Manholes are round so that their covers cannot be dropped through the manhole itself.
Squares, rectangles, ovals, and other shapes could be so positioned that they would slip into the manhole.
The circular manhole cover rests on a lip that is smaller than the cover.
Thus, the size and shape keep the manhole cover from falling into the hole.
PacMan was invented by twenty-seven-year-old Turn Iwatani in 1980. Iwatani worked for Namco Limited of Japan, a producer of video games and computer software. Pac-Man is an icon of 1980s pop culture, and is considered universally as a classic video game.
Alfred Carl Fuller came to the United States from Norway in 1903, and after working at a variety of jobs, he began selling brushes door-to-door in 1905. By 1910, he had a staff of 25 salesmen. Over the years, Fuller adapted by expanding his line to include a variety of household cleaning products. When he…
An inventor from Massachusetts named Earl D. Tupper invented Tupperware in 1942. In the 1930s, Tupper, a chemist at Du Pont, experimented with a new durable plastic called polyethylene. Tupper thought it could be used for all types of housewares, and he developed some test products. The first piece of Tupperware, a bathroom cup, was…
Henry Shrapnel of England (1761-1842), an artillery officer, invented the so-called shrapnel. It was a round projectile filled with bullets and equipped with an explosive charge to scatter the shot. In later versions, fragments of the shell casing itself were found to be more deadly than the enclosed bullets. Shrapnel today refers to those fragments.
Chamois is a soft, warm leather and is the skin of the Alpine animal of the same name. More often, however, it is specially treated sheepskin.
There are nine nuts per ounce in each box of Cracker Jack, a smaller proportion than in the original 1893 box. But there is a prize, and that didn’t become part of the package until 1913.