Fixing your floor



  •  Give scratched floors the boot



Light scratches in wooden floors can often be successfully camouflaged with shoe polish. Just be sure to shop around and find the best colour match for your floor. Apply the polish with a soft cloth, let it dry, and then buff with a slightly dampened rag for a quick and easy cover-up.




  •  Iron off a broken tile



To lift a damaged vinyl tile, cover it with a cloth, and then give it a rub-down with an iron on a medium setting. Use slow, even strokes. The heat from the iron will eventually loosen the adhesive and the tile, making it easy for you to prise it up with a filling knife. If you don't have an iron on hand, try using a hair dryer.




  •  Tiles on the move



Do you find that your carpet tiles have a tendency to move around and not stay put? Use double-sided adhesive tape to hold them in place. You don't need to stick down all the tiles — just a few key ones and they should hold the others in check.




  •  Repair carpet



If you have Berber carpet with a number of unsightly pulls, squeeze a bit of latex adhesive into the base of the loose stitch and push it back into place. If the pulled stitch is very long, trim it down with a sharp knife or scissors before gluing. With looped pile you may need to thread a toothpick through a loop to keep it free of adhesive.




  •  Renew a burned carpet



To remove slight burns and singes from carpet, use tweezers to lift the threads and then carefully slice off the charred tips with sharp scissors, a razor blade or utility knife. Trim the threads as little as possible to avoid leaving an indentation. The longer and denser the carpet material, the better your results are likely to be.




  •  Stone-cold clean



Tools covered with flooring adhesive can be really hard to clean. Instead of scrubbing, place them in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer overnight. In the morning, the glue will be rock solid and can easily be chipped off using a hammer and chisel. Always wear goggles to protect your eyes from any airborne shards.



Credit: Reader's Digest



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Walls and ceilings



  •  White-out wall and ceiling flaws



A small bottle of white correction fluid such as Liquid Paper can be incredibly handy in more ways than one. What you may not know is that it's even more useful around the home for covering up small stains and blemishes on white walls, mouldings and ceilings. Simply dab it on the defect, and it's gone. When touching up glossy surfaces, coat the dried correction fluid with a little clear nail polish.




  •  Fix small cracks



Don't repaint a ceiling expecting to cover up a few small cracks. Hairline cracks need to be checked and repaired. Use a utility knife to open up the cracks, brushing away all dust. Fill with quality plaster filler and then smooth over the patch with 180-grit abrasive paper before sealing and painting.




  •  Wipe away wallpaper paste



Removing old wallpaper can be a pain, but what's even worse is contending with old wallpaper paste. A window squeegee can make the job a lot easier and neater. Dip the squeegee into a bucket of very hot water; add 1 cup (250ml) vinegar for extra-strength paste. Use the spongy side to apply the solution to the wall; then flip it over and use the blade to remove the glue. Then wipe the glue off the blade frequently with a damp rag.




  •  Cover nail holes without filler



If you run out of filler, take a look in your bathroom before heading off to a hardware shop. A little bit of plain white toothpaste should do the job. You can also fill small holes in plasterboard with a paste of equal parts of bicarbonate of soda and woodworking adhesive. Or you could mix 2 tablespoons salt and 2 tablespoons cornflour with just enough water to make stiff putty.




  •  Stick on a patch



Some people think that the lack of wall studs makes it far more difficult to patch a hole in plasterboard. But they're wrong. In fact, all that's needed is a couple of thin slats of timber about 25mm wide, manoeuvred through the hole and held in place against the back of the plasterboard by a combination of cornice adhesive and plasterboard screws. A piece of string tied through a hole in the middle will prevent you losing the timber slats down the wall. Once the slats are in place, a matching plasterboard patch can be stuck or screwed in place and damage made good with wall filler.




  •  Find a wall stud with a shaver



If you don't have an electronic stud finder, use an electric shaver instead. Switch on the shaver and place it flush against the wall. Move it slowly over the wall, and note the sound of its hum. When the shaver moves over a stud, the pitch of the buzz will rise.




  •  Secure a screw



A screw set into a wall without a plastic plug may work loose over time as the hole surrounding it expands. Take up the slack by cutting one or two twist ties into strips that are equal in length to the screw. Bunch them together in your fingers, stuff the hole and then reset the screw. If the hole has significantly widened, opt for oversized plastic plugs in masonry walls to match or toggle bolts in plasterboard walls.




