Kids Questions & Answers

With the discovery of the New World, Spain and Portugal became great rivals. Before this rivalry led to war, Pope Alexander VI divided the world, in 1494, into two parts by drawing a line from the south of Greenland to the mouth of the Amazon. All lands to the west of this line belonged to Spain, all to the east …

The first French explorer in the New World was Jacques Cartier. On 20 April 1534 he sailed westwards with two ships, seeking a short route to the Indies. Having reached Newfoundland, he waited until the winter ice had cleared, and then sailed through a strait and explored a great bay, claiming the territory in the name of France. On a …

For thousands of years the world had speculated about the origin of the River Nile, but it was not until Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, two experienced explorers, led an expedition to Africa in 1857 that a real attempt was made to solve the problem. The entire journey was complicated from the start by the fact that neither of …

One of the many who went on a vain search for El Dorado was a Spaniard, Hernando de Soto. He set off with a few mounted companions from Florida in 1539 on a journey that was to last for three years. De Soto and his party pushed their way through unexplored territory and in 1541 came to the banks of …

John Cabot was an Italian and a native of Venice. When he sailed westwards in the little Matthew, in 1497, however, he flew the banner of St George at his masthead, for he had been sent on a voyage of discovery by England’s King Henry VII. After a crossing of six weeks, land was sighted. Cabot went ashore to claim …

Comets have been known to mankind since eons, hence it cannot be said that comets were discovered by any single individual. A comet, like planets and asteroids, orbits around the sun – with the orbital period varying from a few years to thousands of years. A comet is formed of rock, ice, dust and a few frozen gases like carbon …

In earlier civilizations, there was much doubt about whether vacuum can exist. Ancient Greeks also did not believe vacuum is possible. In the medieval Islamic world, physicist Ibn al-Haytham supported the existence of a void or vacuum. He mathematically demonstrated that place (al-makan) is the imagined three-dimensional void between the inner surfaces of a containing body. The first suction pump …

The Tutsi of Burundi and Rwanda, who are noted for their dancing and high jumping, are, on average, the world’s tallest people. Men over 183 cm (6ft) in height. The world’s shortest people also live in Central Africa. These are the pygmy hunters and gatherers in the forests. Pygmy women average only 135 cm (4ft5in) and men 137 cm (4ft6in)!

The NEO consumers are new high-value consumers of the new economic order (NEO). It is a newly emerging segment of customers from all age groups, ethnicities, income bands, locations and have high propensity to spend their income on disposable goods. NEO consumers are valuable as they consume constantly and favour a sense of investment, discretionary choices and value added services. …

The greatest of the fighting giants of the sea was the Japanese Yamato. She gave her name to a class four battleships designed to be invincible. Yamato displaced 72,000 tons. Her main armament consisted of nine 45.9 cm guns in triple turrets – overwhelmingly superior to any other battleship in the world. The Yamato was completed soon after the Japanese …