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Page 8

Q0189

WonderHistory

Pompeii was buried so quickly by Mount Vesuvius that it preserved daily Roman life in extraordinary detail.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, ash and pumice buried Pompeii within about a day, and searing pyroclastic surges killed those who had stayed. The burial was so fast and so complete that it sealed a Roman town mid-life: loaves still in ovens, election slogans on walls, wine jars in taverns. We even have an eyewitness — Pliny the Younger, who watched from across the bay and described the column of ash in two letters to the historian Tacitus. Rediscovered in the 1740s, Pompeii became the single richest window archaeology has onto everyday Roman life.

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Q0190

WonderHistory

Ancient Roman concrete was so durable that some harbour structures still survive after 2,000 years.

Roman harbour concrete used volcanic ash and lime that kept reacting with seawater, growing new minerals in cracks. Some structures still stand after 2,000 years.

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Q0191

WonderHistory

The Olympic Games were already more than 1,000 years old when they were banned in the Roman Empire.

The ancient Olympic Games ran from 776 BC and were held for over a millennium before a Roman emperor banned them around AD 393 as a pagan festival.

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Q0192

WonderHistory

The Silk Road was not one road, but a network of trade routes connecting cultures across Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The Silk Road was a web of overland and sea routes. Along it moved not just silk but paper-making, faiths, numerals — and, at times, disease.

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Q0194

WonderHistory

Genghis Khan's empire connected East and West so widely that goods, people, disease, and ideas moved faster than ever before.

By linking East and West under one rule, the Mongols let goods, people and ideas flow along protected roads — and plague travelled the same routes.

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Q0195

WonderHistory

The Black Death killed such a large part of Europe's population that it helped change labour, wages, and social power.

The Black Death killed so many workers that survivors could demand better pay and conditions — helping loosen the rigid ties of feudal society.

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Q0196

WonderHistory

The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of art. It was also a revolution in how humans saw themselves.

The Renaissance revived classical art, but also changed how people saw the world — reviving inquiry, perspective and a new confidence in human reason.

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Q0197

WonderHistory

Leonardo da Vinci left thousands of pages of notes, but many of his inventions were never built in his lifetime.

Leonardo filled thousands of notebook pages with flying machines, gears and studies — but many designs were never built, hidden for centuries in his mirror-writing.

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Q0199

WonderHistory

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 helped push Greek scholars and ancient texts westward into Renaissance Europe.

When Constantinople fell in 1453, Greek scholars fled west carrying ancient manuscripts — fuel that helped feed the Italian Renaissance.

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Q0200

WonderHistory

Coffeehouses became centres of politics, business, science, and gossip in early modern Europe and the Middle East.

17th- and 18th-century coffeehouses were called 'penny universities': for the price of a coffee, anyone could join debates on politics, trade and science.

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Q0201

WonderHistory

The word 'salary' is linked to salt, because salt was once valuable enough to shape trade and payment.

'Salary' comes from the Latin salarium, rooted in sal, salt. Salt was once so valuable it shaped trade routes and, some say, part of a soldier's pay.

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Q0202

WonderHistory

The Industrial Revolution changed human life so deeply that work, cities, time, and family routines were reorganised around machines.

The Industrial Revolution reshaped daily life at the root — moving people to cities, ruling the day by the clock, and remaking work and the family.

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Q0204

WonderHistory

Humans went from the first powered flight to landing on the Moon in less than 70 years.

From Kitty Hawk in 1903 to the Moon in 1969 was just 66 years — a single long lifetime spanning the whole leap from first flight to lunar landing.

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Q0205

WonderHistory

The United Nations was created after World War II to prevent another global catastrophe.

Founded in 1945 after the Second World War, the United Nations was built to give nations a table to talk at, hoping to prevent another global catastrophe.

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Q0206

WonderHistory

The Cold War was fought not only with weapons, but with science, sport, propaganda, cinema, and space exploration.

The rivalry shaped more than military strategy: classrooms, films, Olympic arenas, laboratories and the space race all became stages for influence.

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Q0207

WonderHistory

The Space Race turned the sky into a political battlefield — and accidentally built the world we live in.

It began in October 1957, when Sputnik — a beeping metal sphere just 58 cm wide — passed over America and triggered the creation of NASA within a year. Twelve years later, Apollo 11 stood on the Moon. But the race's real legacy is under your thumb: weather and communication satellites, GPS navigation, and a young microchip industry supercharged by Apollo's demand for tiny, reliable electronics. The rivalry was political; the infrastructure it left behind became everyone's.

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Q0208

WonderHistory

The first human in space was Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth once aboard Vostok 1, becoming the first human in space — a flight of about 108 minutes.

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Q0209

WonderHistory

The first words spoken from the Moon were heard on Earth almost instantly, but the signal travelled across nearly 400,000 kilometres (250,000 miles).

Radio signals travel at light speed, so the Moon's words reached Earth in about 1.3 seconds — near-instant, yet still a measurable delay across 384,000 km (239,000 miles).

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Q0210

WonderHistory

The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years and fell in 1989.

The Berlin Wall divided the city from 1961 until 1989, when it was opened almost overnight — a sudden end to a 28-year symbol of a divided world.

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Q0211

WonderHistory

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before becoming president of South Africa.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned for opposing apartheid, then walked free in 1990 and, in 1994, became South Africa's first Black president.

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Q0212

WonderHistory

Human history is not a straight line of progress. It is a messy chain of accidents, inventions, collapses, recoveries, and choices.

History rarely moves in a straight line. Progress comes tangled with accident, reversal and unintended consequence — less a march than a messy braid.

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Q0213

WonderHistory

Every ordinary object around you has a hidden history of people who invented, traded, fought over, improved, copied, or carried it.

Everyday things carry hidden histories — the people who invented, traded, mined and shipped them. Look closely and an ordinary object opens into a whole world.

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Q0215

WonderHistory

Ancient Egyptians used a calendar of 365 days thousands of years ago.

The ancient Egyptians used a 365-day solar calendar of twelve 30-day months plus five extra days — a strikingly modern structure, thousands of years ago.

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Q0216

WonderHistory

The first coins appeared in Lydia in western Anatolia around the 7th century BC.

The first true coins were struck in Lydia, in western Anatolia, around the 7th century BC — standardised metal money that helped transform trade.

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