  •  Banish ceiling stains



Get rid of ugly ceiling stains by putting on a pair of gloves and goggles, then aiming a long-handled sponge mop moistened with equal parts water and sugar soap at the ceiling. Simply scrub until the stains are gone.




  •  Match a patch



When repairing damaged textured coating on a section of ceiling, it's worth putting in the extra effort to do the job properly. Once the coating is level, try to match the texture of the surrounding ceiling. You can usually come pretty close by applying some gentle touches with a small scrubbing brush, a pocket comb or a dry abrasive sponge.




He told me that he hates me



My friend is studying in another class of the same school as I am. I teased him by spreading rumours for fun. Normally, he doesn’t take it seriously, but this time he did. I said sorry but he is not responding, and not listening to me. I gave him a letter to know if he wants to be my friend or not but he tore it up. He spoke to me using foul language and called me names. I was heart-broken when he told me that he hates me.



Spreading rumours means spreading false stories or lies about someone. And it can have very serious effects when you cross a limit, as you have seen with your friend. Unfortunately, you seem to be feeling more heart-broken that he hates you, rather than remorseful that you hurt him. Perhaps you thought it was not such a big deal, but for your friend it certainly was.



If you focus more on your friend’s feelings, you will realize that even though you said sorry, you have not really shown him that you truly feel bad about what you did. Giving him a letter asking him to ‘decide’ whether he wanted to be your friend is a ‘thinking’ thing that is pushing his feelings of hurt aside. It would have been better to have just apologized and shown him that you care about him and that you are truly sorry for your actions.



At present, it is best to leave your friend alone and respect his decision about whether he wants to be your friend or not. Going forward, it would be nice if you were more sensitive to and considerate about others’ feelings. Maintain healthy boundaries and you will enjoy mutual respect and love.



 



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Delightful DIY door fixes



  •  Get the lead in



Forget about oil, which can do more harm than good to a stuck lock. The best lubricant for a lock's inner mechanism is graphite, and a good source of graphite is pencil lead. Rub a sharpened, soft lead pencil (B or HB) repeatedly against the matching key, then insert it several times into the lock. Perform this trick twice a year to keep locks in top working condition.




  •  Remove a broken key



It happens all the time: keys get old and bent and end up breaking off inside the lock. If you can't enter your house or flat through another door, go to a neighbour to borrow a couple of items before calling a locksmith. First, try removing the broken piece with tweezers. If that won't work, apply a tiny drop of Superglue to the end of the piece that's still on your key chain. Line it up with the part inside the lock, and carefully insert it. Hold it in place for 40-60 seconds and then slowly pull out the key.




  •  Light up your lock



To solve the problem of having to come home to a dark verandah, then feeling around for the lock on your front door, dab a few drops of luminous paint around the keyholes of your exterior locks using a cotton bud or small paintbrush. Do the same for any locking bolts on the inside of your house as well, which will make exiting much easier in the event of a power failure, fire or other emergency.




  •  Polish a loose doorknob



A wobbly doorknob is often the result of a loose setscrew (a tiny screw found on the doorknob shank), which keeps the knob firmly in place on the spindle. Everyday usage can cause setscrews to become loosened, but you can keep them in place by brushing a little clear nail polish onto each screw after you have tightened them.




  •  Pamper a noisy hinge



Is a squeaking door hinge making you feel unhinged? A few drops of baby oil applied around the pin should solve the problem. When you can't find any baby oil and you are out of WD-40, a bit of cooking spray, petroleum jelly or even shaving cream could also be used to silence a squeaky hinge.




  •  Re-fix a hinge screw



A loose hinge will cause a door to stick or become difficult to open or close. Tightening the hinge screws usually solves the problem, but if an undamaged screw won't grip, it means the hole has become worn.



To fix it, slide a magazine or two under the opened door to prop it up, if necessary, and then remove the screws from the loose side of the hinge so that it can be folded back. Loosely fill the screw hole with wooden toothpicks or matchsticks that have been dipped in some woodworking adhesive. Keep them flush with the frame by trimming off any protruding ends with a utility knife. When you screw back the hinge, the extra wood should hold the screw firmly in place.




  •  Pop goes the rusted bolt



Loosen a rusted bolt by rubbing it with a few tablespoons of a fizzy drink.




