Where was the first newspaper printed?

You probably have a bulletin in your school. When you read what's posted on it, what do you get? You get news! At one time, this was the only form of "newspaper" that existed. News would be gathered from travelers or from government sources, and posted on a bulletin board for everyone to read.
Of course, this isn't really a newspaper, because you can take a newspaper with you to read whenever you like. So for the first newspaper ever printed we must go to China about 1300 years ago. At that time the government printed a paper called Tching pao, which meant "News of the Capital". In this way the government was able to keep its people informed of important developments.
There was also a government newspaper in ancient Rome which was distributed among the people. This was called Acta Diurna, which meant "Daily Happenings". These two are the first newspapers of which we have any records.By the 16th century, people were already paying to buy a newspaper! In Venice the government put out a paper called Noitizie Scritte ("Written News") and people paid one gazetta for a copy.
By the 18th century, newspaper were coming out more or less regularly which not only contained news but also opinion. One such paper was started in London as early as 1663 and was called The Intelligencer. Most early papers, however, came out only once a week because both communication and production were slow.
The first American newspaper was called Publick Occurrences, and was started in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1690. It was quickly stopped by the Governor of the colony. Benjamin Franklin conducted a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, from 1729 to 1765. In 1752, the Colonies has only two newspapers, but at the time of the American Revolution there were 37!Probably the most influential newspaper ever published, The Times Of London, began in 1785 and is still published today.
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Who discovered how to make paper?

Take a piece of paper and tear it in both directions. You will notice two things. It tore more easily in one direction than in the order, and hairlike fibres stick out from the edges of the tear.
The first shows that the paper was made by machine; otherwise it would tear the same way in all directions. The second shows that paper is a mat of tiny fibres, felted together. These fibers are the small particles of cellulose that help form the framework of plants.
Man had created a writing material before he invented paper. The ancient Egyptians, about 4000 years ago, took the stems of the papyrus plant and peeled them apart and flattened them. Then they laid them crosswise and pressed them down to stick them together. When dry, this made a sheet of papyrus and could be written on.But it wasn't paper. This was invented in China about the year 105, by a man called Ts'lai Lun. He found a way to make from the stringy inner bark of the mulberry tree.
The chinese pounded the bark in water to separate the fibers, then poured the soup mixture onto a tray with a bottom of thin bambo strips. The water drained away and the soft mat was laid on a smooth surface to dry. Bamboo and old rags were also used. Later on, somebody thought how to improve the paper by brushing starch on it.
Chinese traders traveled far to the west and came to the city of Samarkand in Russia. There they met Arab who learned their secret and took it to Spain. From there the art of papermaking spread over Europe and to England.
In time, all kinds of improved methods and machines for making paper werediscovered. One of the most important, for example, was a machine developed in France in 1798 that could make a continuous sheet or web of paper.
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Who invented the Pencil?

There is a Latin word, penicillus, which means "little tail". This word was used to indicate a fine brush, and the word "pencil" originally meant a small, fine pointed brush.Today, of course, a pencil means something altogether different. Pencils as we know them are less than 200 years old. About 500 years ago, graphite was discovered in a mine in Cumberland, England, and it is believed that some sort of crude pencils may have been made then.In Numerberg, Germany, the famous Faber family established its business in 1760 and used pulverized graphite to make a kind of pencil, but they were not very successful. Finally in 1795, a man called N.J. Conte produced pencils made of graphite which had been ground with certain clays, pressed into sticks, and fired in a kiln. This method is the basis for the manufacture of all modern pencils.As you might have guessed by now, a "lead" pencil doesn't contain lead but a mineral substance called graphite. Graphite, like lead, leaves a mark when drawn across paper. Because of this it is called "black lead", and that's where we get the name "lead pencil".In manufacturing pencils, dried ground graphite is mixed with clay and water. The more clay, the harder the pencil will be, the more graphite, the softer the pencil will be. After mixture reaches a doughy consistency, it passes through a forming press and comes out as a thin, sleek rope. This is straightened out, cut into lenghts, dried, and put into huge ovens to bake.Meanwhile, the pencil case has been prepared. The wood, either red cedar or pine, is shaped in halves and grooved to hold the lead. After the finished leads are inserted in the grooves, the halves of the pencil are glued together. A saw cuts the slats into individual pencils, and a shaping machine gives the surface a smooth finish.Today, more than 350 different kinds of pencils are made, each for a special use. You can buy black lead pencils in 19 degrees of hardness and intensity, or get them in 72 different colors! There are pencils that write on glass, cloth, cellophane, plastics, and movie film. There are even pencils, used by engineers and in outdoor contruction work, that leave a mark that won't fade after years of exposure to any weather!

