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One
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FRUIT AND AVEGETABLE?
In 1893 the United States Supreme Court tried to clarify the difference between a fruit and a vegetable by saving that vegetables are eaten as pan of the main course of a meal, but fruit is eaten as an appetizer or dessert, or for a snack.
But. as with so many words, there is one definition which is correct according to the dictionary and another one which people use in everyday life. Sweet corn, for instance, is eaten as an appetizer, but most people would consider it a vegetable.
In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary of a plant. (The ovary is the part of the plant where the seeds are kept.) So, strictly speaking, an
acorn is as much a fruit as an apple. But, if you went into a store and asked for fruit, the store-owner would not offer you acorns. When we talk about fruit in every-day life, we mean the juicy fruits like apples, grapes, oranges and melons.
"Vegetable" has even more meanings than "fruit". The word covers any kind of plant life, even including trees. But, again, in everyday life vegetables mean food like lettuce, carrots, cabbage and sprouts.
A Sweetcorn (vegetable)
B Tomato (fruit)
C Aubergine or egg-plant (vegetable)
D Avocado (fruit or veg etable)
E Jerusalem artichoke (vegetable)
Two
WHERE IS THE WORLD'S HIGHEST MOUNTAIN?
The world's highest mountain is Mount Everest, on the Nepal-Tibet frontier in the eastern Himalayas. Mount Everest was named after Sir George Everest who discovered it in 1856, when he was surveyor-general of India. At that time its height was estimated by trigono-metry as 29,002 feet, but more recently it has been established as 29,028 feet.
Everest is not only the highest mountain in the world, but also the most magnificent and inaccessible. It is swept by icy winds and gripped in a coldness that often drops far below zero. There are great glaciers and crevasses, ice-falls and sheer rock faces, and the rarified atmosphere as its greatest
heights has defied generations of climbers.
It was not until 1920 that the Dalai Lama of Tibet was persuaded to permit a British climbing party into his territory. Until then both Nepal and Tibet had forbidden any such intrusion.
Several unsuccessful British ex-peditions were made to conquer the mountain and 16 men were lost in the attempts. In 1951 Eric Shipton made an approach from the south through Nepal. Before then all the expeditions had made their approach from the north. Shipton had no intention of at-tempting an assault on the summit. His object was to gather informa-tion for future expeditions.
With the help of this information a British expedition, using light-weight oxygen-breathing appara-tus and other weight-saving equipment, reached the summit in 1953. It was led by Colonel H. C. J. Hunt, later Lord Hunt.
Nine camps were made during the climb, and on the morning of May 29 a New Zealander, Edmund Hillary, and Sherpa Tensing Norgay made the final assault. At 11.30 a.m., after a hard climb, they reached the summit.
Three
WHERE IS THE WORLD'S HIGHEST WATERFALL?
The world's highest waterfall is in Venezuela, South America. It is known as the Angel Falls and lies on the River Carrao. This mag-nificent waterfall tumbles 3,212 feet down to the river.
The Venezuelans did not even know about Angel Falls or the surrounding country until the 1930s, because steep rocks made overland travel to the region im-possible. It was not until aircraft started penetrating the region that the falls were discovered.
The falls get their name from the United States adventurer and ex-plorer James Angel who crashed near them in an aeroplane in 1935.
Warm currents increase the rain -fall of the countries near which they flow. The warm air over the currents becomes heavily charged with moisture and condenses over the land as rain or snow.
Four
WHEN WAS COFFEE FIRST GROWN?
A legend says the coffee plant first grew in Kaffa, a province in south Ethiopia, where it was discovered by a goatherd called Kaldi about the year 850. Kaldi's goats were
Right: coffee beans drying in the sun in a small Guinea village.
reported to have skipped and pranced in a strange manner after feeding on an evergreen plant. The goatherd, so the story goes, tried some of the berries himself and excitedly dashed to the nearest town to tell of his find, which was called coffee after the name of the province.
Another theory is that the word coffee is probably derived from the Arabic qahwah. Certainly coffee was introduced into Europe from Arabia during the 16th and 17th |