  •  Unstick a stuck door



If a door sticks because it rubs against the floor or threshold, try this simple fix. Gaffer-tape all four edges of a coarse sheet of sandpaper to the floor where the door rubs, then open and close the door back and forth over the sandpaper until it swings smoothly.



A door that is sticking in its frame (because of too much painting or because it has swollen) can be cured by using an electric plane, hand plane or belt sander to remove the high spots from the door where it is binding. Re-paint after removing the offending wood.




Window wizardry



  •  Rub out window scratches with toothpaste



Squeeze a small amount of toothpaste onto a soft cotton cloth and vigorously polish the scratch for a minute or two. Wipe off the excess with a damp rag and the scratch should be gone. Be sure to use plain white paste — no gels or striped varieties. You can also use an extra-whitening toothpaste or tooth powder; most have higher amounts of abrasive.




  •  Stop cracks in their tracks



You can buy yourself some time before replacing a cracked window by applying a couple of coats of clear nail polish over the crack on both sides of the window. Once dry, the polish should seal any holes in the glass and contain the damage.




  •  Stifle a rattle with a matchbook



A rattling sash window is bound to rattle your nerves, especially when you're trying to sleep. Silence the racket with a small folding book of matches. Slide the thin end of the matchbook in between the sash and the loose corner of the window frame. Wedge it in as far as you can, but leave at least a third of the matchbook exposed for easy removal. Then give the window a few light tugs to make sure it won't shake on blustery nights.




  •  Plug a draughty window leak



A draughty window is guaranteed to suck out precious heat from your home and raise your fuel bills. What can you do if it's winter and you don't have a sealant gun (or the one you have has dried up)? It's simple. Once you've located the source of the draught (it's often along the top of the lower sash or in a corner between the sash and window frame) take two paper towels, sandwich them together, and fold them up from the bottom 25mm at a time until you have a thick padded strip. Lay the pad over the air leak and secure it on all sides with masking tape.




  •  Straighten that sag



Hinged windows can sag when corner joints have weakened. A quick fix is to add flat L-shaped steel corner plates, which cost very little, with matching countersunk screws. From the outside, with the window closed, drive wooden wedges between the window and its frame to close up any loose joints (or to raise a dropped window), and simply screw the plates in place over the corners. Apply metal primer and topcoat to prevent the plate rusting.




  •  Removable secondary glazing



If you have single-glazed windows, you can halve the heat lost through them by fixing plastic-sheet double glazing. The plastic sheet can be ordered cut exactly to size and is held in place with a magnetic strip secured to the window and a matching metal strip secured to the frame. The strips need to be cut to length (with sharp scissors or a utility knife) and the backing paper peeled off as they are applied. Unlike film double glazing, sheet glazing can be applied just to the window (so it still opens) and it can be removed in summer when it's no longer needed.





Credit: Reader's Digest



Picture Credit: Google




He treats me as his sister



I have a crush on a boy who is my neighbour. I know him since childhood as we used to play together with other children, too. As time passed we stopped talking, and I don’t know why, but I still like him. Now he has gone away for his studies and I desperately wait for him. I’ve cried for him a lot. I really want him but he treats me as his sister. This is affecting my performance in studies. I tried a lot to forget him since two years but I am unable to do so.



You seem to have a crush on a phantom from the past and not a real person of today. While this is causing you so much emotional pain, you are chasing an idea of a person, and not the person himself. It is as though you are walking forward with your head facing backwards!



Imagine if you meet a new friend and she or he finds that there is only a love-struck zombie in you, then she or he won’t be able to connect with you or exchange ideas and views, share thoughts, feelings and experiences, listen to you and be listened to, and have fun together. The person will be so disappointed.



Wake up and see that there is much to look forward to. Your family and existing friends would like your full attention. Once you’re done with school, there is college to go to; perhaps get-together and weddings to attend and new people to meet…the future can be quite exciting…if you let it!



So, let the ghost of this boy go. Come back to the ‘present’…you’re missing out so much!



 



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Hints for cyclists



  •  Shine your bike with furniture polish



Once your bike is clean, you may want to shine it up. Instead of using liquid or paste wax and spending time applying the wax to the bike's various tubes, joints and hard-to-reach spots, all you really need to do is spray the bike all over with a furniture polish containing wax —something you may well have around the house.




