Friday, May 8, 2009

Why Was Washington Made The Capital Of The United States?

After the American Revolution the United States needed a capital city. The selection of the site resulted from a compromise. Various cities and sections of the country wanted the honor of being the nation’s capital.

It was finally decided to create a new city. Congress passed a bill in 1790 giving permission for a site to be chosen. It was somewhere near the Potomac River and not over ten miles square. The ten- mile square section of the land was to be called the District of Columbia, after Christopher Columbus; and the city to be built on it was to be named Washington, in honor of the country’s first president.

In 1791 George Washington chose the place where the city now stands. He thought it was a good location because

The Potomac river was deep enough for ships to come as far as the city.

The land was given to the federal government by the states of Maryland and Virginia . About 64 square miles were given by Maryland and about 36 square miles by Virginia. Later , in 1846, the land given by Virginia was returned to the state at her request.

By 1800 the president's house was nearly completed.The capitol was built on a hill,renamed capitol hill,for the building in which congress was to meet.In 1800 President John Adam and other member of the government moved to the new federal city,Washington,D.C.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Why do we have April Fools’ Day?

Some customs, holidays, and traditions are very hard to trace to their beginnings. We just do it and can’t explain why? April fool’s Day, and how it originated, has explained in several ways, but no one is quite sure.
First of all, there is a day like our April fool’s Day in nearly all parts of the world. It is a day when practical jokes are played on friends and neighbors, like sending them on foolish errands or tricking them in to doing silly things.
It is believed that our April fool’s Day started with the French. When the calendar was reformed, the first nation to adopt the reformed calendar was France. Charles IX ordered, in 1564, that the year should begin with the 1st of January. Until then, New Year’s visits and the exchange of New Year’s gifts have been associated with the 1st of April.
Now, after Charles issued his decree, all this became associated with the 1st of January. But there were many people who objected to the change and refused to go along with it. The other people made fun of them for this.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Who Invented Traffic Signals?

Did you know that traffic was a problem long before the age of the automobiles? Julius Caesar probably the first government official on record to order a traffic control regulation. He passed a law that no women was to drive a chariot in Rome!
After the coming of the automobile, the first traffic controllers were foot patrolmen, directing traffic by hand. Then they were given hand-operated traffic lights. It was not until the early 1920’s that automatic traffic lights were first used.
But these lights left an important problem unsolved. The amount of traffic passing through an intersection changes at different times of the day..
In 1927 two men patented “traffic-acuated” controllers. These were traffic lights designed to adjust to the amount of traffic passing through an intersection at a given time. One of these lights, invented by Harry Haugh of yale university, was first installed in New Haven, Connecticut, in April, 1928.
This device worked by means of pressure detectors in the road pavement. A car passing over a detector signaled the “call box” on the light pole, which caused the light to turn green for the approaching vehicle. This type of traffic light, with some changes, is still widely used today.
Charles Adler, also in 1928, invented a traffic light that used a microphone to activate the call box. When a motorist, facing a red light, blew his horn, the microphone transmitted the sound to the call box. Which caused the light to change. Today, there are other type of traffic controllers that used sound to change the light.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Why Were School Started?

From the time of the cavemen, human beings have always taught what they knew to their young. If they had not, no child would have survived. He would not have known which animals were dangerous, which plant were good to eat, or how to make a fire to keep warm.
After many centuries man learned to write down what he knew. In this way he could save up more knowledge and pass it on to his children and grandchildren.
Once systems of writing had been invented, schools began. The earliest schools we know about were in Mesopotamia and Egypt three thousands to four thousand years ago.
So schools were started to pass on knowledge and to help prepare young people for living in the world. But the way society was set up in most places in ancient times, it was felt that schools and a good education were not for all young people. In Egypt, for example, there were higher levels of education for young men who were going to be priests, government officials, architects, or doctors. Only a very few young men received this much education.
Another ancient people, the Hebrews, had a long tradition of education. When they were an independent nation, the father of each family taught his sons the history of their people, their laws, and their religion. Later, when the Hebrews were conquered by outsider, they were afraid that their own customs and beliefs might be lost. They set up formal schools where everybody, rich or poor , was taught the language, the religion, and the history of the Jews. This was probably the first time in human history that formal education was given to rich and poor alike.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Who Invented Comic Books?

The comic strip is usually found in daily newspapers. It is made up of three or more picture panels telling a story with one or more characters. Comic books are extensions of comic strips into magazines. Each magazine is about one set of characters and the pictures tell a complete story.
While the first newspaper comic strip appeared in 1892, it was not until 1911 that an entire publication was devoted to comics-a comic book. That year the Chicago American offered reprints of Bud Fisher’s “Mutt and Jeff” in pamphlet form.
Some present-day comics originate with strip cartoons in newspapers. If these cartoons become very popular then collection of them are published. But more often, now, comic books are published at regular intervals, usually weekly or monthly.
Comic books are not all humorous stories. The types of comic books issued include: adventure, animal, biography, detective, fantasy-mystery, history, humor, military, religion, romance, satire, science-fiction, teen-age, and western.
Some types, such as adventure and humor, sell better, so there are more of them. The popularity of comic books,however, has led all kinds of groups to use comic books to tell a story. Many companies use comic books to tell the story behind a product or the history of their company. Comic books are also published to explain complicated subjects, to dramatize public needs, or to give the history of a particular event. So “comic books” can be as varied as the subject matter and the purpose behind them.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Why Is Speed At Sea Measured In Knots?

When ships first ventured out to sea, they had no sure way of knowing their location. Eventually, this was done by finding the latitude and longitude of the place. Latitude is distance north or south of the equator. Longitude tells how far east or west a place is. It was decided that zero degrees longitude would be the longitude line that goes through Greenwich, England.
To get an idea of their longitude, early ships first calculated how far they had traveled in a certain period of time.They used a “log” to find this out. It was a log of wood, weighted at one end, with the other end fixed to a long piecep of rope. The log, thrown over the stern of the ships, floated, and the rope was let out as the ship sailed on. The speed of the ship could be calculated by seeing how much rope had been let out in a given time.
In later years, knots were tied at equal distances along the rope. A sailor counted how many knots passed through his hands in a certain time. This gave the speed of the ship. Sailors came to use the word “knots” to mean the speed of the ship.
Today, a knot has come to mean one nautical, or a sea, mile per hours. A nautical mile equals 6076. I feet, a little more than a land mile. Suppose a ship is sailing at a speed of 15 knots. This means that it is sailing at a speed of 15 nautical miles an hour.
Logs are still used to show how fast a ship is traveling . But today the logs are specials metal rods with flat blades around them. As the ship sails through the water, the metal rod rotates and twists the rope round and round. The spinning rope works a device back on the ship that shows the actual speed.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

FrostWire 4.17

FrostWire 4.17 is derived from well known LimeWire PRO Gnutella/Bittorrent client. As we know that LimeWire is the fastest P2P transferring application. FrostWire with all the qualities and feature from LimeWire along with some add-ons is emerging as an powerful down loader.
As it has got the same source code as LimeWire, the features like anti-adware and spyware, inbuilt Bittorent support etc. are included by default. Moreover it is having a different interface than LimeWire with blue colors, snazzy icons with rounded edges and some extra options to aid in downloading. It has a default FrostWire player and an optional ASK toolbar. It supports Windows 2000/XP and Vista with Java Run time Environment 1.6.