My Science School

It takes about 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter. Peanuts are native to the tropics of the Americas and probably originated in Brazil or Peru. By the time the Spanish began their exploration of the New World in the 15th century, peanuts were grown as far north as Mexico. Spanish explorers brought peanuts to Europe upon their return, and other traders eventually brought them to Asia and Africa.

But who first thought of mashing them up into a pasty, tasty treat? Researchers believe the ancient Aztecs mashed peanuts into a paste hundreds of years ago. Modern peanut butter didn't come about until the 1890s, though.

In 1890, Dr. Ambrose Straub, a St. Louis doctor, asked George A. Bayle Jr., the owner of a food products company, to process ground peanut paste as a protein substitute for toothless people who couldn't chew meat.

In 1897, J.H. Kellogg, who later became famous for his breakfast cereals, obtained U.S. Patent 580,787 for a "Process of Preparing Nutmeal," which produced a "pasty adhesive substance" that he called "nut-butter."

A few years later, peanut butter was first sold as a snack food in 1904 at the Universal Exposition in St. Louis by C.H. Sumner. It is a common misconception that George Washington Carver, a prominent African-American inventor and botanist who focused on the uses of peanuts, invented peanut butter. Although he did not, he did add sugar and molasses to peanut butter formulas, giving it a sweeter taste and better consistency we enjoy today!

Credit : Wonderopolis 

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New Zealand is famed for having far more sheep than people living on its two islands but Wales is not far behind in the woolly mammal stakes. At the last count, it was reckoned the country was home to four times as many sheep as humans, not so very far behind New Zealand’s ratio of 7:1.

Figures from a June 2016 agriculture survey showed that, at the time of the survey, there were 9.81 million sheep in Wales, compared to just over three million people, according to the Independent.

This is due to an increase in sheep farming in the country – meaning there are now two million more sheep than there were seven years ago.

John Richards, industry information executive for Hybu Cig Cymru (Meat Promotion Wales), said the increase was an 'indication of confidence' in the future of the industry.

“There are still challenges for the lamb industry in Wales,” explained Mr Richards.

“Ensuring that everyone, including farmers and processors, get a good price for their product is vital, and means continuing to respond to changing customer demands.

Wales has the largest sheep population of any region in the UK, but globally, Wales still falls behind New Zealand, where sheep outnumber people six to one.

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The red sandstone pyramids of a region once known as Nubia, now in Central Sudan, were built about 800 years after their more famous Egyptian cousins. Similar in workmanship, the Nubian Pyramids are much smaller in size and greater in number. They were also built as tombs for the kings and queens of the region. In fact, Sudan probably has the greatest number of pyramids in any country around the world. Surprise! Take a look at drone footage of some of the 220 pyramids that exist away from tourist glare in Sudan.

Thousands of years ago, Meroe served as the capital city of the Kingdom of Kush, the realm presided over by the Nubian dynasty. The pyramids here, which are almost 5,000 years old, are spread across three sites and are different from their more famous Egyptian counterparts on account of their smaller bases and steep sloping sides. Unknown to most visitors to North Africa, the site is home to around 200 pyramids and temples—more than there are in the whole of Egypt. Sudan’s pyramids were designed as tombs for the Nubian kings, such as the El Kurru necropolis, which once housed the tomb of the famous King Tanutamun. Step inside today and you’ll notice the elaborate paintings that adorn the walls and showcase the highlights of the reign of this celebrated king. The Nubians took inspiration from their Egyptians neighbours as well as the ancient Greeks and Romans in order to create their own distinctive structures. Given their age and isolated location, it’s a wonder that these structures have survived so intact. However, sharp-eyed visitors to the pyramids in Sudan might note that several of the monuments are missing their top points, which is due to Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian explorer who blew up several of the pyramids in his search for treasure in the 1880s. Ferlini plundered the tombs of the likes of Amanishkheto, a Nubian warrior queen, in order to sell the spoils to European museums.

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Statistics Netherlands (or CBS), a government institution that gathers statistics about the country, says that Dutch men born in 2001 are 0.39 inches (1 centimeter) shorter than those born in 1980. Dutch women are 0.55 inches (1.4 centimeters) shorter. Despite these drops, the Netherlands still has the tallest people in the world – with CBS reporting that today's generation stands, on average, at 6 feet (182.9 centimeters) for men and 5.55 feet (169.3 centimeters) for women. 

In their report, the government statisticians concluded that, for most of the 20th century, the Dutch grew taller and taller. But since 1980, that growth stopped.

