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Apr. 11th, 2019|11:31 am |
zemes mīdīti un mīti
• In Britain, Walter Raleigh is thought to have introduced tobacco and potatoes to Europe, on his return from the Americas in 1586. In fact, tobacco had arrived before then from France, where it had been introduced in 1560 by Jean Nicot (hence ‘nicotine’), and potatoes were growing in Italy by 1585.
• Apparently Cinderella wore ‘glass’ slippers, but the story of Cinderella was popularized in 1697 by the French author Charles Perrault, who elaborated it from old tales where Cinderella wore slippers made of ‘vair’, which is a medieval word for white squirrel fur, not used in Perrault’s time, and he presumably read it as ‘verre’, which means ‘glass’ in French.
• Mussolini is ‘known’ to have ‘made the trains run on time’, but he achieved it mainly by banning any reporting of the delays, as revealed by the journalist Alexander Cockburn.
no Daudinga jaunās grāmatas Gardening Myths and Misconceptions |
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