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Invention
Where does Lawn mower come from?
Edwin Budding of Stroud, England, invented the lawn mower in 1830, patenting it as a better way than the scythe to cut grass on sports grounds and large gardens.
More Inventions
Invention
Hot-air balloon
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
Invention
Stethoscope
📍 Paris, France
French doctor René Laennec invented it in 1816 at a Paris hospital, after noticing that a rolled-up sheet of paper carried heart sounds to his ear. His first version was a simple wooden tube.
Invention
Eyeglasses
📍 Tuscany (Pisa–Florence), Italy
Spectacles appeared in Tuscany around 1290: in a 1306 sermon a Pisan friar said the art of making them was not yet 20 years old. The tale that Marco Polo saw glasses in China is a myth; Chinese sources say they were imported.
More from Europe
Nature
European rabbit
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
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Game
Motocross
📍 Camberley, Surrey, England
The first known motocross race, then called a 'scramble', was run on Camberley Heath in Surrey, England, on 29 March 1924. The name motocross came later, blending French 'motocyclette' with 'cross-country'.
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Word
Denim (the word)
📍 Nîmes, France
Your jeans are part French: 'denim' is short for serge de Nîmes, 'serge from Nîmes', a city in southern France. English had the word by the 1690s, and American mills were weaving cotton denim by 1789.