Tourism

Tourism is the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, who are travelling for pleasure. 

Tourism is at least 2,000 years old. It began when wealthy citizens of Ancient Rome opted to spend summers in the countryside or on the coast.

Ancient Roman tourists visited Egyptian tombs and temples, and some of them left graffiti—though not always negative! Many Roman-era visitors inscribed their names, comments, or even poetic reflections on the grandeur of what they saw. Some graffiti expressed admiration for the sites, while others could be more critical or irreverent.

For example, at sites like the pyramids of Giza and the temples of Philae, Roman visitors carved Latin and Greek inscriptions, sometimes complaining about the difficulty of travel or making sarcastic remarks. One famous piece of graffiti from a Roman tourist at the tombs of the Valley of the Kings roughly translates to: "I can't read the hieroglyphs, but I bet they’re just as boring as home."

The world's first known tourist guide was published in 330 AD. The Itinerarium Burdigalense, or ‘Bordeaux Itinerary', explained where pilgrims could find water supplies and where they could change horses and donkeys on their long voyage to the Holy Land.

The modern tourist industry began on July 5, 1841, when Thomas Cook organized a trip from Market Harborough to Loughborough in the English Midlands for a temperance meeting.

By 1845, Cook's tourist industry had grown to offering trips to Glasgow for a guinea.

Thomas Cook's first foreign trip was a 'grand circular tour' of Belgium, Germany and France, ending in Paris, where the British tourists were greeted by band music and a cannon salute on arrival.

The word "tourist" for individuals travelling for recreation has been in the English language since at least 1772. "Tourism" came into use in 1811 and "package holiday" in 1959.

Englishman in the Campagna by Carl Spitzweg (c. 1845)

The first cruise ship in the world, Prinzessin Victoria Luise, was launched in June 1900 in Hamburg, Germany. 

American multimillionaire Dennis Tito, a former NASA engineer, became the world's fee-paying space tourist on April 28, 2001, when he launched aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft to the International Space Station. Tito spent seven days aboard the ISS, conducting experiments and taking photographs of the Earth from space.

Tourism gives rural communities the ability to protect and promote their natural surroundings, as well as their culture and heritage. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has celebrated World Tourism Day as international observances on September 27 since 1980. This date was chosen as on that day in 1970, the Statutes of the UNWTO were adopted. 

Tourism accounts for five per cent of the world's economy. Fuels, chemicals and automotive products are the only sectors earning more in global exports.

In 2017 there were 1.323 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide, with a growth of 6.8% as compared to 2016. The top international tourism destinations in 2017 was France with 86.9 million arrivals, followed by Spain with 81.8 million. 

In 2020 the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide declined sharply due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. There were 1.466 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide in 2019 and just 409.5 billion in 2020. They rose by approximately nine percent in 2021 to 446.3 billion. 

Cruise lines pay almost no taxes thanks to a maritime law loophole called "flags of convenience." Despite being headquartered in Miami, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings have all of their ships registered in the Bahamas. Carnival Cruise Line has all of its ships registered in Panama.

Strike

A strike, also called labor strike or strike action, is when a large number of workers stop working in protest. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. 

Amazon labor strike. Pixibay

The first ever labor strike in history took place on November 14, 1152BC. It was held by workers in the royal necropolis during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III in ancient Egypt. The artisans of the Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs because they had not been paid and the stoppage proved successful as the Egyptian authorities raised the wages.

The English word "strike" originated in 1768, when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London, "struck" or removed the topgallant sails of merchant ships at port, thus crippling the ships.

Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when the importance of mass labor in factories and mines gave the workers some power. 

In 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern general strike. The nationwide stoppage started among the miners in Staffordshire, England, and soon spread through Britain affecting factories, mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall. 

Agitated workers face the factory owner in The Strike, painted by Robert Koehler in 1886

In 1844, policemen in New York City staged a strike against their proposed blue uniforms. The reason for their opposition was that they considered uniforms to be symbols of servitude, as maids and butlers wore them in the old country.

The Newsboys' Strike of 1899 lasted two weeks and forced US newspapers to pay their newsboys more. Until then, newsboys bought papers from the publishers and had to resell them to make money.

In 1909, the first hunger strike in a British prison was begun by Inverness-born suffragette Miss Marion Wallace Dunlop, after she was imprisoned for willful damage. She kept it up for 91 hours, until she was released from Holloway Prison on grounds of ill-health.

A seventeen-month-long strike action, which at its peak involved 15,000 coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers across 65 mines, began on March 9, 1910 in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, U.S.

