Historians believe the earliest version of tennis was invented by the ancient Egyptians, but they didn’t use rackets. Instead, they struck the ball with the palm of their hand (called the “rahat”), which was said to have been the origin of the word
A proposed array of 200 small telescopes could detect Planet Nine by observing stellar occultations. Spaced across 1,000 km, they’d map Trans-Neptunian Objects and potentially confirm a planet or primordial black hole in the solar system’s outer reac
New English Canaan, written by Thomas Morton, was the first book to be banned in the US. It was banned in 1637 for its harsh criticisms of the restrictive Puritan customs of the New English colony at the time.
In Japanese mythology, Oni can mean a variety of things like demon, troll, orc or ogre. Children play "oni gokko", which is the same as Tag, but who is "it" is called "the oni"
Ninjas used a system called Goshiki-mai, meaning Five Colored Rice, in which rice grains were painted red, blue, yellow, black or purple in order to leave coded messages or trails.
Bite the Bullet: This phrase is believed to originate from the days before modern anesthesia when soldiers were given bullets to bite on during surgery to cope with extreme pain. This practice allowed them to focus on something else during painful proced
