What does “Pocahontas” mean?

Pocahontas (Her name means “Little Mischief”) was the favorite daughter of Powhatan, chief of the area, where the first English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. She was about 12 when one of the settlers, Captain Joho Smith, was dragged before her father to be clubbed to death. Pocahontas pleaded successfully for his life. Some years later, Pocahontas was taken hostage by the English who wanted her father to return their prisoners. During her time in Jamestown, she converted to Christianity and, to cement Anglo-Native American relations, she married a tobacco planter, John Rolfe. He took her and their baby son to London and they lived there for a year. However, she became homesick and decided to return home, but died of smallpox before she had left England.

What does “LASER” stand for?

Lasers are machines that produce thin but very powerful monochromatic beams of light or heat rays. The power of laser beams makes lasers useful for cutting and welding with great precision. They are used in medicine, in industry and especially for research, e.g. undertaking delicate eye operations, drilling holes in metal and diamonds, and providing standards of straightness in engineering. In communication systems, laser beams can be used to carry vast amounts of information by fiber optics. The first laser was built in 1960 in the US by the American physicist T.H. Maiman.

Where is the home of sandwiches?

It is estimated that Americans wolf down over 300 million sandwiches a day – more than one per person. However, sandwich has its origin in England. Sandwiches were named after John Montagu, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, who spent entire days at the gaming table. During one of his round-the-clock sessions, he ordered his man to fetch him some cold beef between slices of bread and thus quickly fortified himself without the clutter of cutlery. Within a few years, all of England was eating “sandwiches”. Today, almost anything edible that can fit between two slices of bread is a sandwich – from butter to shop suey vegetables to sunflower seeds to red licorice. It is no longer a humble snack.

What are Botticelli’s most famous works?

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), an Italian painter, is one of the most notable artists of the Renaissance. Most of his pictures are of religious subjects, but he also painted portraits, mythological scenes, and allegories. His most famous and original works are his mythological paintings. Chief among them are the two great masterpieces in the Uffizi in Flurence, Primavera (c. 1478) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) –supremely graceful works that have become so famous that they are practically symbols of the Renaissance. His refined, elegant figures became an inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelites and a major source of influence on Art Nouveau.

What is the symbol of a barber?

There was a time when a gentleman went to his barber for haircuts, shaves, manicures, blood-letting, teeth extraction, and the removal of wrens. The barber-surgeon’s dual role goes back as far as Egypt in 1600 B.C. Until 200 years ago, blood-letting was a remedy for anything that ailed you. Because the bleeding of patients was a regular service of the barber-surgeon, it was appropriate, at that time, for a barber to advertise his trade with a white sign (the symbol of a bandage), splattered with touches of red. By the mid-18^th century, barbers and surgeons of England had been divided into separate professions, and the barber’s sign had become a red-and-white striped pole, from which hung a basin. At one time, patients held onto the pole as they were bled into the bowl.

What is the name of the first dictionary?

Dictionaries have been published in almost every living language from Afrikaans to Zulu, as well as some dead ones, such as Afrikaans and Egyptian (defining hieroglyphics). However, editing a dictionary is not a job for people with short attention spans – or short lives. The first great French dictionary, the Academic Françoise, took 56 years to complete, and the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled in 71 years. The standard Italian dictionary, begun in 1863, is still unfinished. The first bilingual dictionary (English-French), printed for travelers to France, was compiled in 1480 by William Caxton. In previous centuries men made glossaries which are handwritten lists of foreign and unusual words.