My Science School

The main ingredient of chocolate is cocoa from the fruit of the cacao tree. The fruit is the size of a small melon and contains around 40 beans that are dried, roasted, then ground into a fine powder.

The Aztecs drank an unsweetened chocolate drink, often mixed with wine and flavoured with pimento and pepper.

In the mid-nineteenth century solid chocolate bars were made in Europe from cocoa powder, cocoa butter, sugar and sometimes milk.

The Spanish kept chocolate quiet for a very long time. It was nearly a century before the treat reached neighboring France, and then the rest of Europe.

In 1615, French King Louis XIII married Anne of Austria, daughter of Spanish King Phillip III. To celebrate the union, she brought samples of chocolate to the royal courts of France.

Following France’s lead, chocolate soon appeared in Britain at special “chocolate houses”. As the trend spread through Europe, many nations set up their own cacao plantations in countries along the equator.

The history of chocolate continues as the treat remained immensely popular among European aristocracy. Royals and the upper classes consumed chocolate for its health benefits as well as its decadence.

Chocolate was still being produced by hand, which was a slow and laborious process. But with the Industrial Revolution around the corner, things were about to change.

In 1828, the invention of the chocolate press revolutionized chocolate making. This innovative device could squeeze cocoa butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving a fine cocoa powder behind.

The powder was then mixed with liquids and poured into a mold, where it solidified into an edible bar of chocolate.

And just like that, the modern era of chocolate was born. 

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The Romans ate ices of fruit juice and wine added to snow. The explorer Marco Polo returned to Venice from the Orient in 1295 with recipes for ice cream made with milk.

The first official account of ice cream in the New World comes from a letter written in 1744 by a guest of Maryland Governor William Bladen. The first advertisement for ice cream in this country appeared in the New York Gazette on May 12, 1777, when confectioner Philip Lenzi announced that ice cream was available "almost every day." Records kept by a Chatham Street, New York, merchant show that President George Washington spent approximately $200 for ice cream during the summer of 1790. Inventory records of Mount Vernon taken after Washington's death revealed "two pewter ice cream pots." President Thomas Jefferson was said to have a favorite 18-step recipe for an ice cream delicacy that resembled a modern-day Baked Alaska. Check out President Jefferson's vanilla ice cream recipe here. In 1813, Dolley Madison served a magnificent strawberry ice cream creation at President Madison's second inaugural banquet at the White House.

Until 1800, ice cream remained a rare and exotic dessert enjoyed mostly by the elite. Around 1800, insulated ice houses were invented. Manufacturing ice cream soon became an industry in America, pioneered in 1851 by a Baltimore milk dealer named Jacob Fussell. Like other American industries, ice cream production increased because of technological innovations, including steam power, mechanical refrigeration, the homogenizer, electric power and motors, packing machines, and new freezing processes and equipment. In addition, motorized delivery vehicles dramatically changed the industry. Due to ongoing technological advances, today's total frozen dairy annual production in the United States is more than 6.4 billion pounds.

Wide availability of ice cream in the late 19th century led to new creations. In 1874, the American soda fountain shop and the profession of the "soda jerk" emerged with the invention of the ice cream soda. In response to religious criticism for eating "sinfully" rich ice cream sodas on Sundays, ice cream merchants left out the carbonated water and invented the ice cream "Sunday" in the late 1890's. The name was eventually changed to "sundae" to remove any connection with the Sabbath.

Ice cream became an edible morale symbol during World War II. Each branch of the military tried to outdo the others in serving ice cream to its troops. In 1945, the first "floating ice cream parlor" was built for sailors in the western Pacific. When the war ended, and dairy product rationing was lifted, America celebrated its victory with ice cream. Americans consumed over 20 quarts of ice cream per person in 1946.

In the 1940s through the ‘70s, ice cream production was relatively constant in the United States. As more prepackaged ice cream was sold through supermarkets, traditional ice cream parlors and soda fountains started to disappear. Now, specialty ice cream stores and unique restaurants that feature ice cream dishes have surged in popularity. These stores and restaurants are popular with those who remember the ice cream shops and soda fountains of days past, as well as with new generations of ice cream fans.

