Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Rise of the Regional Jet
CRJ first flight in 1991 When the commercial air travel industry was deregulated in the United States in 1978, new opportunities appeared on the horizon to link hundreds of city pairs that had never received nonstop air service before. In this new environment, airlines relied on turboprop aircraft to feed hubs where passengers could…
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Shipping Containers
The first standard shipping container was invented and patented by Malcolm McLean (USA, 1956). Although he wasn’t an ocean shipper, he owned the largest trucking company in the country at that time. Gradually, he came up with idea of how to make intermodal transportation seamless and efficient. For years, when Malcolm started his trucking company, cargo…
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History of Coleslaw!
When I order at Popeyes chicken, I always order a large side of coleslaw, giving me the satisfaction of, with the large volume of fried chicken, eating vegetables. Then I was reading up about history of Coleslaw and found this: Coleslaw (from the Dutch term koolsla meaning ‘cabbage salad’), also known as cole slaw or…
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History of Christmas Tree
My son asked me about the Christmas tree and I realized – I didn’t know! So here goes – a little bit of history about the Christmas tree: Interesting fact: In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined…
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Worlds longest Flight
No- it is not from Sydney to London at 18hours. It is 64 Days, 22 Hrs, 19mins and 5 seconds. That is over two months in a Cessna 172, flying twenty four hours a day, without even landing for fuel. That’s exactly what two pilots did back in 1958 in the California and Nevada desert.…
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Hamsterdam
One of my top TV serials is HBO’s The Wire. It fascinated me on several levels in terms of the story as well as the portrayal of Baltimore. In season 3 episode 4 the concept of Hamsterdam was introduced – where they section a “Safe haven” for drug addicts – the police does not intervene.…
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Traffic Jams
Have you ever wondered when you are driving down the road, the traffic seems to stop but then when you move forward, there is nothing which caused the slow down. Well, there is math behind this. MIT has did a study in place and came up with this paper. https://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/ Overview This web site presents…
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The History of the Toilet
Yes, the topic is rather shocking, but it was fascinating to read the evolution of the toilet. This lead to the development of plumbing technologies. The smithsonian has a very interesting article about this – where they have gone into details about the evolution of the “throne room” from medieval times to the present. Toilets…
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History of Banking
The history of banking began with the first prototype banks which were the merchants of the world, who made grain loans to farmers and traders who carried goods between cities. This was around 2000 BC in Assyria, India and Sumeria. Later, in ancient Greece and during the Roman Empire, lenders based in temples made loans, while accepting deposits and performing the change of money. Archaeology from this period in ancient…
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The Cup Noodle – カップヌードル Kappu Nūdoru
Instant noodles were invented in 1958 by Momofuku Ando, the Taiwanese-born founder of the Japanese food company Nissin. He used Chicken Ramen as the first instant ramen noodles. In 1970, Nissin formed the subsidiary Nissin Foods (USA) Co. Inc, to sell instant noodles in the United States. Nissin recognized that the bowls traditionally used to package instant noodles in Asia…
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