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Who invented the Pen?

The art of writing is one of the most important contributions to the development of civilization. It enables man to record his thoughts and deeds. But there were great many writing tools before a real pen was first made.For instance, early man used pointed flints to scratch records and pictures on cave walls. He even dipped his finger in plant juices or the blood of an animal and used it as a pen. Later on, he tried lumps of earth and peices of chalk. The Chinese painted their letters with a fine camel's hair.Probably the first real pens were made by the Egyptians. They fastened a piece of copper, similar to a modern steel pen point, to the end of a hollow stem. The first letter handwriting was done by the Greeks alomost 4000 years ago. They used a "pen" made of metal, bone, or ivory, and wrote on wax-coated tablets. Later still, a split pen was made from hollow, tube like grasses which was dipped into a form of ink and used to write on papyrus.When paper was introduced in the Middle Ages, man learned that the tail or wing feathers of a goose, crow, or swan could be made into a pen. The tip was pointed on split so that the ink could flow down the channel to the paper. It may interest you to know that the word "pen" itself comes from the Latin penna, which means "feather"! Even though a feather pen didn't last long, this was man's writing instrument for a thousand years.Steel pens began to be made in England as early as 1780, but they didn't become popular for another 40 years. The first fountain pens, our modern writing instruments, were made in United States in 1880's. The point, or nib , of a fountain pen is usually made of 14-carat gold, and is tipped with osmiridium or iridium. These are smooth, hard metals which enable the pen to write without scratching. Inside, the barrel holds a supply of ink and usually is made of hard rubber or plastic.The ball-point pen is a 20th century invention. The writing point is a tiny ball of chrome steel which is about one millimetre in daimeter. The ball sits in a socket and revolves as it is dragged across the writing surface. it picks up the ink from a reservoir inside.

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How did slang begin?

Slang is a variation of or addition to standard speech. If you stop to think of it, you'll realize how many forms of slang there are.For example, slang may be formed by compounding words ("lowdown") or by clipping words ("pro", "mike", "pix") or abbrevation ("O,K.", "snafu", "q.t"), or onomatopoeia ("boom", "whiz", "bang"), or borrowing from foreign languages ("pronto", "savvy"), or by analogy ("Prak your hat", "He got pickled").These various forms of slang arise from many reasons and under many different conditions. One of the most common ways is among people who belong to the same group. It might be the same trade, profession, hobby, age, or social position. For example, students have their "lab" and their "gym". Second-hand car dealers have their "creampuffs" (good cars) and their "dogs" (bad cars). A waitress will say, "Drop two on", when she orders poached egs on toast.But the same slang word in one group may mean something else to another group. In the underworld, "cat" doesn't mean the same thing it does in the jazz world. Some social conditions tend to produce slang more easily. If there is exitement, crowding, or people have been suddenly assembled for a particular purpose (as in time of war), then a large number of slang words are formed. "Blitz", "doodlebug", and "walkie-talkie" were salng expressions created in the last world war.Sometimes one clever person may launch a new slang expression and it is picked up by a lot of people. In many cases, new expressions that were once considered slang have been accepted into the dictionary in time. Among these are "bet", "shabby", "chap", "cab", and "kidnap". Some words have lasted as slang for hundereds of years, as, for example, the word "booze".
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How did the English language begin?

Practically all languages spoken on earth today can be traced by scholars back to some commmon source, that is, an ancestor language which has many descendants. The ancestor language-together with all the languages which have developed from it- is called a "family" of languages.
English is considered a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Other languages belonging to the same family are French, Italian, German, Norwegian, and Greek.In this Indo-European family of languages there are various branches and English is a member of the "West Teutonic" branch. Actually, English dates from about the middle of the fifth century, when invaders from across the North Sea conquered the native Celts and settled on the island now known as Great Britian.
For the sake of convenience, the history of English language is divided into three great period: the old English( or Anglo-Saxon), from about 400 to 1100; Middle English from 1100 to 1500; and Modern English from 1500 to present day.
The Anglo-Saxons themselves spoke several dialects. Later on, the Norsemen invaded England and they introduced a Scandinavian element into the language. This influence, which was a Germanic language, became a part of the language.
In 1066, William the Conqueror brought over still another influence to the language. He made Norman French the language of his Court. At first, this "Norman" language was spoken only by the upper classes. But gradually its influence spread and a language quite different from the Anglo-Saxon developed. This language became the chief source of modern English.