Credit : International Dairy Foods Association 

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The Chinese had firework displays back in the 9th century. They used black gunpowder, a mixture of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur. They fired rockets on very special occasions.

Gunpowder traveled west when European and Arabian diplomats and missionaries began visiting China around this time. Like their Chinese counterparts, Western engineers also developed weapons -- this time, muskets and cannons -- but continued to develop fireworks, and they became larger and more elaborate.

If you attended a fireworks show in 1600, the science would not have been much different from ancient China, but it was a lot more entertaining! Now used for military victories, religious events, or royal celebrations, aerial fireworks (still plain orange -- no color yet!) were run by "firemasters" and their assistants, "green men". Before the show, the green men, named for the leaves they wore to protect themselves from sparks, would tell jokes to the crowd while they prepared the celebration. Being a green man, however, was a highly dangerous position, and many were injured or killed when their fireworks malfunctioned.

Credit : Smithsonian 

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The ship The Bounty was commanded by Captain Bligh. In 1787 some of the crew, led by Fletcher Christian, mutinied against Bligh's cruel discipline and set him and 18 sailors adrift in a small boat.

This tiny boat crossed 5,793km (3,600 miles) of open sea and landed safely in the East Indies. In 1805 Bligh was made governor of New South Wales and he planted Australia's first apple trees.

Bligh had visited Van Diemen’s Land in 1777 when he was a navigation officer on Captain James Cook’s Resolution. He returned to the island in the Bounty in 1788 on a voyage that had been intended to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies. The ship had called at the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and the apple trees planted were most likely acquired there.

Blight’s visit on the Bounty occurred on the voyage which ended in the famous mutiny. He navigated a longboat to Timor and continued his naval service.

Four years later Bligh returned to Adventure Bay, again on his way to Tahiti. He recorded in his log that one of the first apple trees that he had planted had survived. The others had been destroyed by fire. He described the fruit of the surviving tree as green and slightly bitter.

Bligh became Governor of New South Wales in 1806. However, he seemed to attract mutiny and was deposed by the New South Wales Corps in 1808.

Credit : Australian Food Time 

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During the first World War, a doctor at a German hospital left his German shepherd dog to look after a patient for a few minutes.

The way the dog behaved impressed the doctor so much that he began training dogs purely to help the blind.

The modern guide dog story, however, begins during the First World War, with thousands of soldiers returning from the Front blinded, often by poison gas. A German doctor, Dr Gerhard Stalling, got the idea of training dogs en masse to help those affected. While walking with a patient one day through the hospital grounds, he was called away urgently and left his dog with the patient as company. When he returned, he saw signs, from the way the dog was behaving, that it was looking after the blind patient.

Dr Stalling started to explore ways of training dogs to become reliable guides and in August 1916 opened the world’s first guide dog school for the blind in Oldenburg. The school grew and many new branches opened in Bonn, Breslau, Dresden, Essen, Freiburg, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Münster and Hannover, training up to 600 dogs a year. These schools provided dogs not only to ex-servicemen, but also to blind people in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, due to a reduction in dog quality, the venture had to shut down in 1926, but by that time another large guide dog training centre had opened in Potsdam, near Berlin, which was proving to be highly successful. This school’s work broke new ground in the training of guide dogs and it was capable of accommodating around 100 dogs at a time and providing up to 12 fully-trained guide dogs a month.

Around this time, a wealthy American woman, Dorothy Harrison Eustis, was already training dogs for the army, police and customs service in Switzerland. It was to be Dorothy Eustis’s energy and expertise that would properly launch the guide dog movement internationally.

Having heard about the Potsdam centre, Eustis was curious to study the school’s methods and spent several months there. She came away so impressed that she wrote an article about it for the Saturday Evening Post in America in October 1927.

