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  6 Things You Might Not Know About the Vikings Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Email The Vikings are mostly known as a group of aggressive invaders who pillaged and plundered their way from Scandinavia to other European nations from about the eighth to the 11th century. In fact, the word “Viking” means “pirate invader” in the Old Norse language. Though they were a fearsome lot, the Vikings were also skilled boatbuilders and seafarers who sailed to other lands for many reasons, seeking riches and profitable trade routes. Historians have uncovered former Viking sites as far away as Iceland, Greenland, and Canada that reveal fascinating history about historic civilizations. Here are six things about the Vikings you might not know. Credit:  Print Collector / Hulton Archive via Getty Images Not All Vikings Came From Scandinavia Sweden, Norway, and Denmark receive most of the attention regarding Viking history, but a group of warriors known as the Oeselians lived on a l...

  Why Did the British Wear Red Coats? Home World History Article Share to emai Twitte In February 1645, during the First English Civil War, the Parliament of England created the New Model Army. This single, standing army consisted of 22,000 regularly paid, well-disciplined, and properly trained men, with promotion gained on merit. To enhance the cohesion of this force, every soldier was supplied with a standardized uniform, which included a red coat. It wasn’t long before these soldiers were unofficially dubbed “Redcoats,” a name that stuck through many conflicts to come. British soldiers only stopped wearing red when the khaki uniform was introduced during the Second Boer War (1899-1902), but even today, red coats are worn by British soldiers on ceremonial duty.  But why the color red? It may seem strange today, when camouflage is so commonplace in the design of military uniforms, that such a noticeable color was used on the battlefield, rather than green, brown, or khaki. Bu...

  Original photo by Pravruti/ Shutterstock The world's hardest cheese can be chewed like gum for hours. It’s frustrating when you buy a block of cheese at the supermarket and it grows mold before you can enjoy the whole thing. But that’s rarely an issue with  chhurpi , the world’s hardest cheese that can last for up to 20 years. Chhurpi originated in the Eastern Himalayas region of Nepal and China, and it comes in both a softer variety produced from cow’s milk and a hard variety made from yak’s milk.  Soft chhurpi  lasts for only a week or two and is often pickled or enjoyed in curries. But the version made from yak’s milk is a special culinary treat you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Hard chhurpi is produced by  curing  fresh cheese curds at room temperature for several days. The curds are then sliced into blocks and left to dry either outside or in a low-heat oven, which gives it a  smoky flavor  and a dense consistency. While chhurpi is...

  Apollo 10 achieved the fastest speed humans have ever traveled. Science & Industry D espite being described as a “dress rehearsal” for the first moon landing, which took place just two months later, Apollo 10 achieved something incredible in its own right: the fastest speed that humans have ever traveled. Astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan  reached a speed  of 24,816 mph while returning from their eight-day voyage on May 26, 1969, a  record  that not even subsequent Apollo missions managed to top. Before doing so, Stafford and Cernan boarded the Apollo lunar module and orbited our only natural satellite at a distance of about 9 miles from its surface. Young later walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 16 mission, and Cernan did so with Apollo 17. Other speed records, while impressive, don’t even come close to Apollo 10. The land speed record, set in 1997 by a 54-foot Thrust SuperSonic Car, is 763 mph, while a diving peregrine falco...

  Original photo by Brett Sayles/ Pexels Jeep owners spread kindness by exchanging rubber ducks. If you saw a Jeep with a rubber duck on its dashboard, you probably wouldn’t think anything of it — until you saw several other Jeeps with ducks on their dashboards, too. This quirky, quacky tradition, known as “Jeep ducking” or “ Duck Duck Jeep ,” started with one friendly Jeep owner placing a rubber duck on another Jeep. Like the “ Jeep wave ,” in which Jeep owners acknowledge one another on the road by waving with two or four fingers, the “Jeep ducking” tradition quickly caught on among Jeep fans. The tradition was started in July 2020 by   a Canadian Jeep owner named  Allison Parliament . During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parliament wanted to leave a note for the fellow owner of a Jeep Wrangler, but she didn’t have any paper on hand. She did, however, have a rubber duck. So she wrote a cheerful note — “Nice Jeep, have a great day” — on the duck, and placed i...

  Original photo by Iren_Geo/ Shutterstock People used to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” while taking a photo. Photographers have relied on the magic of cheese for decades — just mentioning the word is enough to turn up the corners of our mouths into a picture-perfect grin. But the earliest photographers utilized a different food to help purse their subjects’ puckers: prunes. According to Christina Kotchemidova, a communications professor and researcher, British photography studios of the past encouraged people to  say “prunes”  in an effort to tighten their lips, a look that was more socially preferable than a wide smile.  Most 19th- and early 20th-century photos show subjects with a solemn expression, a look that’s often attributed to the long exposure times of early cameras; holding a neutral expression for several minutes was  easier than maintaining a smile.  But social norms also played a big role — stern faces remained popular even after photo tech...

  Original photo by NASA/ Unsplash Astronauts say space smells like gunpowder and burnt steak. It being a vacuum and all, space isn’t often thought of as having a scent of its own. And while no one has  directly  smelled outer space — exposure without a helmet would be fatal — many astronauts have  reported  that it smells like a mix of gunpowder and burnt steak. The odor is most noticeable after an astronaut returns to their spacecraft through the airlock and removes their helmet, at which point the lingering scent can be detected by both the astronaut who had been outside the ship and their crewmates who remained aboard. It’s been theorized that the source of space’s scent is dying stars, which release molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — a chemical compound also found in coal, oil, and food — as they near the end of their existence. There’s even a  cologne  named “Eau de Space” based on the smell, which was originally synthesized by b...