#United States
Questions about “United States”.
29 articles
Were sticky notes born from a failure?
Stick it, peel it off, stick it again. The little square of paper that now lives on every desk did not have an easy birth.
Can a Venus flytrap count?
What if a plant with no brain and no nerves were “counting” something as its prey crept closer? A look inside the intricate workings of a carnivorous trap.
Is the Japanese word “hotchikisu” named after a person?
The desktop tool that snaps papers together has a Japanese name no English speaker would recognize. And a famous story about an inventor goes with it. But is it true?
What is the biggest tree in the world?
A tree nearly as tall as a 40-story building stands quietly in a California forest. But change how you measure “big,” and the champion changes too.
Where does the word “hamburger” come from?
Cheeseburger, fishburger: “burger” now works like a dish name of its own. Trace the word back, though, and it has nothing to do with ham, or with buns.
Is the word “jeans” named after a city?
Tough blue trousers that seem to hang in every closet. Trace their name, and the name of their fabric, and an old map of Europe unfolds.
Is the famous story of how potato chips were invented true?
A fussy customer and an irritated cook: the birth of the potato chip comes with a story you can’t resist retelling. But leaf through old cookbooks, and things get complicated.
Where does the baseball term “strike” come from?
A batter lets a pitch go by without moving the bat, and it’s still a “strike.” That odd little word preserves the easygoing ways of 19th-century baseball.
Did Edison invent the light bulb?
The light bulb is the first thing people name when they think of the great inventor. But trace the story of its birth, and a slightly different picture emerges.
Was “escalator” originally a brand name?
We ride them every day in stations and department stores. But when, and by whom, was the name of this moving staircase coined?
What is the oldest tree in the world?
One tree has stood on the same mountain slope since before the pyramids were built. Yet change how you count, and there’s always someone older.
What is the longest cave in the world?
A labyrinth of darkness spreads beneath the ground. People have been measuring it for nearly 200 years, and there is still no end in sight.
How do tornadoes form?
A slender vortex reaches down from the sky to the ground. What conditions have to come together to create a tornado, the source of nature’s most violent winds?
Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit?
It stars in salads, yet some varieties are sold as “fruit tomatoes.” The question of what this red globe really is once went all the way to a national supreme court.
Why do geysers erupt?
A quiet hole in the ground suddenly sends boiling water high into the sky, almost like clockwork. Behind the spectacle lies an underground “pressure cooker.”
Why don’t elevators fall?
In the movies, an elevator whose cable snaps plunges straight down the shaft. Real elevators, though, carry on a trick invented more than 170 years ago.
Did Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone?
Behind the name in the textbooks stand a rival who filed papers at the patent office on the very same day, and a man who tried to send voices down a wire years earlier.
Was basketball really born from peach baskets?
Why does a basketball hoop hang at exactly 3.05 meters, such an oddly specific height? The answer lies in a gym more than 130 years ago.
What does the “short” in shortcake mean?
In Japan, the strawberry cake is a fixture of birthdays and Christmas. But is the “short” in its name about size? A dictionary turns up an unexpected answer.
What kind of piece is 4′33″?
A pianist walks on stage and sits at the keyboard, and then no note ever sounds. What was the twentieth century’s most notorious piece of music really asking us to hear?
Was carbonara really a charcoal burners’ dish?
Egg, cheese and black pepper: Rome’s famous pasta carries a name that means “charcoal burner.” Follow that name back, and some unexpected people and times come into view.
When was the zipper invented?
Jackets, bags, pencil cases: we open and close zippers almost every day. Getting this little mechanism right took more than 20 years of trial and error.
Why does baseball have nine innings?
Most ball games are timed, but baseball has no clock. So when, and how, did the game come to be measured in nine innings?
Was the Statue of Liberty once copper-colored?
The Statue of Liberty is famous for its blue-green color. But that color was never chosen by the sculptor.
Why was volleyball invented?
Volleyball is a school gym staple the world over. Yet it was not dreamed up for energetic young athletes at all, but for a very different crowd. The story begins in the US about 130 years ago.
Why does bowling use ten pins?
Knock down all ten pins in their triangle with one ball and it’s a strike. But that familiar number “ten” comes with a rather dubious legend attached.
Why is home plate a pentagon?
First, second and third base are all squares, yet home plate has five sides. In fact, this base has changed shape twice: from a circle, to a square, to a pentagon.
Was the barcode born on a beach?
The black-and-white stripes that beep at every checkout are everywhere. But when, and how, did someone first think of them?
Were fortune cookies born in Japan?
The folded cookie with a fortune inside arrives at the end of countless Chinese-American meals. It is often taken for a traditional Chinese sweet, yet you rarely see it in China. So where did it come from?