A blind American man, Morris Frank, heard about the article and bought a copy of the newspaper. He later said that the five cents the newspaper cost him “bought an article that was worth more than a million dollars to me. It changed my life”. He wrote to Eustis, telling her that he would very much like to help introduce guide dogs to the United States.

Taking up the challenge, Dorothy Eustis trained a dog, Buddy, and brought Frank over to Switzerland to learn how to work with the dog. Frank went back to the United States with what many believe to be America’s first guide dog. Eustis later established the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1929, but before this went back to Switzerland to do further work there. Meanwhile, an Italian Guide Dog organisation, Sculola Nazionale Cani Guida per Ciechi was also established in 1928.

The success of the United States experience encouraged Eustis to set up guide a dog school at Vevey in Switzerland in 1928. She called this school, like the one a year later in New Jersey, ‘L’Oeil qui Voit’, or The Seeing Eye (the name comes from the Old Testament of the Bible – ‘the hearing ear and the seeing eye’, Proverbs, XX, 12). The schools in Vevey, New Jersey and Italy were the first guide dog schools of the modern era that have survived the test of time.

In 1930, two British women, Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond, heard about The Seeing Eye and contacted Dorothy Eustis, who sent over one of her trainers. In 1931, the first four British guide dogs completed their training and three years later The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was founded in the UK.

Since then, guide dog schools have opened all round the world, and more open their doors every decade. Thousands of people have had their lives transformed by guide dogs, thanks to the organisations that provide them. The commitment of the people who work for these organisations, and the people who financially support them, is as deep today as it ever was, and the heirs of Dorothy Eustis’s legacy continue to work for the increased mobility, dignity and independence of blind and partially-sighted people the world over. The movement goes on.

Credit : International Guide Dog Federation

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Paper was first made by wasps! They make paper for their nests by chewing up fragments of wood.

The ancient Egyptians made paper from a water reed called papyrus-hence the name paper.

As early as the second century the Chinese manufactured paper from bamboo fibres, pounded and pulped and then left to dry.

Paper made out of plant-like fibres was invented by the Chinese Cai Lun, who in the 2nd century China, mixed textile fibres from the bark of the mulberry in water and produced sheets of paper from that. The invention of paper was one of the reasons for the successes of early China, through easier governing of the country.

Archaeological findings have shown that paper was first made from plantlike fibres, were already used from 140 to 87 BC.

The art of papermaking was first exported from China to Korea and Japan around 610 AD. Arabic people have learned the papermaking technique in the 8th century from Chinese, as is being told, from Chinese people skilled in papermaking who were captured. The Arabic people spread the knowledge during their military campaigns in the North of Africa and the South of Europe. The first paper manufacturing in Europe started in 1144 in Xativa (near Valencia) in Spain. The first papermaking in countries in Europe, which were not controlled by the Arabians, was in the 13th century in Italy and Spain, although the usage of paper was already known in Europe since about 1100. A paper mill in Fabriano (near Ascona) in Italy existed in 1276 (and still exists nowadays). Around this time sizing paper with animal glue was invented in Italy. The Germans had their first paper mill in 1389, followed by the rest of Europe at the end of the 15th century. In Belgium the first paper production was in Huy (Hoei) in 1405 and in Holland in Dordrecht in 1586.

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Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, invented dynamite in 1867 and gelignite in 1875. During his early experiments his laboratory blew up, killing Nobel's younger brother and four workers.

Nobel made a huge fortune out of the manufacture of explosives and left the biggest part of the money for annual awards called Nobel Prizes. The seven prizes for physics, chemistry, are economics, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.

To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer Alfred Nobel experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with kieselguhr would turn the liquid into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form suitable for insertion into drilling holes. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite. To be able to detonate the dynamite rods he also invented a detonator (blasting cap) which could be ignited by lighting a fuse. These inventions were made at the same time as the diamond drilling crown and the pneumatic drill came into general use.

Together these inventions drastically reduced the cost of blasting rock, drilling tunnels, building canals and many other forms of construction work.

