When were Jokes and Riddles First told?
Riddles:
Riddles have been asked since very ancient times. Today, we consider puzzles as a form of amusement, but people took riddles very seriously long ago.
Ancient oracles often answered questions and advised the form of riddles. Kings used riddles to send each other secret messages. These serious riddles were also called enigmas.
Greek and Romans held riddle contests at their feast and gave prizes to the winners. According to some legends, a man's life sometimes depended on giving the correct answer to a riddle.
Riddles even appear in the Bible. At Samson's wedding feast, a riddle contest was held, and the Queen of Sheba asked King Solomon several riddles.
Jokes:
Jokes are as old as the spoken word. In every country in the world and every age in history , people have told funny stories to make one another laugh.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, the court jesters, or fools, amused the king and his court with jokes and tricks. At first, court jesters sang of brave deeds or gests. But as time went by, they became tellers of jokes and funny stories.
Jokes told by jesters began to appear in collections or jestbooks. One of the best known English jestbooks was "Tarlton's Jests," which appeared about 1611. So you see how long ago people were collecting jokes. The most famous joke teller in history is Joe Miller,an English actor who lived from 1684 to 1738.
Who Invented the Elevator?
No one man invented the idea of the elevator; it was developed over a long period of time. This is because the mechanical principles of elevators had been in use for centuries.
The ancient Greeks knew how to lift objects using pulleys and winches. A pulley is a grooved wheel, or drum, with a rope that can slide over. A winch is a machine that has a broad wheel, or drum, with a rope fastened to it. By turning the drum with a crank, the rope can be wound up on the drum or let out. By running the rope over a pulley, it can be made to raise or lower a load.
In the 17th century, a "flying chair" was invented. It was designed to carry people to the top floors of the buildings and was operated by a system of weights and pulleys. the chair and its machinery were outside the building. The "flying chair" never became popular.
During the first half of the 19th century, elevators were already in existence, but they were mostly freight. Steam power was used to turn the hoisting drums of these elevators.
People were afraid that the rope holding the elevator might snap, and the elevator would go crashing down. Then Elisha Otis invented a safety device that prevented this from happening, and elevators became popular. Also, at this time, hydraulic power began to be used to raise and lower elevators.
The electric elevator, which is used today, was developed by the German engineer Werner von Siemens.
When were Houses First Built?
The man began to build a home, shelter for himself and his family thousands and thousands of years ago. The kinds of homes people built long ago depended almost completely upon at hand, and the "house" was the first-ever built.
For example, when the stone ax was invented thousands of years ago, wood began to play an important part in homebuilding. So the early man was already building himself houses of wood.
On the other hand, in ancient times, people living in warm climates found that grass houses were easy to make and comfortable to live in. So all over the wet, hot grasslands of Aaaaaaaaaafrica and on some of the islands of the South Pacific, houses were made of grasses, leaves,or vines that grew nearby.
Thousands of years ago, people who lived in hot, dry climates found a way to make fine walls for their homes. They plastered a sticky mixture of clay or mud over house walls.
The ancient Egyptians are believed to have been among the first to discover how to make bricks. In Mesopotamia, primitive people later developed a way of making the sun dried bricks harder and stronger. They placed the molded bricks in a fire and "burned" them. Later on, the ancient Assyrians found out how to burn a glaze onto their bricks. Such bricks have lasted for thousands of years.
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