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Why don't we all speak the same language?

At one time, at the beginning of history, what there was of mankind then probably spoke one language. As time went on, this parent language, or perhaps there were several parent languages, spread and changed.
At first, the parent lanuages were spoken by small numbers of persons or by scattered small groups. Gradually, some groups increased in numbers and there wasn't enough food for all of them. So some people would form a band to move a new location.
When these people arrived at a new location and settled down, they would speak almost the same as the people from whom they had parted. Gradually, though, new pronunciations would creep in. The people would begin to say things a little differently and there would be changes in the sounds of words.
Some words that were needed in the old home were no longer needed in the new place and would be dropped. New experiences would require new words to describe them. Ways of making sentences would change. And suppose the people had settled in a place where others were already living? The two languages would blend, and thus both of old languages would change.
At first , when the speech of the new people had changed only slightly from the original language, it would be called "a dialect". After a longer time, when there were many changes in words, sounds, and grammar, it would be considered a new language.
In just these ways, Spanish, French, and Portuguese developed from Latin; and English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch grew from an early form of the German language.
The ancestor language, together with all the languages which developed from it, is called "a family" of languages.
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Who first thought of the Alphabet?

The letters if an alphabet are really sound signs. Those of the English alphabet are based on the Roman alphabet, which is about 2,500 years old. The capital letters are alomost exactly like those used in Roman inscriptions of the third century B.C.
Before alphabets were invented men used pictures to record events or communicate ideas. A pictures of several antelopes might mean "Here are good hunting grounds", so this was really a form of writing. Such "picture writing" was highly developed by the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese.
In time, picture writing underwent a change. The picture, instead of just standing the object that was drawn, came to represent of a foot might indicate the verb "to walk". This stage writing is called "ideographic", or "idea writing".
The trouble with this kind of writing was that the messages might be interpreted by different people in different ways. So little by little this method was changed. The symbols came to represent combination of sounds. For example, if the word for "arm" were "id", the picture of an arm would stand for the sound of "id". This stage of writing might be called "syllabic writing".
The Babylonians and Chinese and the Egyptians never passed beyond this stage of writing. The Egyptian did make up a kind of alphabet by including among their pictures 24 signs which stood for seperate letters or words of one consonant each. But they didn't realize the value of their invention.About 3,500 years ago, people living near the eastern shore of the Mediterranean made the great step leading to our alphabet. They realized that the same sign could be used for the same sound in all cases, so they used a limited number of signs in this manner and these signs made up an alphabet.
A development of their alphabet was used by the Herbews and later the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians carried their alphabet to the Greeks. The Romans adopted the Greek alphabet with certain changes and additions and handed it down to the people of Western Europe in the Latin alphabet. From this came the alphabet we use today.
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How did Halloween originate?

The name Halloween means "hallowed, or holy, evening." Yet, for some reason this holiday has become one of the most popular and best liked holidays of the entire year and is celebrated with great enthusiasm in many countries.
Halloween, which takes place on October 31st, is really a festival to celebrate autumn, just as May Day is a festival to celebrate spring. The ancient Druids ( the Druids were the religious priest in ancient Gaul, Britian, and Ireland) had a great festival to celebrate autumn which began at midnight on October 31st and lasted thorugh the next day, November 1st.
They believed that on this night their great God of death, called Saman, called together all the wicked souls who had died during the year and whose punishment had been to take up life in the bodies of animals. Of course, the very idea of such a gathering was enough to frighten the simple-minded people of that time. So they lit huge bonfires and kept a sharp watch for these evil spirits. This is actually where the idea that witches and ghosts are about on Halloween began. And there are still people in certain isolated parts of Europe who believe this to be true!The Romans also had a holiday about the 1st of November which was in honour of their goddess Pomona. Nuts and apples were roasted before great bonfires. Our own Halloween seems to be a combination of the Roman and Druid festivals.
Originally, the Halloween festival was quite simple and was celebrated mostly in church. But all over Europe, people looked upon this occasion as an opportunity to have fun and exitement, to tell spooky tales, and to scare each other. So instead of being devoted to the celebration of autumn, it became a holiday devoted to the supernatural, to witches, and to ghosts.
Here are some of the curious customs which sprang up in connection with Halloween: Young girls who "ducked" for apples on this night could see their future husbands if they slept with the apple under their pillow. Stealing gates, furniture, signs, and so on, is done to make people think they were stolen by the evil spirits. And of course, no one goes near a cemetery on Halloween because spirits rise up on that night! Today we use these superstitions as a way of having fun on Halloween.
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Why are Eggs and Rabbits associated with Easter?