The market for dynamite and detonating caps grew very rapidly and Alfred Nobel also proved himself to be a very skillful entrepreneur and businessman. By 1865 his factory in Krümmel near Hamburg, Germany, was exporting nitroglycerine explosives to other countries in Europe, America and Australia.

Credit : Nobel Prize

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A sailmaker, Oscar Levi-Strauss, in San Francisco in 1850 invented jeans. The word 'jeans' may come from 'jene fustien', a strong twill cotton cloth, first made in Genoa. The original jeans were brown until blue denim was used.

With their patent secure, Levi Strauss & Co. was the only company to make riveted clothing for nearly 20 years. When their patent expired, however, dozens of other manufacturers began to copy their clothing. By that time, the public routinely referred to blue jeans as “Levi's," a name the company eventually trademarked.

Although they were originally designed as work pants, blue jeans became a significant part of popular culture in the 1950s after James Dean wore them in the movie Rebel Without a Cause. Their popularity continued to grow, and today they're routinely worn as casual dress in the United States and many countries around the world.

The visionary immigrants who transformed denim and small pieces of metal into the most popular clothing product in the world probably never imagined how famous they would become. Indeed, no other clothing product has been identified more with American culture, especially the American West.

Credit : Wonderopolis 

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The zip fastener or zipper with small interlocking teeth was invented back in 1890 by American Whitecomb Judson. It took about 20 years before his invention was satisfactory. The zip was first used on snow boots.

The popular "zipper" name came from the B. F. Goodrich Company, which decided to use Sundback's fastener on a new type of rubber boots or galoshes. Boots and tobacco pouches with a zippered closure were the two chief uses of the zipper during its early years. It took 20 more years to convince the fashion industry to seriously promote the novel closure on garments.

In the 1930s, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign advocated zippers as a way to promote self-reliance in young children as the devices made it possible for them to dress in self-help clothing. 

A landmark moment happened in 1937 when the zipper beat the button in the "Battle of the Fly." French fashion designers raved over the use of zippers in men's trousers and Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men." Among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray." 

The next big boost for the zipper came when devices that open on both ends arrived, such as on jackets. Today the zipper is everywhere and is used in clothing, luggage, leather goods and countless other objects. Thousands of zipper miles are produced daily to meet the needs of consumers, thanks to the early efforts of the many famous zipper inventors.

Credit : Thought Co.

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Will Keith Kellogg discovered cornflakes by accident in 1894. His brother was a doctor looking for a food that was easy for patients to digest. Will boiled a pan of wheat and from its contents thought up the idea of cornflakes.

He was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, a world-renowned health resort which was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The Sanitarium combined aspects of a spa, a hydrotherapy institution, a hospital and a high class hotel.

Kellogg treated both the wealthy and the poor who could not afford other hospitals.

He also dedicated the last 30 years of his life to promoting eugenics, the practices aimed at improving the genetic makeup of the human race by excluding people and groups who have been judged to be inferior.

Kellogg discouraged the mixing of races and was in favour of sterilising people with mental handicaps.

Credit : The Scotsman

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John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, is said to have invented the sandwich in 1762.

The Earl loved to gamble, and so as not to interrupt his card game a servant was ordered to bring him a piece of meat between two slices of buttered bread. That is how the Earl gave his name to the sandwich!

Montagu was a hardened gambler and usually gambled for hours at a time at this restaurant, sometimes refusing to get up even for meals.  It is said that ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread.  Because Montagu also happened to be the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, others began to order “the same as Sandwich!”  The original sandwich was, in fact, a piece of salt beef between two slices of toasted bread.

John Montagu’s biographer, N. A. M. Rodger, points out in the book, The Insatiable Earl – A Life of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, that the sole source for giving Montagu credit for the invention of the sandwich, was gossip mentioned in a travel book by Grosley, and that at the period in question 1765, he was known to be very busy, and it is just as likely that it was for the purpose of eating at his desk. 

Credit : What’s Cooking America 

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The earliest forms of hospitals were healing temples located in ancient Greece. These temples were called Asclepeions and treatment centered around promoting healthy lifestyles and spiritual healing.