  •  Salt-and-lemon juice rust buster



Salt can cause metal to rust — yet it can also be used to remove rust. If any rust spots appear on the handlebars or wheel rims of your bike, try this home remedy. In a small container, mix ¼ cup (60g) salt with 2 tablespoons lemon juice to make a paste. Apply the paste to the rusted area with a dry cloth and rub it in. Rinse and then dry thoroughly and step back to admire your rust-free bike.




  • Maintain your chain with WD-40



The hardest part of a bicycle to clean is the chain. But you can make the job easier with a little WD-40. Turn the bike upside down and spray some WD-40 onto a soft clean cloth. Rub the chain with the cloth a few links at a time. Then move the pedals forwards to work on a new section of chain.



Once the entire chain is clean, carefully dislodge it from the chain ring (the metal toothed wheel that engages it) and use a screwdriver or blunt knife to remove any dirt that may be lodged between the chain ring's teeth. Once that is done, use a cloth to polish between the teeth with a back-and-forth flossing motion and then replace the chain.




  •  Spray for a smooth ride



To keep the chain of your bicycle well lubricated, spray it with WD-40 and wipe off any excess with a soft cloth. You can also spray WD-40 into the cables and bearings to drive out moisture and also on the springs in the seat to eliminate squeaking. Finally, spray the frame of the bike to keep dust from sticking to it.




  •  Repair a slash with a folded paper



If a sharp rock or anything else in the road slashes a tyre, you can patch the puncture in the inner tube, but it will bulge out through the slash in the tyre when you try to ride. After patching the inner tube, prevent it from bulging by folding a thickish piece of paper — it could be a paper note — into at least four layers and tucking it between the inner tube and the slash in the tyre. This quick fix should hold for at least a short ride home.




  • Let nature help you with a flat tyre



 If you get a flat tyre while cycling and don't have a repair kit with you, completely deflate the tyre, turn the bike upside down and pull one side of the damaged tyre out from the rim of the wheel. A good way to work it out is with the wide end of a house key, but any dull metal object will do. Once the tyre is loose around one side, find some leaves and grass along the roadside and stuff them inside the rim. Then squeeze the tyre back into place and ride straight home. The repair will allow you to ride (carefully) for a while, but not for long, so repair the flat properly as soon as possible.




  •  Baby powder for a smoother ride



If you're a motorcyclist who likes to deck yourself out in leather before taking to the road, sprinkle the bike seat with baby powder before you mount. The fine powder will make it easier for you to slide freely from side to side on the seat, assuring a smooth ride.




  •  Keep your visor fog free



To keep a motorcycle helmet visor from fogging up on the road, put a drop of washing-up liquid on the inside, then rub it over the whole surface with your finger until it's no longer visible.




  •  Motorbike wash-time protectors



If your motorcycle gets caked with mud and grease from the road, you will probably want to hose it down. Be careful to keep the pressurized water away from the cables and controls. The easiest way to do this is to cover them with plastic. Save the plastic sleeves that often come with mail-out magazines and catalogues, and slip them over the handlebars before washing your bike. To keep water out of the ignition lock, put a piece of masking tape over the keyhole.




Credit: Reader's Digest



Picture Credit: Google



A clean and tidy garage and driveway



  •  Avoid nicks with carpet



If your garage is cramped and you tend to bump your car door on the wall when you get out, attach carpet offcuts to the garage wall where the door hits. The carpet will soften the blow and prevent nicks and dents.




  •  Install a bumper



If you need to reverse your car all the way into the garage until it almost hits the back wall, fix an old tyre onto the wall at bumper height. If you do reverse in a little too far, your bumper will hit the pliant tyre and save both the car and the wall from damage.




  •  A combination work seat and tool caddy



If you're tinkering with something on a low part of your car, you may find it hard to keep squatting or kneeling as you work, when in fact you don't need to. Instead, make an easily constructed combination seat-tool caddy out of a sturdy plastic crate or wooden box. Bolt a 2 x 7-cm strip of wood onto two parallel sides of the underside of the box or crate. At the ends of each strip, attach screw-cap casters. You can now store your tools inside the crate or box — and you can sit on top of the caddy as you work. Just be sure to put the lid on — or put a sheet of plywood on top of the box to use as a seat.




  •  Slide right under on vinyl



You don't have to buy a special trolley to work under your car. Simply place a 1.2 x 1.5-m scrap of vinyl flooring on your garage floor or driveway pavement — shiny side up — and park the car over it; keep a metre or so of the vinyl protruding from under the car. Lie on your back on the vinyl and you have a slippery mat that lets you easily slide underneath the car.




