World History
Why Do We Drive on the Right Side of the Road?
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Article
When it comes to transportation, Americans and Brits have one thing in common: They both consider the other to be driving on the wrong side of the road. But how did it come to this? Today, only about a third of the world’s countries drive on the left side of the road, including Britain and many of its former colonies, such as Australia, India, Pakistan, Jamaica, and South Africa. The United States, however, bucked this colonial trend. To understand why the U.S. drives on the right, we have to travel back long before cars existed ...Read More
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World HistoryArticle70The History of Calendars, in 7 Facts
Humans never stopped working to perfect how we mark the passage of time.
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World HistoryArticle475 of the Longest Wars in History
War rarely follows a strict schedule. Fighting flares, subsides, and then sometimes flares up again, and a peace agreement that seems decisive can fall apart. Determining the longest war in…
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World HistoryFact20People wore tiny perfume holders around their necks to survive bad city smells.
The past probably didn’t smell as bad as we tend to think, but there are certainly exceptions. European cities, for example, tended to be quite, shall we say, fragrant in…
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World HistoryFact88Kids used to gather to watch giant blocks of ice being delivered.
Before electric refrigerators became standard kitchen equipment in the U.S., the arrival of the iceman was a familiar neighborhood event. Horse-drawn wagons carried huge blocks of ice through American streets,…