The Romans established military hospitals called valetudinaria for wounded gladiators and soldiers, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In ancient India hospices or ‘punya-salas’ were established. Here the sick and infirm were looked after and given free treatment and care. They were also known by other names such as dharmasalas, viharas and maths.

The first dedicated public hospital was founded in the eastern Byzantine Empire by a Christian saint named Basil of Caesarea, in the 4th century AD. Diseases had been treated privately till then, but Christian traditions of service transformed this equation into one where the care of the sick was considered an obligation and duty within the community.

By around the 9th century AD, Islamic hospitals called ‘bimaristans’ started to appear. These were secular in nature and offered treatment to rich and poor alike. Islamic hospitals first appeared in the city of Baghdad.

The first pharmacies were also established in Baghdad in the year 754 under the Abbasid Caliphate. Advances in botany and chemistry led to the development of the science of pharmacology and the medical uses of chemical compounds were being discovered and documented. By the 12th century pharmacies could be found in Europe as well. Pharmacies greatly aided knowledge of the properties and uses of drugs.

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The Babylonians, along with the ancient Egyptians, were the first people to introduce the concept of diagnosis in medicine. An extensive medical compilation called the ‘Diagnostic Handbook’ existed in Babylon in the middle of the 11th century BC. This treatise described the symptoms of 3,000 different illnesses with their likely outcome or prognosis.

There was however a mix of rational elements as well as magical elements in the Babylonian diagnostic method. They observed the symptoms of the disease in great detail and its progression, but relied on spiritual treatment along with physical treatments.

The Babylonians believed that illness was the result of evil spirits attacking the body and that the health of a person depended on the battle between good and evil. Treatment therefore consisted of giving the patient medicines, often made from mustard, turpentine, pine and herbs; as well as chanting incantations and spells to get rid of the bad spirits.

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A visit to the doctor is never complete without a prescription for pills or tablets. Bitter or sweet, they are an integral part of treatment all over the world today. Have you ever wondered how and when pills were invented?

Before pills, medicines were administered in liquid form. The first pills are believed to date back to 1,500 BC. The earliest reference to pills was found in a set of ancient Egyptian papyruses. According to them, medicinal ingredients were mixed with bread, oil or honey and shaped into tiny balls. In ancient Greece such medicines were called ‘katapotia’, which means something to be swallowed. The Roman scholar, Pliny first called such medicines ‘pilula’ meaning ‘ball’ in Latin.

In medieval times pills were coated with slimy substances to make them easier to swallow. Some pills were even coated in gold and silver! Such pills were called gilded pills. In the 17th century, pills became popular in England and pill makers were granted special patent rights from the king. This meant that their top secret pill formulas were protected by law.

In the 1800s pills began to be sugar-coated and gelatine capsules were invented. In 1843, a British artist and watchmaker named William Brockedon invented a machine to compress and shape pills into the modern form that we see them in today. This machine was able to compress powder into the shape of a tablet without the use of an adhesive. Brockedon’s invention was a precursor to the modern-day pharmaceutical industry.

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Headaches are a common malady and can occur due to a number of reasons. We know that they can result due to stress, fasting, lack of sleep, sun exposure, allergies or more serious ailments such as high blood pressure and brain tumours.

In the olden days however, headaches were a puzzle to many. It was believed that they were a result of spiritual problems or even demonic activity. Strange and bizarre reasons were cited as their cause and people resorted to extreme measures to cure them.

One of these measures involved drilling a hole into the skull of the patient! This process is called trepanation and was practiced as early as 7,000 years ago. It is considered the earliest form of surgery known to Man and involves cutting or scraping a hole in the human skull. Trepanation was carried out not just to cure headaches but also to treat brain disorders, let out evil spirits and cure insanity.

There is scientific evidence that patients often survived these operations and even came back for more! What is more remarkable is that the patients were not given any anaesthetics and were fully conscious during the operation!

Trephined skulls have been found all over the world in France, Germany, North Africa, New Zealand and South America. In places like Peru, single skulls have been found with multiple holes in them!

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