Invention
Where does Dynamite come from?
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel developed dynamite in 1866–67 at his Krümmel factory on the Elbe near Hamburg, taming nitroglycerin by soaking it into kieselguhr, a porous earth. He patented it in 1867.
More Inventions
.jpg/330px-Daniel_Watson_2016-03-17_(Unsplash).jpg)
Invention
Lawn mower
📍 Stroud, England
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.
Invention
Ukulele
📍 Honolulu, Hawaii
Madeiran craftsmen who sailed to Hawaii in 1879 turned their little machete guitar into the ukulele in the 1880s, and King Kalākaua made it a royal favourite. The Hawaiian name roughly means 'jumping flea'.
Invention
Folding fan
📍 Kyoto–Nara, Japan
The folding fan was invented in Japan. In 988 a Japanese monk presented folding fans to the Chinese emperor, and the Chinese long called them 'Japanese fans'. Portuguese traders later brought them to Europe, where Spain made them famous.
More from Europe
.jpg/330px-Art-broken-explosion-glass_(24300206666).jpg)
Word
Smithereens (the word)
📍 Ireland
Smithereens comes from Irish smidirín, 'a tiny fragment', from smiodar, 'fragment', plus the Irish diminutive -ín, the same ending as in colleen. It turns up in English in the early 1800s.
.jpeg/330px-Jeans_Detail_(184193271).jpeg)
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.
Game
Dog agility
📍 London (Crufts at Olympia), England
Dog agility began as interval entertainment at the 1978 Crufts dog show in London, with dogs racing round a course modelled on horse show jumping. It became a proper competition at Crufts in 1980.