The strike was sparked by a wage dispute between the miners and the mine owners, who were seeking to cut wages in response to a drop in coal prices. The miners, who were already working long hours in dangerous conditions, refused to accept the proposed wage cuts and instead went on strike.

The Westmoreland strike was a difficult and often violent affair, with clashes between strikers and mine owners, as well as between striking miners and those who continued to work during the strike. The strike also had a significant impact on the local economy, as many businesses that relied on the mining industry struggled to stay afloat.

In the end, the Westmoreland strike was only partially successful, with some miners returning to work under the new, lower wages, while others held out and eventually received higher wages and improved working conditions. The strike remains an important event in the history of the UMW and the labor movement in the United States, 

In 1917, 1,300 miners went on strike in Bisbee, Arizona over unsafe working conditions, low pay, and long hours. The mining company, Phelps Dodge, hired 2,000 men who on July 12, 1917 loaded the strikers at gunpoint into cattle cars for a 16 hour trip through the desert without food or water and left them in New Mexico.

The Winnipeg General Strike begun on Thursday May 15, 1919. By 11:00 am, almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Canada, had walked off the job. During the strike, members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police charged into the crowd of strikers on horseback, beating them with clubs and firing weapons. It was one of the most famous and influential strikes in Canadian history.

Crowd gathered outside old City Hall during the Winnipeg general strike, 

The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a nationwide stoppage that lasted 9 days, from May 3 - May 12.  It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners.

Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer during the General Strike. He proposed to force the striking miners back to work by cutting off poor relief to their wives and children.

Tyldesley miners outside the Miners’ Hall during the strike

Apprentice barbers in Copenhagen, Denmark, staged the longest strike in history from 1938 to 1961.

The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country – and the first general wildcat strike in history – occurred in May 1968 in France. The prolonged stoppage involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a row, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government. 

The picture below shows strikers in Southern France with a sign reading "Factory Occupied by the Workers." Behind them is a list of demands.

By BeenAroundAWhile at en.wikipedia,

The phrase "industrial action" used in British journalism for a strike was established in 1971. It is a curious choice of words, "inaction" would be more suitable.

On December 28, 1973, during the last of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Skylab missions, the crew turned off all communications with NASA after being over-worked and spent the day relaxing and looking at the Earth. It is the only strike to occur in space.

On October 24, 1975 an estimated 90 percent of women of Iceland took part in a "women’s day off" to protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices. Participants, led by women’s organizations, did not go to their paid jobs and did not do any housework or child-rearing for the whole day. Fathers had little choice but to bring their children to work or stay home themselves, leading them to call it "the long Friday."

The secret police in Communist Romania subjected the leaders of a 1977 coal miners' strike to 5-minute chest X-rays to ensure that they developed cancer.

In the early spring of 1981, several members of the quickly growing Polish Solidarity movement were brutally beaten up by the country's security services. On March 25, Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa met Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski of the Polish United Workers' Party, but their talks were fruitless. Two days later, a four-hour national warning strike took place. It was the biggest strike in the history of the Eastern Bloc, during which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs. On March 30, 1981, a day before the proposed national strike, the government of Poland reached agreement with Solidarity.

At 7 a.m. on August 3, 1981, the the US Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek. Two days later President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization en masse for failing to carry out their oath to never strike as employees of the US federal government.

Until 1991 there was a 3 acre aquarium in Montreal. The aquarium closed down after all of the dolphin trainers went on strike, leaving the dolphins unfed for 38 days and causing most of them to die.

Major League Baseball players went on strike on August 12, 1994. The labor stoppage resulted in the premature termination of the season, and the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904.

In 1998, Mickey Mouse went on strike at Disneyland Paris over a pay dispute.

Steel

HISTORY

Steel is a combination of several metals, but mostly iron with a little carbon. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, it is a major component used in buildings, tools, ships, automobiles, machines, and weapons.

Steel mill By Riksantikvarieämbetet / Pål-Nils Nilsson,

The earliest known production of steel is seen in pieces of ironware excavated from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehoyuk), in modern day Turkey, dating from 1800 BC.

People in India and Sri Lanka were making small amounts of steel more than 2,500 years ago. It was very expensive and was often used to make swords and knives. The reputation of the Seric iron of South India (wootz steel) grew considerably in the rest of the world.

The Haya People of Tanzania have been forging steel for over 2000 years. Investigation of their land led to the discovery of ancient furnaces that were then carbon dated and found to be around 2000 years old. 

In the Middle Ages, steel could be made only in small amounts since the processes took a long time.

Bloomery smelting during the Middle Ages

The large-scale, industrial use of steel began only after more efficient production methods were devised in the 17th century, with the production of blister steel and then crucible steel.