Easter is the most joyous of Christian holidays. It is celebrated in commemoration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.The exact day on which Easter falls may vary from year to year, but it always comes, of course, in the spring of the year. Thus, Christianity spread, the celebration of Easter included many customs that were linked with the celebration of spring's arrival. This explains why many Easter customs go back to traditions that existed before Christianity itself.Both Easter and the coming of Spring are symbols of new life. The ancient Egyptians and Persians celebrated their spring festivals by coloring and eating eggs. The Christians adopted the egg as symbolic of new life, the symbol of the Resurrection.There is another reason why we observe the practise of eating eggs on Easter Sunday and of giving them as gifts to friends or children. In the eartly days of the Church, eggs were forbidden food during Lent. With the ending of Lent, people were so glad to see and eat eggs again that they made it tradition to eat them on Easter Sunday.The Easter hare also was part of the spring celebrations long before Christianity. In the legends of ancient Egypt, the hare is associated with the moon. The hare is linked with the night because it comes out only then to feed. By being associated with the moon, the hare became a symbol of a new period of life. Thus the hare stood for the renewal of life and for fertility. The early Christians therefore took it over and linked it with Easter, the holiday that symbolizes new life!By the way, the rotation of wearing new clothes on Easter Sunday is also Symbolic of casting off the old and the beginning of the new!

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How did the days of the week get their Names?

There was a time in the early history of man when the days had no names! The reason was quite simple. Men had not invented the week.
In those days, the only division of times was a month, and there were too many days in the month for each of them to have a separate name. But when men began to build cities, they wanted to have a special day on which to trade, a market day. Sometimes these market days were fixed at every tenth day, sometimes every seventh day or every fifth day. The babylonians decided that it should be every seventh day. On this day they didn't work, but met for trade and religious festivals.
The Jews followed their example, but kept every seventh day for religious purposes. In this way the week came into existence. It was the space between market days. The Jews gave each of the seven days a name, but it was really a number after the Sabbath day (which was Saturday). For example, Wednesday was called the fourth day (four days after Saturday).
When the Egyptians adopted the seven-day week, they named the days after five planets, the sun, and the moon. The Romans used the Egyptian names for their days of the week: the day of the sun, of the moon, of the planet Mars, of Mercury, of Jupiter, of Venus, and of Saturn.
We got our names for the days not from the Romans but from the Anglo-Saxons, who called most of the days after their own Gods, which were roughly the same as the Gods of the Romans. The day of the sun became Sunnandaeg, or Sunday. The day of the moon was called Monandaeg, or Monday. The day of the Mars became the day of Tiw, who was their God of war. This became Tiwesdaeg, or tuesday. Instead of Mercury's name, that of the God Woden was given to Wednesday. The Romans day of Jupiter, the thunderer, became the day of the thunder god Thor, and this became Thursday. The next day was named for Frigg, the wife of their God Odin, and so we have the Friday. The day of Saturn became Saeternsdaeg, a translation from the Romans, and then Saturday.
A day, by the way, used to be counted as the space between the sunrise and sunset. The Romans counted it as from midnight to midnight, the most modern nations use this method.
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How did the Calendar begin?

