Fact-based How It Started
Play-Doh Began Life as a Wallpaper Cleaner
Before it was squashed into dinosaurs and pretend pizzas, the world's favourite modelling dough was sold for rubbing soot off wallpaper.
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Fact-based Word Journeys
The Word Tomato Was Born in the Language of the Aztecs
Tomato, tomate and the Russian tomat all grew from one Aztec word, tomatl, while Russian also kept a second name that means golden apples.
Fact-based How It Started
The Tiny Pocket on Your Jeans Was Made for a Watch
That little pocket tucked inside the front pocket of your jeans is older than phones, earbuds and even wristwatches: it was made to carry a pocket watch.
Fact-based Word Journeys
The Word Robot Was Born in a Czech Play, Thanks to a Painter Brother
Robot, the Russian robot and the Spanish robot all come from a single stage play written in Prague in 1920, where a writer's brother suggested an old Czech word for hard, dull work.
Fact-based Weird Facts
You Cannot See the Great Wall of China From the Moon
It is one of the most repeated facts in the world, and it is wrong: from the Moon the wall is invisible, and even from orbit it is so hard to spot that astronauts argue about it.
Fact-based How It Started
The First Jigsaw Puzzle Was a Map for Teaching Geography
Long before there were puzzles of kittens and lighthouses, a London mapmaker glued a map of Europe onto a thin wooden board and cut it up so that children could learn where every country went.
Fact-based Word Journeys
Tea, Té and Chai Are One Chinese Word That Took Two Roads
English and Spanish say tea and té, Russian says chai, and all three are the same Chinese word, split in two by whether it travelled west on a ship or on the back of a camel.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Oxford University Is Older Than the Aztec Empire
Students were being taught in Oxford more than two hundred years before the city of Tenochtitlan was founded, and over three centuries before the Aztec Empire took shape.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Scotland's National Animal Is the Unicorn
Other countries picked eagles, bears and lions, and Scotland chose a creature nobody has ever seen, then kept it in golden chains just to be on the safe side.
Fact-based How It Started
Bubble Wrap Began as a Wallpaper Nobody Wanted
Two inventors sealed a pair of plastic shower curtains together in 1957 hoping to make stylish textured wallpaper, and it took them years and a computer to find out what they had really made.