Monthly Archives: April 2014
308.HOW DID THE CAVE MEN DISCOVER FIRE?
Knowing how to make and use fire was man’s first step on the road to civilization. We know that our cave-man ancestors who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago used fire, because we find charcoal and charred bits of bone in their caves. We even find stones still standing that were used as fireplaces.
How did men learn the trick of making a fire? The best we can do is guess. Primitive men probably knew how to use fire before they knew how to kindle it. Lightning may have struck a rotten tree and made it smolder. From this the cave man managed to start a fire, and then he kept it going, possibly for years.
307.HOW DID RESTAURANTS START?
You may think that the chief reason for cooking food is to make it taste better. Actually, the changes cooking produces in food help us to digest it better. Cooking food also guards our health, because the heat destroys parasites and bacteria which might cause us harm.
No matter how good mother’s cooking is, we like to go out to a restaurant sometimes (if we can afford it). It’s not just because there’s different food to eat, but we also enjoy the “going out.”
306.HOW DID FRUITS AND VEGETABLES GET THEIR NAMES?
The name of everything we come in contact with has an origin, and sometimes it’s quite surprising to discover how certain names began. Take a name like gooseberry, for example. It has nothing to do with geese! It was originally gorseberry. In Saxon, gorst from which “gorse” is derived, meant “rough.” And this berry has this name because it grows on a rough or thorny shrub! Raspberry comes from the German verb raspen, which means to rub together or rub as with a file. The marks on this berry were thought to resemble a file.