  •  Prevent spots leaving stains



Many garages and driveways are spoiled by unsightly — and sometimes dangerously slippery — grease stains from oil leaks or greasy tools. Prevent stains when you work by covering the area with newspaper or paper bags. If your car is leaking even a little oil, place an unopened brown paper bag or a flattened cardboard box under the leak and replace as necessary.




  •  Contain dust with newspaper



Before sweeping out a dusty area of the garage, shred a bunch of old newspaper, dampen it with warm water and scatter it around the area. The soggy paper will keep the dust from rising and resettling as you're sweeping.




  •  Stop water seeping through a garage door



If water sometimes seeps in through your garage door during heavy rainfall, spray the seal on the door with WD-40. The seepage should stop, even when the rain doesn't.



Credit: Reader's Digest



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I want to take up a career in chemical engineering



I am a student of Class X. I want to take up a career in chemical engineering. What study plans should I opt for? I want to make a career in this field abroad. Which countries will provide better opportunities?



Chemical engineers design equipment and develop processes for the manufacture of chemicals in chemical plants. They plan and test methods of manufacturing products and supervise their production. A graduate degree in a respective field, i.e., Bachelor in Engineering (B.E.)/Bachelor in Technology (Bach.) courses is the minimum requirement to enter this field. Admission to these four-year courses in different colleges/ institutes is made on the basis of admission tests for which the basic eligibility is 10+2 with physics, chemistry and mathematics. These tests evaluate students' aptitude, ability, knowledge and application of the subjects.



 



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I have aspirations to become a chartered accountant



I am presently studying in Class IX and have aspirations to become a chartered accountant. I am confused about the courses to take after the Class X board exams. Can you help me with the courses I can go for?



Eligibility for becoming a chartered accountant is 10+2 in any stream. So you can take any combination of subjects in Class 11. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is the only institute to provide training in this field in India. The Institute imparts compulsory postal tuition for its various exams. Regional Councils and some of the Chapters of the Institute also conduct oral coaching classes for the benefit of the students.



 



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Where did beer bread come from?



Bread and beer both come from grain. Bread was made from wild wheat and barley in the Stone Age. Beer-making may have started as a byproduct of early bread-making. And no one knows whether the first grain was cultivated because of a need for bread or a taste for beer.



Stone mortars, pestles and grinding stones found on ancient sites indicate that people in the Middle East were making, some form of unleavened bread or mash with wild grain even before they knew how to make pottery.



With wild grain, it is difficult to separate the edible seed from the chaff — the outer sheath. Archaeologists believe that early people learned to split the chaff by parching the grain on hot stones while they were threshing it. Mixing the parched grain with water would have produced an edible mash. Unparched seeds may have been moistened and left to sprout, like bean shoots. Natural yeasts could have fermented the liquor left from such sprouting retaking it into beer.



The first people known to have grown their own grain were the Natufians who lived around Mount Carmel in what is now northern Israel. Research by a British archaeologist, Dr Romana Unger-Hamilton. in 1988, showed that they were using flint sickles to cut wheat and barley they had grown themselves as long as 13,000 years. She found sickles with scratch marks caused by dust, showing that the plants were reaped in cleared ground, not among natural vegetation where ground cover from other plants keeps the dust down.



The Sumerians, who lived in southern Mesopotamia (now mainly modem Iraq) around 5000 years ago, used about 40 per cent of their grain harvest to make beer of eight different flavours. About 1750 BC. King Hammurabi of Babylon, in southern Mesopotamia. Issued laws regulating the quality of beer to be sold in taverns.



 The ancient Egyptians were the first people known to have made leavened brew:, in about 2600 BC. They used wheat flour to keep a store of sour, fermented dough (sourdough) that was added to each mix to make the bread rise. Sourdough has been discovered by accident, when airborne yeast entered dough that had been mixed and put aside before baking. Later civilizations, such as the Celts, used foam from — the yeasty foam from fermenting beer - to leaven bread.



 



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How scientists can use pollen grains to determine past?



Microscopic grains of pollen are helping scientists to reconstruct the world's past. The tiny grains can explain how the environment has been changed by man, and how the climate fluctuated thousands of years ago.



One oak tree releases more than 100 million pollen grains into the air every year. Some smaller plants are even more prolific — the common sorrel of waysides and woodlands emits an incredible 400 million grains annually.



