Imagine the Egyptian pyramids built without planning and measurements. You can’t, because there would be no standing pyramids today, just piles of rubble. Careful measurements were the key to the ancient Egypytians’ success. Many of the measuring tools...
Few plants can match the canna lily’s bold beauty and long history. This tropical showstopper is a lily only in name — in fact, it’s more closely related to bananas and ginger. Once grown as food in ancient Peru, cannas, with their towering banana-like...
An impact driver and a hammer drill look like close cousins. Both are compact, equipped with a pistol grip, and have rotating chucks. Both are loud enough to wake the neighbors. But they couldn’t be more different. One specializes in brute-force persuasion —...
Nothing is quite as satisfying in salad as a kiwi, that tart-sweet, fuzzy-skinned fruit from the faraway land of… wait for it… California. That’s right. More often than not, the exotic kiwifruit at your local SoCal market is grown in the San Joaquin...
Have you ever tightened a nut with pliers? It sort of works until the nut strips. Reach for a wrench instead. The modern wrench emerged in the 1800s, alongside the rise of machine manufacturing and standardized hardware. Before that, blacksmiths and craftsmen often...