In the 1740s the crucible steel process was improved by Sheffield resident Benjamin Huntsman, allowing a much better production quality. Huntsman used coke rather than coal or charcoal, achieving temperatures high enough to melt steel and dissolve iron, often along with sand, glass, ashes, and other fluxes, in a crucible.

The Bessemer process was developed in the 1850s. This was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. This method meant that mild steel came to be used for most purposes for which wrought iron was formerly used. 

A Bessemer converter in Sheffield, England. Wikipedia

The Bessemer process to improve steelmaking made possible much taller office buildings. The first structure to use steel-girder construction was the 138-foot (42 m) tall, ten-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago, which opened in 1885.

The steel guitar, was invented in Hawaii in the late 19th century. The inventor was Joseph Kekuku, who made it by sliding a piece of steel across the strings of a slacked guitar.

In 1892, Andrew Carnegie created the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company grew and on March 2, 1901, it merged with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company to become U.S. Steel.

At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion,  making it the world's first billion-dollar corporation.

The first major confrontation between modern steel battleship fleets took place in the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War.

Rustless steel (later to be called "stainless steel") was invented by chance at the Brown Firth Research Laboratories in Sheffield, England, on August 13, 1913 when, while trying to develop non-corrosive gun barrels, Harry Brearley added chromium to steel – thus boosting the city's cutlery industry. The development of the stainless steel made a cutlery set affordable for most households.

A stainless steel gravy boat

In 1924, Citroën produced Europe's first all-steel-bodied car, the B-10.

Low Background Steel, steel forged prior to the 1945 atom bomb explosions, is the only kind of steel that works for various medical and scientific equipment, since the post-nuclear steel is contaminated by radiation.

In 1948 Continental Can Company and Pepsi-Cola launched the first major soft drink in steel cans. Twelve ounces of Pepsi sold for ten cents.

Five hundred thousand American steelworkers went on strike on July 15. 1959, closing nearly every steel mill in the country. This was one of the largest strikes in U.S. history and lasted 116 days, ending in November 1959. The central issue wasn’t wages but management’s demand for more flexibility in work rules—essentially, the right to introduce new technologies and change job definitions without union consent. The union feared this would lead to massive job losses.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Taft-Hartley Act in an attempt to halt the strike, citing national security concerns, as steel was crucial to defense production during the Cold War. Ultimately, a compromise was reached, but the strike marked a turning point in labor relations and signaled the beginning of a long-term decline in the dominance of the American steel industry.

Chairman Mao saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development. He encouraged the Chinese people to smelt steel in their back gardens.

FUN STEEL FACTS

Luxembourg multinational steel manufacturing corporation ArcelorMittal S.A is the world's largest steel producer, with an annual crude steel production of 98.1 million tons as of 2014.

East Chicago is home to ArcelorMittal's Indiana Harbor Works, the largest steel mill in the USA.

Low-background steel is steel from ships that sank prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bomb. Because of that the steel is not contaminated by radiation and harvested to be used in medical equipment or Geiger counters.

Modern day Japanese swordsmiths are required by law to use traditional Katana forging techniques, despite the fact that modern day steel does not need to be folded multiple times.

The smelting of iron ore into steel consumes 55% of commercially produced oxygen.

The Sears Tower in Chicago contains enough steel to build 50,000 automobiles. 

Nearly 70% of the Steel used in the US is recycled from scrap. Steel used in construction has a 90% recycling Rate.

More steel in the United States is used to make bottle caps than to manufacture automobile bodies.

Alabama is the only state with all major natural resources needed to make iron and steel. It is also the largest supplier of cast-iron and steel pipe products.

Spinning machine

In ancient times textile production was a cottage industry using flax and wool. Weaving was a family activity. The children and women would card the fiber — break up and clean the disorganized fluff into long bundles.

The spinning wheel was invented between 500 and 1000AD, replacing the earlier method of hand spinning with a spindle. Probably developed in India and first used in Europe in the 1330s, the spinning wheel was the first improvement on the distaff and spindle. The spinning wheel makes it possible to turn the spindle, twist the fibers, and wind the thread mechanically instead of manually.

A weaver and carpenter named James Hargreaves (c. 1720 – April 22, 1778) was one of the very few weavers who owned their own spinning wheel in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire. He invented a machine in 1764 that could spin eight threads at the same time. He called his new invention a spinning jenny.

Model of the spinning jenny in a  German museum  By Markus Schweiß, 

Hargreaves kept the machine secret for some time, but produced a number for his own growing industry. The price of yarn fell, angering the large spinning community in his local area.