Dutch people born in 1980 may have been the tallest in the country's history, with the average heights of 6 feet (183.9 centimeters) for men and 5.6 feet (170.7 centimeters) for women. This marked a significant growth spurt for the 20th century — in 1930, for example, Dutch heights averaged at just 5.76 feet (175.6 centimeters) for men and 5.43 feet (165.4 centimeters) for women.

Credit : USA Today

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More than 850 languages are used within the 462,840 km2 that make up the country of Papua New Guinea. This makes Papua New Guinea the most linguistically diverse country on the planet. Of these 850, the country has three official languages: English, Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin.

Not only is Papua New Guinea home to around 850 Indigenous languages, but those languages also descend from a diverse group of 33 different language families. The country officially recognizes four languages—English, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and Papua New Guinea Sign Language. Tok Pisin serves as the lingua franca of the country, while students are typically instructed in English. Because of the predominance of the two languages, the researchers note that about a third of the Indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea are endangered.

According to the researchers, their study is one of the first national linguistic surveys conducted that analyzes the status of the smaller Indigenous languages spoken in the country. Secondary school students were surveyed for the study, to assess how frequently members of younger generations use their heritage languages and how well they know them (if at all).

The researchers collected data from a little over 6,000 students across the country, covering speakers of 392 languages. Once each participant completed a survey, the researchers then devised a model to predict future trends for each language based on their historical status among older generations and their usage among younger residents. 58% of the students sampled spoke an Indigenous language fluently, compared to 91% of their parents’ generation; the researchers then developed the model, which predicted that only 26% of the next generation will speak these languages fluently, indicating a significant decline in these languages’ use that would likely lead to the loss of significant cultural information.

“The traditional multilingualism in Indigenous languages in the present oldest generation has given way to bilingualism with the English-based creole Tok Pisin in an intermediate generation and monolingualism in Tok Pisin, with perhaps English from schooling, in a third generation.”

Credit : Language Magazine 

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A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that a country’s chocolate consumption correlates strongly with the number of Nobel Prizes its citizens win. According to the author’s calculations, Switzerland consumes the most chocolate and ranks second behind Sweden in laureates per capita. (The author accuses the Sweden-based Nobel committee of favoritism.) Switzerland doesn’t have the climate to grow cocoa. How did it become known for chocolate?

Because the great chocolate innovators were Swiss. Earlier this year, the Explainer answered the question, “How did Detroit become Motor City?” In short, although some attribute Motown’s dominance to its vast natural resources, its role in manufacturing probably had more to do with the historical accident that a handful of important industrialists worked there. Henry Ford set up shop in Detroit, as did Ransom Olds and other automotive visionaries. Their companies behaved like today’s dot-coms, creating cross-pollination by sharing employees and ideas. The same process explains how the Swiss came to dominate the chocolate world through a century of remarkable innovation. In 1819, Francois-Louis Cailler developed a recipe to turn gritty cocoa beans into a solid, smooth chocolate bar. Rudolph Lindt eventually perfected the smoothing process by adding cocoa butter with a machine he called the conche. In 1830, his countryman Charles-Amédée Kohler added hazelnuts to chocolate. Jean Tobler formulated the Toblerone bar in the late 1860s. Perhaps the greatest innovation came in 1875, when Daniel Peter figured out how to combine cocoa powder with local milk to create milk chocolate, which became an instant sensation. (The Swiss can’t take credit for cocoa powder, which was developed by Dutch chemist Coenraad J. van Houten in 1828.) Eventually, Kohler, Peter, and food magnate Henri Nestlé joined forces to create the Swiss Chocolate Society, which eventually became the Nestlé company. Today, Swiss consumers eat more than 23 pounds of the country’s most famous product per year.

There’s another factor to Switzerland’s high chocolate consumption: wealth. (Which may also explain the correlation with Nobel prizes.) Few cocoa-producing countries are big chocolate consumers, because chocolate is a luxury. Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Ghana, and Nigeria, all of which have per capita GDPs well below the global average, lead the world in cocoa production. By contrast, wealthy Western Europe constitutes 6 percent of the world’s population, but eats 45 percent of its chocolate.

Credit :  Slate 

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Residents of the People's Republic of China produce 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks each year, or 130 million pairs each day, according to Los Angeles Times, which reported on the story earlier this week.

The problem? Made from birch and poplar, China's disposable chopsticks bring down about 100 acres of forests every day, estimates Greenpeace China. That's 16 to 25 million trees felled each year for a single-use utensil. Across the East China Sea, Japan uses more than 20 billion disposable chopsticks annually, nearly 97 percent of which come from China.