When men first began to plant seeds and harvest crops, they noticed that t he time for planting came at a regular time each year. Then they tried to count how many days came between one planting time and the next. This was man's first attempt to find out how long a year was!
The ancient Egyptians were the first to measure a year with any exactness. They knew that the best time to plant was right after the Nile River overflowed each year. Their priests noticed that between each overflowing the moon rose 12 times. So they counted 12 moonths or months, and figured out when the Nile would rise again.
But it still wasn't exact enough. At last the Egyptian priests noticed that each year, about the time of the flood, a certain bright star would rise just before the sun rose. They counted the days that passed before this happened again and found that it added up to 365 days. This was 6,000 years ago, and before that no one had ever known that there were 365 days in a year! The Egyptians divided this year into 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 extra days at the end of the year. Thus they invented the first calendar.
Eventually, the calendar was based not on the moon (lunar calendar) but on the number of days (365 1/4) it takes the earth to go around the sun (solar calendar). The extra quarter of day began to cause more and more confusion. Finally, Julius Caesar decided to straighten it all out. He ordered that the year 46 B.C. should have 445 days to "catch up", and that every year from then on was to have year of 366 days to use up the fraction left over in each ordinary year.
But as time went on it was discovered that Easter and other holy days were not coming where they belonged in the seasons. Too many "extra" days had piled up. In the year 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decided to do something about it. He ordered that ten days should be dropped from the year 1582. And keep the calendar accurate for all the future time, he ordered that leap year should be skipped in the least year of every century unless that year could be divided by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but the year 2000 will be a leap year!
This system is called the Gregorian calendar and is now used all over the world for everyday purposes, though various religions still use their own calendar for religious purposes!
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Why is there daylight saving time?

Let's say a person gets up at 7:00 in the morning and goes to bed at 11:00 in the night. He comes home from work about 6:30, and by the time he's finished with dinner it's after 8:00. He steps outside in the summer to relax- but its already getting dark! Not much time to enjoy the summer day.
Now suppose you set the clock ahead one hour. This person still does everything at the same hour- but this time, when he steps out at 8:00 o'clock there's still plenty of light to enjoy. An hour of day light has been "saved" for him.
Daylight saving time doesn't, of course , add any hour to a day. That's impossible. All it does is increase the number of useful hours of daylight during the seasons when the sun rises early.
Daylight saving is most popular in cities. It permits the closing of offices, shops, and factories at the end of the working day while the sun is still high. Farmers, who do their work by sun time, usually do not observe daylight saving time. They cannot work in the field before the morning dew has dried or after it appears in the evening.
Did you know who first thought of daylight saving time? It was Benjamin Franklin! When he was living in France in the 18th century, he suggested the idea to the people in Paris. But it was not adopted then.
Daylight saving laws were first passed during World War 1. At this time, fuel for generating electricity was scarce, and so it was necessary to save on artificial light. With the daylight saving, the bedtime of many people comes son after it gets dark, while without it, if they stay up until the same hour they may have to use artificial light.
The first country to adopt daylight saving time was Germany in 1915. Then England used it in 1916, and the United States adopted it in 1918.

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Does the whole world have time zones?

Now that we can travel so fast by jet plane over big distances, the differences in time have become even more startling. We can leave New York at a certain hour, for example, and arrive in Los Angeles just a little while later-on the clock.
The reason for this is that the U.S.A. is divided into time zones. This division was adopted in 1833, when the United States was divided into four time belts or zones-Eastern, central, mountain, and Pacific.
The division was based on meridians, the imaginary lines that run around the earth through the North and South Poles. The time kept in each belt varies exactly an hour from the belt next to it. And the time kept everywhere within each belt is exactly the same.
As you move from one belt to another, going east, the time advances an hour. If you go west, it goes back an hour. But the time belts do not follow perfectly straight lines. The reason for this is that some community may be closely linked with an area very near it and wish to keep the same time. For example, Georgia, most of Florida, and the lower peninsula of Michigan could all be in the central time zone, but they include themselves in the Eastern zone.
The whole world is divided into time zones exactly as the United States is. Every 15 degrees as one goes around the world, in terms of meridians, there is a new time zone. Where does the measuring start?
It starts in Greenwich, England, which has 0-degree meredian running through it. As you move east from Greenwich, you add an hour to Greenwich time every 15 degrees. As you move west from Greenwich, you subtract an hour from Greenwich time in the same way.
So when it is 12:00 noon in Greenwich, it is 4:00 in the morning in California, because you have moved west nine 15-degrees interval, and it is 2:00 in the afternoon in Egypt, beause you have moved east two 15-degrees intervals.
Exactly on the opposite side of the world from Greenwich is an imaginary line called "the International Date Line". If you cross this line moving west, you "lose" a whole day, and if you cross it moving east, you "gain" a whole day.

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