Zippy Facts
Which Explorers First Explored the Continents of the World?
Who was La Salle? Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, was born in 1643 and studied in Jesuit schools to become a priest. But lured by the opportunity of adventure and fortune in North America, the 22-year-old Frenchman traveled to Montreal, a city on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. He cleared a patch…
What was the European Age of Exploration?
We know of many explorers and travelers from the Middle East, Africa, and China before the 1400s. But during the fifteenth century, advances in exploration occurred in a relative backwater of the world—western Europe. At the dawn of the 1400s, most Europeans tilled the soil and had little knowledge of the world beyond their villages.…
Who Were the First Explorers of Ancient Civilization?
Thousands of years ago, vast empires rose and fell in Egypt, Greece, Italy, the Middle East, northern Africa, China, and India. Bold explorers from these civilizations, such as Pytheas and Hanno, ventured into unknown lands and seas. Most of them searched for new trade routes or places to settle. Today, scholars have limited knowledge of…
5 Greatest Inventions in the Last 500 Years
Dancing How glad you are about the invention of dancing will depend largely on whether or not you’re any good at it. Dancing Queen. Of course, no one knows who was the first person to start tapping their feet in time to some music or the site of the world’s first dance floor. But we…
10 Inventions That We Can’t Live Without
The Language Decoder A language decoder would be an incredible tool to have at your disposal —you’d be able to converse with everyone, no matter where they came from and what language they spoke! It may sound like science fiction, but the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a version of…
15 Inventions You Wish You Invented
The Ejector Seat Although it looks funny in action, the ejector seat has saved thousands of lives since its invention in the middle of the 20th century. Supersonic Seats. An ejector seat is designed to catapult the pilot and crew out of a plane in an emergency, inflate a parachute once the seat is clear…
The Best 20 Inventions Ever Invented
Fizzy Drinks Too many fizzy drinks can be bad for you, but the first manufactured fizzy drinks were just bubbles in water, which isn’t so bad for you, just flavorless. A Glass of Bubbly. The fizz in fizzy drinks is dissolved carbon dioxide (the same gas you breathe out). No one really invented fizzy drinks…
Top 25 Inventions That Changed Our Lives Forever
Sliced Bread You often hear things referred to as the best thing since sliced bread’. But when was sliced bread invented, and why is it such a good thing? Bread: Who Kneads It? You wouldn’t have thought that inventing a machine to slice bread would be that difficult. Yet one man spent 16 years of…
Top 25 Inventions That Changed the World
Photography Most people keep photos as a reminder of special people and moments. Unfortunately, photos can also remind us of all our bad hair days and fashion blunders. Say Cheese. People have known how to project images using a pinhole camera for thousands of years, they were using them in China 2,500 years ago. But…