The amount of cotton yarn Hargreaves and his children began to produce alarmed other spinners, who feared that the machine would put them out of work; so they broke into his home and destroyed his machine. Eventually they broke into his house and smashed his machines, forcing him to flee to Nottingham in 1768.

Hargreaves set up a fairly profitable yarn mill to supply hosiers in Nottingham. On July 12, 1770, he took out a patent on his invention, but since he had sold several of his machines, the patent was declared invalid when challenged in court. This left others free to use the invention without paying him royalties.

In 1769 Sir Richard Arkwright invented the spinning frame – later renamed the water frame following the change to water power. The machine produced a strong twist for warps, substituting wooden and metal cylinders for human fingers. This made possible inexpensive cotton-spinning.

The yarn produced by Hargreaves' spinning jenny was too coarse and rough for fine grades of cloth, and a young inventor from Bolton, Lancashire named Samuel Crompton (December 3, 1753 – June 26, 1827) set about the task of overcoming these defects. For ten years he earned a scanty living by day as a yarn spinner, and by night worked at his invention, which he was obliged to guard from his suspicious neighbors.

By 1779 Samuel Crompton had devised a machine which produced yarn of such astonishing fineness that the house was beset by persons eager to know the secret. He called his machine the "spinning mule," because it was a hybrid combining the principles of Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's roller frame.

The only surviving Samuel Crompton spinning mule. By Pezzab

Crompton had no funds to obtain a patent, so he was forced to sell his idea to a Bolton manufacturer for very little return. The spinning mule was such a great success producing a finer, smoother, and more elastic yarn, that it displaced the other spinning machines.

It was 20 years before Crompton had the means to set up a small factory in Bolton, and by that time thousands of his spinning machines were in use, with no profit for him. He was eventually awarded a national grant of ₤5000 in 1812, but Crompton's later ventures, in bleaching and cotton, were failures.

Mules operating in a Cotton mill.

Samuel Crompton's improvements of the machines made by Hargreaves and Arkwright transformed spinning from a hand-operated cottage industry to the machine-operated factory process of today. The mule was the most common spinning machine from 1790 until about 1900 and was still used for fine yarns until the early 1980s.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Siemens

German electrical engineer Werner von Siemens (December 13, 1816 – December 6, 1892) and Johann Georg Halske founded Siemens & Halske, on October 12, 1847. The company has been known as Siemens since 1966.

Today Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe.

Werner von Siemens, co-founder of Siemens & Halske.

Siemens was internationalized soon after its founding. One the Siemens brother's represented the company in England (Carl Wilhelm Siemens) and another (Carl Heinrich von Siemens) opened a branch in St. Petersburg, Russia, each earning recognition.

Werner von Siemens played a crucial role in the development of the telegraph industry. In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe; 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main.

In 1879 Werner von Siemens demonstrated the first ever electric locomotive in Berlin.

First electric locomotive, built in 1879 by company founder Werner von Siemens.

A Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the world's first electric street lighting in 1881 in the town of Godalming, England.

Werner von Siemens was so influential in the field of electrical engineering that his name was adopted as the unit of electrical conductance (the SI or siemens).

Werner von Siemens brother, William, became a British subject in 1859 and was knighted in 1883 as Sir William Siemens.

He was manager of the London sales office of Siemens & Halske, and perfected the open-hearth production of steel (now superseded). William Siemens was also responsible for the hot tube ignition system used on many of the early gas engines.

Working at Siemens after the Second World War, Ernst Ruska, developed the first commercial transmission electron microscope and major scientific conferences on electron microscopy started being held in the 1950s.

Siemens is incorporated in Germany and has its corporate headquarters in Munich.

Siemens' headquarters, Munich (front) By Florian Adler 

Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 372,000 people worldwide and reported global revenue of around €83 billion in 2017 according to its earnings release.

Today Siemens is organised into six main parts: Industry, Energy, Healthcare, Equity Investments, Siemens IT Solutions, and Services and Siemens Financial Services (SFS).

Oil well

The oldest oil wells date from AD 347, when the Chinese drilled to depths of up to 240 m (787ft) by attaching primitive drill bits to pipes made from bamboo.

North America's first commercial oil well came about when asphalt producer James Miller Williams set out to dig a water well in Black Creek, Ontario in September 1858 and found oil instead.

Williams' discovery triggered North America's first oil rush and the village's name was changed to Oil Springs that same year.

The first commercially successful oil well in the United States was successfully drilled in 1859 by Col. Edwin L. Drake near Titusville, Pennsylvania, just northeast of Pittsburgh.

