chonzskypedia

When was the first steamboat built? The first boat ever to be moved by steam power was designed by a Frenchman Jacques Périer and tested on the Seine in Paris in 1775. But the first really successful steamboat was built by Périer’s fellow countryman, the Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d’ Abbans. His craft which was 141 feet long and equipped with straight-paddled sidewheels travelled several hundred yards against the current on the Sa Ô ne at Lyons on July 25, 1783. Among early American pioneers was James Rumsey who in 1786 drove a boat at four miles an hour on the Potomac River, propelled by a jet of water pumped out at the stern. Between 1786 and 1790 John Fitch experimented in the Delaware River at Philadelphia with different methods of propulsion, including paddle wheels, a screw propeller and steam-driven oars. The first to apply successfully the principle of steam to screw propellers was John Stevens whose boat, equipped with two propellers, crossed the Hudson River in 1...

When did a nuclear submarine make its first passage under the North Pole? The first voyage under the North Pole was made from August 1 to August 5, 1958, by the United States submarine Nautilus. She crossed from Point Barrow, Alaska to the Greenland Sea, travelling 1,830 miles under the polar ice cap and passing the geographic North Pole on August 3. Nautilus could maintain submerged speeds of over 20 knots almost indefinitely. She was designed to run on direct water  heat from an atomic pile. The crew were shielded so well from the pile that in a year’s cruise they received less radiation than that set by the American Bureau of Standards as permissible for a single week. Nuclear submarines are equipped with alternative electrical power for use should the reactor fail.

What is a bathysphere? “Bathos” is Greek for “deep”. A bathysphere means a “sphere of the deep”. The first bathysphere was built by an American, William Beebe, and made its first descent into the unknown ocean darkness in 1930. It reached a depth of about 1,300 feet. Beebe’s bathysphere was held by a cable. Free descents were first made by Auguste Picard in  a bathyscaphe. “Scaphos” means “ship” in Greek. Now special submarines, able to cruise at great depth, are used for specific oceanographic tasks in many parts of the world.

Where was the first bicycle made? The first rideable bicycle was made by Kirkpatrick MacMillan of Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1839, although an attempt to construct one had been made by Jean Théson at Fontainebleau, France, in 1645. Before this, crude machines had been made, which had no form of steering and had to be propelled by pushing the feet against the ground. Machines of this type appear on bas-reliefs in Babylon and Egypt and on frescoes on Pompeii. In England, a stained glass window, dated 1580, in te church of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, shows a cherub astride such a machine. But all these machines seen to have been four-wheeled. The true bicycle belongs to the 19 th  Century. MacMillan’s bicycle was driven by rods attached from pedals to a sprocket on the rear wheel. The first chain-driven bicycle was produced by Tribout and Meyer in 1869. In this year the first bicycle show – in Paris – and the first cycle road race – from Paris to Rouen – took place...

When were fireworks introduced? The use of fireworks, or pyrotechnics, probably began when some prehistoric man mixed saltpetre (potassium nitrate) from his cooking with charcoal from his fire. Saltpetre is a pyrotechnic composition – a substance which does not need oxygen from the air in order to burn, bu instead supplies it. Two more such compositions are potassium chlorate and potassium perchlorate. These are  combined with finely ground gunpowder, sulphur, aluminium dust and many other chemicals to produce force and sparks, or white  or coloured flame. Other substances produce noise, smoke and whistling sounds. It is believed that fireworks were used in the East, especially China and India, for centuries before they spread to Europe. The Chinese fired pyrotechnic war missiles and produced dazzling displays of fireworks for ceremonial occasions. Arabia, in the 7 th  Century, also used pyrotechnics in war. In the 14 th  Century came the invention...

Where was the wheel invented? The earliest wheels so far discovered were found in graves at Kish and Susa, two ancient Mesopotamian cities. These wheels are believed to date from 3,500 B.C. They were made from three planks, clamped together with copper clasps. These kind of wheel also existed in ancient times in Europe and the Near East. No one is sure where the wheel was invented, but this archaeological evidence suggests it was probably in ancient Mesopotamia. A wheel with proper spokes was invented until after 2,000 B.C.  There are records of this wheel in northern Mesopotamia, central Turkey, and north-east Persia. By the 15 th Century B.C., spoked wheels were being used on chariots in Syria, Egypt, and the western Mediterranean. The solid wheel was used mostly in farming. Tripartite wheels – wheels with three spokes – were being used in the Bronze Age in Denmark, Germany, and northern Italy for carts. The invention of the wheel made it possible for peopl...

When was coffee first grown?      A legend says the coffee plant first grew in Kaffa, a province in south Ethiopia, where it was discovered by a goatherd called Kaldi about the year 850. Kaldi’s goats were reported to have skipped and pranced in a strange manner after feeding on an evergreen plant. The goatherd, so the story goes, tried some of the berries himself and excitedly dashed to the nearest town to tell of his find, which was called coffee after the name of the province.      Another theory is that the word coffee is probably derived from the Arabic qahwah. Certainly coffee was introduced into Europe from Arabia during the 16 th and 17 th Centuries. The first licence to sell coffee in the United States was issued to Dorothy Jones of Boston in 1670. The coffee houses of the time became famous meeting places for discussion.      As the drinking of coffee became more popular, its production spread to Java, Haiti, Dutch G...

Where was the first canal built? Archeologist believe the oldest canals in the world are those whose remains were discovered near Mandali in Iraq in 1968. They believed these canals  are nearly 7,000 year old (about 5,000 B.C.). In 500 B.C. Darius the Great, the Persian emperor,  ordered a canal to be built joining the river of Nile to the Red Sea. This remarkable construction the forerunner of the modern Suiz Canal.

AMERICA America gets its name from the traditional family name Amerigo belonging to Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), who was an Italian navigator and merchant. Vespucci began his career in the bank of Lorenzo and Giovanni Pier Francesco de Medici. In 1491, he was sent to Seville, where he met Columbus. At the beginning of 1505 he was summoned to the court of Spain for a private consultation and was appointed chief navigator for the famous Casa de Contracion de las Indias (Commercial House for the West Indies), a post of great responsibility, which he held until his death. The period during which he made his voyages falls between 1497 and 1504. The first tool place in 1499-1500 when, it is believed, he discovered the mouth of the Amazon  and sailed as far as the Cape of La Consolacion or Sao Agostinho (about 6" latitude South). On the way back he reached Trinidad and then made for Haiti, believing all the time that he was sailing along the coast of the extreme easterly peninsul...

Where did the world's first iron battleships fight? The first battle involving "ironclads" was between the Monitor and the Merrimack in March, 1862. The monitor was built by the Federals in the North during the Civil War. She has a displacement of only 987 tons. Meanwhile, the confederates in the South also built an ironclad, the C.S.S. Virginia, better known by her former name Merrimack. She had been a wooden frigate, but was burned down to the waterline by enemy action and rebuilt as an ironclad, sheathed in two inches of metal. Her displacement was 4,636 tons. In 1862 the ships of the North were maintaining a blockade to prevent supplies reaching the South and the opposing vessels met in battle at Hampton Roads off the south-east coast of Virginia.  Thousands of people lined the shores to watch the fight as the ships passed on opposite courses, turned and passed again. Both crews lacked training and their shooting was ineffective.  The Merrimack had more guns, ...