In fact, for a brief time back in the 80's, one American company tried to cash in on Japan's penchant for waribashi, as the throw-away chopsticks are called. At the cost of more than $3 million, the town of Hibbing, Minn. (better known as Bob Dylan's hometown) attempted to make and export chopsticks made from local aspen forests. The factory failed and closed two years later, crushing townspeople's hopes of providing jobs and dominating the Japanese disposable eating utensils market.

Still, back in China, officials have been trying numerous measures for more than a decade to rein their country's growing appetite for convenience and dining-on-the-run. The government has instituted taxes on the sticks and plenty of citizens – concerned about deforestation of China's forests – have attempted to convince their compatriots to stick with "real" chopsticks through humorous ad campaigns. Opponents of those efforts insist the chopsticks are important to the economy and argue the country's disposable stick factories employ 100,000 in economically depressed areas.

Credit : Delish 

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The record for the shortest street is held by Ebenezer Place in Wick, Caithness, Scotland, which measured 2.05 m (6 ft 9 in) long, when checked on 28 October 2006. Ebenezer Place is maintained by Highland Council as road authority. It first appeared in the Valuation Roll in 1886-1887.

Ebenezer Place was established in 1883 when Mackays Hotel was founded by the owner Alexander Sinclair who had returned to Scotland from America after making a considerable fortune. The hotel was constructed at the junction of Union Street and River Street in Wick. During that time Alexander Sinclair was asked by the town council to print a name on the shortest side of the hotel; he did, and the shortest street in the world was created. However, Ebenezer Place was not officially approved as a street for about four years as it took the same amount of time to get the required door for Ebenezer Place to be installed. At present, Ebenezer Place comprises of only a single address since there is no room for another and No 1. Bistro remains a part of the Mackays Hotel.

Ebenezer Place was mostly unnoticed as the shortest street in the world until Murray Lamont the manager of Mackays Hotel did some research and started a long process of getting the Guinness Book of Records to accredit the street. Craig Glenday, the editor-in-chief of the Guinness Book of Records traveled to Wick in Scotland, a trip that took about 50 hours battling through gale force winds and storm. An hour after Glenday arrived in Wick, he declared Ebenezer Place held the new record as the shortest street in the world. Robert Louis Stevenson, the son of Thomas Stevenson who spent time in Wick while his father was building the new breakwater in the Bay later, included a new reference to Ebenezer Place referring to it as Treasure Island.

Credit : World Atlas 

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The salty Caspian Sea has the greatest surface area of any lake at 143,200 square miles (370,886 square kilometers).

Lake Superior, on the United States/Canada border, is the named freshwater lake with the greatest surface area at 31,700 square miles (82,103 square kilometers).

However, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron can technically be considered a single lake because they both have the same surface elevation and they are connected by the Mackinac Strait (which is not a river because the water does not have a consistent flow direction). So, Lake Michigan-Huron could be considered the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. It has a total surface area of 45,410 square miles (117,611 square kilometers), which is significantly larger than Lake Superior. The total water volume in Lake Michigan-Huron, at 2,026 cubic miles (8,443 cubic kilometers), is much smaller than the volume of Lake Baikal.

Credit : Geology 

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China, which seems to complete mammoth infrastructure projects on a routine basis, has claimed another world-beater with the opening of the longest sea bridge.

The 26-mileJiaozhou Bay crossing connects the bustling port city of Qingdao, south-east of Beijing, to the industrial district of Huangdao.

The eight-lane, 35-metre-wide bridge opened to traffic on Thursday morning, China's Xinhua news agency said. Built over a four-year period the project cost about £1.4bn and uses 5,000 pillars. It shortens the driving route between the two locations by about 20 miles.

Somewhat inevitably, the bridge takes the world record from another Chinese sea crossing, the 22.5-mile Hangzhou Bay bridge, which opened in 2008, connecting the cities of Jiaxing and Ningbo, south of Shanghai. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, at almost 24 miles, is slightly longer but crosses an inland waterway rather than open sea.

China is constructing an even more ambitious bridge. Work began in December 2009 on a Y-shaped structure linking Guangdong province in southern China to Hong Kong and Macau. Building is expected to be finished in 2015, and the bridge is expected to cover about 31 miles, although only about 22 miles will span the sea.

Credit : The Guardian 

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In 1929, a bag of popcorn cost only 5 cents (the equivalent of 62 cents after inflation) and a movie ticket cost 35 cents ($4.32 after inflation). And today, the average cost of a small popcorn is $4.75, and a movie ticket costs $7.20. Of course, modern day movie theaters make most of their money of concession purchases, because Hollywood movie studios take upwards to 70% of the opening weekend box office.

