Category: blah blah blah
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Getting Inked? The history of Tattoos
In 1961, it officially became illegal to give someone a tattoo in New York City. But Thom deVita didn’t let this new restriction deter him from inking people. This ban existed till 1997. What is the earliest evidence of tattoos? In terms of tattoos on actual bodies, the earliest known examples were for a long…
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Window Tax- aka- Daylight Robbery
It was interesting to learn about the etymology of “Daylight Robbery”- it really prompted me to dig deeper. When William III was short of money, which he attempted to rectify by the introduction of the much-despised Window Tax. As the name suggests, this was a tax levied on the windows or window-like openings of a…
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How the Swiss Ruled Chocolate
I came across this exercpt from a very interseting article. You can read the article here: The Unfinished Dream Behind Amul’s Foray into the Chocolate Industry (thewire.in) Theobroma Cocoa, food of the gods, had been consumed in Latin America since the Aztec and Mayan times in liquid form, it was the making of the…
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Salary = Salt
A while ago I heard about the history of the word “Salary” being linked to Salt, and so I checked it out- Well – Being so valuable, soldiers in the Roman army were sometimes paid with salt instead of money. Their monthly allowance was called “salarium” (“sal” being the Latin word for salt). This Latin root…
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Searching for John Doe
Originally, John Doe was a sham name used to indicate any plaintiff in an action of ejectment (a legal action to regain property) in civil court. Richard Roe was the counterpart, to indicate the defendant. These fake names were used in delicate legal matters, a practice that was abolished in English law in 1852. Since…
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A Twist in the Tail- The history of the NeckTie
The first word that I learnt from this research – sartorialists – derived from the word Sartorial (adj) that of or relating to clothing or style or manner of dress. Textured, solid, striped, botanical, jacquard, geometric, 52 to 58 inches long, alternately withering or widening from 3112 to 5 inches, costing anywhere from three for…
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Popcorn
An iconic snack synonymous with the movie theatre and entertainment, actually packs quite a pop as a healthy snack as well. Archeologists have found traces of popcorn in 1,000-year-old Peruvian tombs. This week, we’ll take a look at the story behind this popular snack, and discover that there’s more beneath that hard husk than meets…
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Frustration seeping in!
Well, last friday, I took a whole 40 minutes to traverse a combined distance of 1.2 Kms from my house to my office. This was the heights of frustration, and it really got me thinking asto what the hell is going on here?the road on which I stay, has been a quite residential neighborhood. We…