Sideburns
These short side-whiskers were originally named after the American Federal General Ambrose Everett Burnside (1824-81) who sported the peculiar whiskers.
He served in the regular artillery and in 1849 was wounded in a fight with Apaches in the New Mexico Territory. He resigned in 1853 to manufacture his breech-loading carbine but was forced into bankruptcy [more…]
Soccer
Arguably the most widely played game in the world today, Association Football or soccer can trace its origins back to 200BC in China.
The word soccer was a slang term coined in the 1890s. The word soccer originally came from an abbreviation of Association Football (Assoc; soc) a term introduced in about 1870 for football [more…]
“Time is money”
“Time is money” has become a common catch-cry in this fast-paced world of ours and yet the dictum has ancient origins.
Way back in 430 BC, Antiphon said that “the most costly outlay is the outlay of time” (MAXIM), a theory which was repeated by Theophrastus, circa 320 BC.
Montaigne mentioned the proverb in his Essays, [more…]
Cryptic Crossword Tutorial
Like to join the ranks of the elite and become a cryptic crossword solver?Sudoku Video Tutorial
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to be good at maths to solve a Sudoku! The puzzles are based on the principles of logic and recent variants have been created which use systems of letters, shapes or colours instead of numbers. To help you get started...Yuan Tan
The Chinese New Year festival, known as Yuan Tan, is probably the most important event on the Chinese calendar. Some 370 million people in China travel home to celebrate the three-day public holiday with their relatives, and every four years are given twenty days official leave to visit their home towns or villages. The [more…]
Yuri Gagarin
Colonel Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space when he orbited the Earth in 1961.
Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was born on a collective farm in Smolensk, west of Moscow in March 1934. His father was a carpenter.
After attending his local school for six years and then various technical schools, Yuri joined the [more…]
Insurance Companies, UK
Life insurance companies devise tests to help them gauge how long their clients will live. So it is important to get it right.
Some questions examine whether their clients involve their minds in any activities.
It’s an eye-opener to see the huge extent to which mental performance, IQ and mind-sports related answers can account for a [more…]
