early humans developed taller bodies and bigger brains. The thinking is that calorie-rich diets, and cooking in particular, drove this change," said David Braun, professor of anthropology at Columbian College of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C.

A new study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, suggests that early humans first cooked food around 780,000 years ago. Before now, the earliest evidence of cooked food was around 170,000 years ago, with early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals using fire to cook vegetables and meat.

The new study shows that Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans, was cooking food much further back in history.

"Setting this date back by more than 600,000 years has implications for reconstructing the evolutionary history of ancient humans," study co-author Jens Najorka from The Natural History Museum, London, told DW.

The study team found their evidence in an archaeological site located in the northern Jordan Valley, in modern-day Israel. The site, called Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, is known to date back to around 780,000 years ago.

It is believed that Homo erectus communities of the so-called Acheulian culture lived in the region. The communities had a varied diet, including large game, fruit and vegetables, and freshwater fish from the nearby paleo-Lake Hula. But until now, experts didn’t know if they ate their food raw or cooked.
The study team analyzed the remains of fish teeth (from carp and barbel) found in the proximity of fireplaces at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov.

By analyzing the crystal structure of the teeth, the team found that they had been cooked under 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit).

"This suggested that the fish had been cooked at a controlled temperature rather than just burned," study co-author Irit Zohar from Tel Aviv University, Israel, told DW. "Until now, no one could prove that Homo erectus cooked food. This is the first evidence that erectus had the cognitive ability to control fire and cook food."

https://www.dw.com/en/evidence-of-cookin...and%20meat.

"Popcorn is thought to be an ancient snack that originated in the Americas; coastal regions.

There are some indications that people in the coastal regions of Peru consumed popcorn 6,700 years ago. Corn was domesticated from a wild grass in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago and spread throughout Central and South America.

However, the first popcorn is often linked to Charles Cretors of Chicago. Cretors, who invented the mobile popcorn cart in 1885, is widely regarded as the modern-day inventor of popcorn. Charles Cretors obtained a vendors license and began selling popcorn outside his Chicago shop in December 1885.

In 1893, he came up with the first popcorn machine capable of popping corn in oil. Soon after, Cretors patented his invention. Then, he took it to the Worlds Columbian Exposition, where he introduced the popcorn machine to the public."------ https://kettleheroes.com/who-invented-popcorn/

"In the 20th century, chewing gum made William Wrigley Jr. one of the wealthiest men in America. Wrigley started out as a soap salesman in his native Philadelphia. After moving to Chicago in 1891, he began offering store owners incentives to stock his products, such as free cans of baking powder with every order. When the baking powder proved a bigger hit than the soap, Wrigley sold that instead and added in free packs of chewing gum as a promotion.

In 1893, he launched two new gum brands, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint. Because the chewing gum field had grown crowded with competitors, Wrigley decided he’d make his products stand out by spending heavily on advertising and direct marketing. In 1915, the Wrigley Company kicked off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to millions of Americans listed in phone books. Another promotion entailed sending sticks of gum to U.S. children on their second birthday.

The competition also played a role in the development of bubble gum. Frank Fleer, whose company had made chewing gum since around 1885, wanted something different from his rivals and spent years working on a product that could be blown into bubbles. In 1906, he concocted a bubble gum he called Blibber-Blubber, but it proved to be too sticky. In 1928, a Fleer employee named Walter Diemer finally devised a successful formula for the first commercial bubble gum, dubbed Dubble Bubble.

Today, gum is sold in a variety of shapes and flavors. Although sadly, Willy Wonka’s three-course dinner chewing gum—said to taste like tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie—has yet to become reality."---
https://www.history.com/news/chew-on-thi...ory-of-gum

"Booker T. Washington was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia in 1856.

At age 16, he left his job as a salt miner in West Virginia and walked 500 miles to Hampton, Virginia, where he was able to convince the administrators of the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) to admit him as a student. Arriving with only fifty cents in his pocket, he worked as the school janitor to pay his way through school, ultimately graduating in 1875. Having distinguished himself as a student, Washington joined the faculty upon his graduation and, a few years later, left to help found Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Along with the school’s first students, he literally built what would become one of the country’s most important educational institutions. He dedicated his life to promoting the benefits of education and to improving educational opportunities for African Americans.
His autobiography Up From Slavery was a best-seller and he became one of the most famous and admired men in America.

Booker T. Washington died on November 14, 1915, one hundred eight years ago today."--Facebook