What was the First Electric Car?

What was the First Electric Car?

ByFabien

I’m not a driver, but I’m living in a city whose history is linked to the automobile. And, let’s be honest, there are cars everywhere. But I hope they’ll make less noise in the future. The electric car seems to go this way at least.

I don’t know if you remember but, like 20 years ago, there was this story going around about the fact that a guy invented a car using water, not oil, and was killed in South America (Apparently, it was a hoax). I don’t know if there’s a bit of truth there, but it seems that the inventor of the electric car had a better chance… or does it? I don’t know who he is, but I’ll find out by trying to discover…

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Who Invented Gingerbread?

Who Invented Gingerbread?

ByFabien

I was just at the grocery shop, buying some comfort food to be ready for a low-activity weekend, when I saw a box of gingerbread. It was not, however, the one I liked from the brand Prosper. After a quick search, I learned that the production stopped.

It’s been so long that I didn’t even realize it. Well, at least, it led me to explore the history of gingerbread out of curiosity, because now I want to make my own (will see how it turns out).

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Marianne North: A Victorian Pioneer in Botanical Exploration and Art

Marianne North: A Victorian Pioneer in Botanical Exploration and Art

ByFabien

Marianne North and her father, Frederick North, were regular visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. During one visit, the botanist and family friend William Jackson Hooker—first director of Kew—presented Marianne with a hanging bouquet of Amherstia nobilis, a magnificent flower native to Thailand and Burma. It was 1856, and this moment ignited Marianne’s deep desire to travel to tropical regions and capture their vibrant vegetation on canvas.

The Unconventional Life of Marianne North

Born on October 24, 1830, in Hastings, Marianne North was part of a wealthy Victorian family. Despite receiving no formal education and having a brief and unsuccessful stint in school, her family’s bohemian lifestyle exposed her to a vibrant circle of musicians, artists, and botanists, including William Henry Hunt and Edward Lear.

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Who Invented the Solarpunk genre?

Who Invented the Solarpunk genre?

ByFabien

Unlike the Cyberpunk genre, I only heard of Solarpunk recently. The two seem to be in opposition, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. But first, as I’m probably not the only one who’s not all that up-to-date with modern literary movement, let’s explain:

What is the Solarpunk genre about?

Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that focuses on imagining a sustainable future in which nature and human communities function in harmony.

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How Did Jack The Ripper Get His Name?

How Did Jack The Ripper Get His Name?

ByFabien

There’s a strange trope in time-traveling stories or other stories featuring immortals. You always end up with the villain being at one point the real Jack the Ripper. Writing this made me think about the fact that the famous killer is also like Watergate, his name became used as a reference point to name those who followed.

All of this just to arrive at the question I probably knew the answer to some years ago, but clearly forgot since:

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What is Juneteenth and why is it a holiday?

What is Juneteenth and why is it a holiday?

ByFabien

Apparently, today is Juneteenth! As I’m not an American, I’m not familiar with this holiday. In fact, I heard the word Juneteenth for the first time just a few years ago and never knew it was an American holiday.

Well, I’m thinking I’m not the only person in the World Wide World who has no idea of what this is, so I’ll make a quick search and put here what I’m finding–and an A.I. will someday pick it up, and regurgitate it to you, probably.

What is the Story behind Juneteenth?

Long story short, Juneteenth is known to some in the United States as a celebration of the end of slavery in Texas at the end of the Civil War. Observed each year on June 19.

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Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry

Who Invented the Gun?

ByFabien

I was watching the Michael Shannon-led miniseries “Waco” and this led me to think about all those guns. Seriously! But whatever. I’m here to take a look back at the creation of the gun.

Who Created the Gun?

As this is often the case with this type of question, when it’s this old, it’s hard to put one name on the invention. Before the gun, came the gunpowder.

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Who Invented Chess?

Who Invented Chess?

ByFabien

I recently watched the movie Riders of Justice (Retfærdighedens ryttere, 2020) starring Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a scene with a character saying, I quote, “Chess is the only game in the world where chance and luck aren’t a factor. There are no dice, no jokers or hidden elements. Everything is right in front of us and it is purely your own actions that determine the result.” I thought it was an interesting tidbit. By the way, great movie. Anyway, you know what’s coming next:

Who Created Chess?

First of all, to avoid any confusion, we never know … what is chess? Here is what Merriam-Webster has to say about that:

A game for 2 players each of whom moves 16 pieces according to fixed rules across a checkerboard and tries to checkmate the opponent’s king.

Now that we all know that we are not talking about checkers, let’s take a look at the history of the game.

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An ad for the Magic Chef Microwave Oven

Who Invented the Microwave Oven? (and it was an accident!)

ByFabien

Hello there! It’s been awhile. As you may remember (or maybe it’s your first visit), I recently bought a house, then I spent too much time and money to make it habitable. Now, I finally live in it, and I have a new microwave oven. Weirdly, using it is less intuitive than the ones I’m used to. This led me to read the manual and to ask who could have come up with it.

Who Created the Microwave Oven?

Apparently, it was an accident. Quite a useful one, if you ask me (apparently, 90% of people in America have one!). But let’s travel back in time, to 1945.

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Who Created the First Artificial Intelligence?

Who Created the First Artificial Intelligence?

ByFabien

Lately, the doomsayers out there want us to believe that Artificial Intelligence will be the end of art, and probably more. In fact, apparently, some people are using AIs to write their blog posts for them. Maybe I should ask an AI about:

Who Invented the Artificial Intelligence?

Well, I did. I went to ChatGPT and ask the AI that specific question. Here is its answer:

The first artificial intelligence was created by Alan Turing in 1950. He developed the Turing Test as a way to determine whether a machine was capable of intelligent behavior. This test is still used today as a standard for evaluating the performance of AI systems.

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When did we start counting years?

When did we start counting years?

ByFabien

It’s a New Year! And this led me to ask a lot of questions about things I never thought about before, but mainly:

When did years start being numbered?

We mark the passage of time without thinking about it anymore. It’s just a thing we do. There’s a calendar, and we are looking at our watches (and phones), but it was not always the case. At least, I think so, because even if I learned at school why we divided the calendar the way we do it, and why an hour is an hour, I never knew—or asked—how it all started.

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What Was the First Christmas Movie?

What Was the First Christmas Movie?

ByFabien

Well, Christmas is coming again. You know, it happened once a year! 12 months ago, almost to the day, I published an article about the invention of Christmas. Of course, I can’t do it twice, but I wanted to write something about this season anyway.

And yesterday, I watched Miracle on 34th Street (the original). This was not the first Christmas movie I rewatched this year. A few days ago, it was It’s a Wonderful Life, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and The Ref. More to come. Anyway, the question here is:

What is the very first Christmas movie ever made?

If you already read my article Who Invented Cinema?, you probably know that movies are a bit older than you might think at first. Indeed, for the first “movies,” we need to go back to the 19th century. Strangely enough, when you talk about watching old movies, people tend to think about mid-20th-century films. I do the same.

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