One could argue that the cost of operating and maintaining a movie theater has gone up, with surround sound systems, stadium seating and now digital projection. But others could argue that the addition of revenue from in-theater advertising has made up for those expenses. In theater ads generated $456 million in 2007, an estimated $1 – $2 per moviegoer. Also, digital projection has been proven to increase ticket sales by a rather large percentage, primarily due to 3D films, which also charge a 33% higher admission cost.

Credit : Slash Film

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The US tops this list as most of the world’s billionaires hail from the US. 724 Americans are now a part of the three comma club. The total net worth of all the billionaires in the country is $4.4 trillion. Furthermore, Bezos sits on top of this list with a net worth of $177 billion.

While the worldwide billionaire population was down 5.4% in 2018, it grew by almost 4% in the U.S., from 680 to 705 individuals, the report found. China, the country with the second-highest number of billionaires, has 285.

Though total billionaire wealth in the U.S. fell by around 5%, it still exceeded that of the next eight wealthiest countries combined, Wealth X found: The billionaires of China, Germany, Russia, the U.K., Switzerland, Hong Kong, India and Saudi Arabia have a combined total of $2.9 trillion, while U.S. billionaires have over $3 trillion.

“Against a backdrop of heightened market volatility, global trade tensions and a slowdown in economic growth, the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires dropped by 7% to $8.6 trillion,” the report states, adding that American billionaires fared better than others around the world thanks to tax cuts and “robust corporate earnings.”

Credit : CNBC 

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The final item on the list is the world’s most expensive dog collar, the diamond embedded Amour Amour dog collar. Once known as “the Bugatti of dog collars”, this hyper luxe collar is a 52-carat collar with 1,600 handset diamonds with a 7 carat, color graded, brilliant shaped centerpiece.

The 3.2 million dollar collar is also made of 18-carat white gold and crocodile leather. The collar has amassed acclaim from several media houses, blogs and has featured on a number of documentaries and TV shows.

In case you liked these dog collars and chains, you can check out the respective websites to source these perfect little gifts for your precious pet dogs.

Pet parents are constantly looking for ways to dress their babies and it is obvious that you would want the best of what there is for your dog. There are a large number of brands that design and produce adorable canine accessories that will give your dog the perfect runway look and you can easily visit their websites to order from them.

If you are a proud dog parent, then do create a profile for your dog at Monkoodog and share your friendship with the world. Dogs make for wonderful companions and it is a pleasure to watch them play and frolic around not only in real life but also, on our screens.

Credit : Monkoodog 

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The most expensive Barbie doll in history is the Stefani Canturi Barbie, valued at a mind boggling $302,500. This highly prized collectible was manufactured in 2010 with elegant blonde hair and the traditional Barbie features. There are two things that make this Barbie so very special. The first is that her jewelry was designed by Stefano Canturi, naming the doll Stefani Barbie. He designed thee necklace she wears and it’s not cheap costume jewelry. The necklace is made of emerald cut Australian pink diamonds. Each is a carat. The rare stones are encircled with an additional three carats of white diamonds that glitter and sparkle. This Barbie sold for $302,500 at auction, but one of the best things about this special edition is that it was created to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, an extremely worthy cause.

The doll, first unveiled on 4 May 2010, during Australian Fashion week, was designed by world-famous Australian jeweller Stefano Canturi, who has also made jewellery for the likes of Nicole Kidman, Oprah Winfrey and Kylie Minogue. The designer was enlisted by Barbie manufacturer Mattel to help promote the launch of the Barbie Basics range in Australia, which features dolls wearing commonly available clothing.

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Surveyed dog owners in the United States stated that they spent, on average, 442 U.S. dollars on pet food per year in 2020. In comparison, cat-owning respondents claimed to spend an average of 329 U.S. dollars on pet food on an annual basis.

In 2019/20, dogs and cats were the most popular American household pets. There were approximately 63.4 million dog-owning households and 42.7 million cat-owning households in the United States. Other pets living in U.S. households included freshwater fish, saltwater fish, birds, reptiles, and horses. Due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and the increased time spent at home, many Americans reported acquiring new pets. In a recent survey carried out in December 2020, 10 percent of respondents in the United States reported acquiring a new pet as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

As Americans increasingly acquired more and more pets over the years, pet industry expenditure in the United States increased at an impressive rate, growing by over 500 percent between 1994 and 2020. Pet food and treats captured the biggest share of pet industry sales, followed by veterinary services and related products. In terms of pet food, the dry dog food segment generated the highest amount of sales, with around 5.3 billion U.S. dollars generated in 2020.

Credit : Statista 

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