Most windborne pollen ends up on the ground and decays in the soil in the presence of oxygen. But some falls into lakes or bogs, where it is preserved because peat deposits and the sediment at the bottom of lakes contain no oxygen. Some of the grains last for many thousands of years and fossilise. As new layers of sediment are formed, they trap pollen from plants growing at the time.



This fossil pollen provides a 'book' that enables palaeobotanists — scientists who study ancient plant life — to build up a picture of the vegetation, and hence the climate, of the past few thousand years. Pollen grains vary in size from 15 to 50 thousandths of a millimetre across, and have individual structures varying from plant to plant that can be identified under the microscope. The grains' tough outer walls are preserved because they contain a decay-resistant protein. Fossil pollen is counted by taking a core sample (with a hollow cylindrical drill) from an organic deposit such as a peat bog. Then specimens are taken at regular intervals throughout the depth of the deposit and dated by radiocarbon dating.



The amount of pollen recovered in this way is very large. Samples taken have ranged from 20,000 grains per cubic centimetre from deposits made 11,000 years ago, to 650,000 grains per cubic centimetre a few thousand years later.



 From this huge quantity a representative sample of about 1000 grains is analysed, and the proportions of the various plants are calculated. Scientists can see, for example, in what way plants colonised the northern lands after the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. One of the first trees found was juniper, which thrives in cold climates. As the weather became warmer it was replaced by birch, then oak and elm. A change to a moister climate brought alder.



 It is also possible to see how people have influenced the vegetation by cutting down forests and growing crops. Pollen analysis carried out in 1987 on sediments from the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinnereth), in northern Israel, showed that oak forests were cleared about 5000 years ago to make way for olive trees, grown for their fruit and oil. In the 3rd century AD the number of olive trees declined when the Jews left Palestine.



 



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What are the three phases of Stonehenge?



Stonehenge was built in three distinct phases over a period of about 1700 years. Professor Gerald Hawkins, formerly of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, has estimated that the entire monument would have taken a total of about 1,500,000 working days to construct, and involved about 1000 workers at a time.



Phase I was begun about 2750 BC, nearly 200 years before the Egyptians started work on the Great Pyramid It is a circle some 380k (11.5m) across consisting of a low outer bank surrounding a ditch, with another bank about Oft (1.8m) high inside the ditch. Inside the inner hank, the Stone Age Britons dug 56 equally spaced pits, called the Aubrey Holes alter the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who first noticed them as slight clips in what they were for is not known.



There is an entrance on the side of the circle. Outside it block of rough sandstone about 16ft (5m) high, known today as the Heel Stone. The centre of the circle, you can see tile rise over it on Midsummer's Day.



Phase 11 of the construction began around 2100 BC, and was carried out by the Beaker Folk, who were so called because of the shape of their pottery. They erected 80 large bluish stones — known today as the bluestones — in two in-complete rings in the centre of the monument. They also built a wide road-way, now called the Avenue, leading north-east towards the River Avon about 2 miles (3km) away.



The bluestones came from the Preseli Mountains in south-west Wales, 130 miles (209km) distant, and were probably brought most of the way by water — loaded on rafts at Milford Haven and shipped up the estuary of the River Severn. By using a network of rivers, only a short overland journey was left, from Amesbury to Stonehenge along the Avenue.



Support for this theory was provided in 1988 when a bluestone block was discovered on the bed of the River Daugleddau at Llangwm in Dyfed. It is of similar size to those used at Stonehenge, and its position suggests that it could have sunk while being floated down the river to the sea. The pale green, broken Altar Stone, once standing but now lying flat among the central trilithons, came from the shores of Milford Haven, probably also by water.



Phase III, lasting from about 2000 to 1100 BC, was carried out by early Bronze Age people. They removed the bluestone circle and erected a ring of about 30 sandstone uprights (averaging 30 tons in weight), linked by stone lintels. The ring is 16ft (5m) high overall, and inside it they put up the five even taller trilithons. Finally they re-erected the bluestones in two groups.



The sandstones, or sarsens, came from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles (32km) away. They must have been manhandled on sledges, with oak logs used as rollers.



Professor Hawkins has calculated that 800 men would have been needed to haul one of the giant 50 ton sarsens. Another 200 would have had to clear the route and continually move the heavy oak rollers from the back of the stone to the front.



