the practice of foot-binding, which rendered generations of Chinese women crippled and semi-mobile for the sake of what amounted to a fetish of Chinese fashion.
I find this interesting because this shows that even though Chinese society had so many advancements, they still had a lot of flaws.
well as a variety of technological inventions including the compass, gunpowder, paper-making, mechanical clocks, and moveable type printing.
China invented all this stuff way before Europe. These inventions eventually shaped the world today, even though Europe gets more historical credit for using them.
Zheng He’s first expedition left China in July 1405 with 62 large ships, over 200 smaller ships, and 28,000 soldiers.
I think this is really interesting and most people would just read right over this and not actually understand how many ships and people this is. Hutch has about 15,000 people and there were almost twice that many that left on the first voyage.
even a scholar from a poor family could take the exam if he could educate himself; success on the top exam was a ticket to the highest levels of imperial society.
I find this interesting because the Chinese were based on someones own education getting them power and no one could get them there but themselves, it didn't matter how much money you had or who you knew.
with people in different parts of the world not only making the same basic discoveries but making them pretty much simultaneously.
I find it interesting how all sorts of different civilizations everywhere around the world were evolving at close to the same pace without even being in contact with each other at the time.
Over generations, women (who were the farmers in ancient Mexico) selectively bred the grass to produce more and bigger seeds. Maize is currently the most important staple in the world for both human and animal feed, as well as in industrial uses like High Fructose Corn Syrup, plastics and fuel.
I find it interesting how people found out how to breed something that was grass and end up turning it into something as poplar as corn.