The upright sarsens were shaped with a slight bulge in the middle so that when viewed from below they would appear straight. The workmanship of the sarsen circle, which is about 100ft (30m) across, is such that the top is level all round. The lintels were cut in a curve so that when fitted together they made a circle.



The stones were shaped by chipping away at the surface with other stones. Larger lumps may have been split off by heating the stones along carefully marked lines, throwing cold water on them and then hitting them.



 



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What is the mystery of Stonehenge?


For more than 800 years, prehistoric people in southern Britain had used the exposed site on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire —today known as Stonehenge — as a place for their rituals. Over those eight centuries two circular banks of earth had been built and two incomplete circles of stones had been erected.



But in about 2000 BC, the most challenging task was still ahead. It was then that workers began the job of erecting the largest structures of Stonehenge — the five trilithons forming a horseshoe at the centre of the circle. Each consists of two 50 ton upright stones around 20ft (6m) high with a 7 ton stone resting across the top.



To set the first upright in the ground, the men dug a pit 8ft (2.4m) deep with one sloping side. They shifted the soil using deer antlers as picks and ox shoulder blades as shovels. Then they hauled the first 50 ton stone into position on wooden rollers, so that one end hung over the sloping wall of the pit. Dozens of men struggled to raise the other end of the stone. They levered it up with long wooden poles, and pushed logs underneath to support it and provide a fulcrum for the poles. As more and more logs were jammed under the stone, it began to tilt, until at last it slid off the logs and down the sloping side of the pit. The huge stone must have thudded with tremendous force into the opposite side of the hole, which had been lined with wooden stakes to prevent it collapsing.



Ropes made from strips of animal hide and plant fibre was used to haul the stone upright. These ropes were not of uniform strength and probably broke quite often, so to prevent the stone crashing back down, it was supported with wooden props fitted into rope 'collars' lashed round its top. As soon as the stone was upright, workers packed soil, logs and stones round the base. On the flat tops of the uprights, the stonemasons had left small protruding knobs These were for fitting into a hollow ground out of the lintel (the crosspiece), to create a mortise-and-tenon joint. Raising a 7 ton lintel some 20ft (6m) to onto its pair of uprights was probably the most dangerous and demanding job in building Stonehenge. Most likely, each lintel was raised on a bed of logs, each end of the lintel being levered up alternately while logs were pushed under it.



 In this way, a wooden tower was built up under a lintel until it was level with the top of the upright stones and could be levered into position. At least 250 logs, each 6m long, would have been needed for the tower's construction.



 



Picture Credit : Google


How many fortresses in Great Wall of China?



The Shanhaiguan Pass is the gateway from north-east China to the central plains. The three-storey gate tower of the Great Wall is over 30ft (9m) high, and a tablet over the gateway reads 'First Pass under Heaven'. The sign is a replica of the original, kept inside, which was inscribed in 1472 by Xiao Xian, the most successful scholar in the year's imperial examination.



The Jiayuguan Pass controls the corridor through Gansu province in the north-west, much of it arid loess (clayey yellow soil) and desert. The fortress, built in 1372 to guard the pass, is made of rammed earth and has walls about 30ft (9m) high, 22ft (6.7m) thick at the base, and just over 6ft (1.8m) wide at the top.



The wall's height and width varies. In the Badaling section north of Beijing, it is about 26ft (8m) high, 22ft (6.7m) thick at the base, and about 20ft (6m) thick at the top —wide enough for five horsemen or ten marching men abreast. At the Jiaoshanguan Pass in the Yan Shan mountains, from where you can see the sea, the wall is only about 16in (400mm) wide in places.



In the wider parts, battlements about 6ft (1.8m) high line both sides of the wall, and there are towers at roughly 200yds (180m) — two bow-shot — intervals. Some towers are just weather shelters, others have sleeping quarters or storerooms. Beacon platforms for signal fires, some away from the wall, were sited at about 9 mile (15km) intervals, and a signal could be sent across country within 24 hours.



Smoke signals



Beacon signals were sent as smoke during the day or fire at night. According to folklore, smoke signals were often made with wolf dung, because the smoke hung in the sky for a long time.



The number of smoke columns, or fires, lighted at each beacon depended on the message. One column meant the area was being attacked by a small force (under about 500 men). For a large force, such as over 10,000, four separate signals were lit.



 



Picture Credit : Google