The world's first offshore oil well was drilled in 1896 at the Summerland Oil Field on the California Coast.

On January 10, 1901 oil gushed from a drilling derrick near Beaumont, Texas, kicking off the American Oil Industry. The oil spray coated the land for hundreds of feet around the well. The geyser pumped oil at a rate of 100,000 barrels a day for nine days before it capped.

The pumpjack, such as this one south of Midland, Texas, is a common sight in West Texas

The population around Beaumont skyrocketed and by the end of the year there were more than 285 oil wells and 500 land and oil companies. Some of those oil companies are still in existence today: They include Exxon, the Magnolia Petroleum Company, also known as Mobil and The Texas Company or Texaco.

The first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made at Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia in 1908. The rights to the resource were quickly acquired by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

Oil prospectors in Kern County, California, drilled into a pressurized oil deposit on March 14, 1910. The eruption of hydrocarbons from the pressurized oil well in the Midway-Sunset Oil Field created a huge oil spill. The Lakeview Gusher lasted 18 months and released nine million barrels (1.4×106 m3) of crude oil into the atmosphere.

Lakeview #1 oil gusher after the well had partially subsided

Cat Creek was the site of the first commercially successful oil field in Montana. First discovered in 1919, it produced oil so pure it could be used in Ford Model T cars straight from the ground.

The era of the oil gusher came to an end with the development of the first blowout preventer in 1924.

The first oil was taken in Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), the world's oldest offshore oil platform, on November 7, 1949. Neft Daşları lies 100 km (62 mi) away from the Azerbaijani capital Baku, and 55 km (34 mi) from the nearest shore in the Caspian Sea.

Oil Rocks near Baku Wikipedia

Neft Daşları is actually a functional town with a population of about 2,000 and over 300 km (190 mi) of streets built on piles of dirt and landfill.

The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea was destroyed by explosions and fires in 1988. 167 oil workers were killed, making it the world's worst offshore oil disaster in terms of direct loss of life.

After studies suggested there could be up to £1 billion worth of oil lying beneath Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II gave permission on December 6, 1994 for drilling to take place in its grounds. However, the Government did not renew the licence needed for exploration to take place.

Windsor Castle

An explosion on April 20, 2010, on Deepwater Horizon, an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, the Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest marine oil spill in history.

There is a cluster of oil wells on the campus of Beverly Hills High School that generates about $300,000 of revenue per year for the school.

Motor car manufacturer

The automotive industry began in Europe in the 1890s with hundreds of manufacturers that pioneered the horseless carriage.

August Horch, who was employed by Karl Benz, founded in 1899 the August Horch Motorenwagenfirma and in 1910 the Audi Automobilwerke. Horch was responsible for the implementation of the first universal joints in the manufacture of cars

The Winton Motor Carriage Company was a pioneer United States automobile manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Winton was one of the first American companies to sell a motor car.

1898 Winton Motor Carriage Company First Auto Ad

Alexander Winton sold his first automobile, built in Cleveland, to mining engineer Robert Allison for $1,000 on March 24, 1898.

The first National Automobile Show opened in Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 3, 1900. It displayed 31 car makers and a wide variety of automobiles, including electric, steam, and gasoline-powered vehicles.  It was a huge success, attracting over 48,000 visitors, who paid the admission fee of 50¢.

Ford Motor Company was founded at Detroit on June 16, 1903, with Henry Ford appointing himself chief engineer. The company sold its first car to a Chicago dentist named Pfennig a month later.

Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines; by 1914 these methods were known around the world as Fordism.

Ford assembly line (1913).

For many decades, the United States led the world in total automobile production. In 1929 before the Great Depression, the world had 32,028,500 automobiles in use, and the U.S. automobile industry produced over 90% of them. At that time the U.S. had one car per 4.87 persons.

In 1902 William Morris started a small cycle-repairing business in Oxford, England, Ten years later, he designed a car that could be produced cheaply, and built up Morris Motors Ltd at Cowley, Oxford.
Morris pioneered the introduction to the United Kingdom of Henry Ford's techniques of mass production.

English-born Herbert Austen emigrated to Australia in 1884, and worked in engineering shops there. He returned to England ten years, and in 1895, with the Wolseley Company, produced his first three-wheeled car. In 1905 he opened his own works near Birmingham, its enormous output including the popular 'Baby' Austin seven, which he began manufacturing in 1921.

Lionel Martin founds the Aston Martin Lagonda company in 1921. It gets it's name from the fact that Martin used to race cars near Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire.

Montana-born Lobban Cord (1894-1974) was a racing car mechanic and driver, before becoming the president of Auburn Automobile Company in Auburn, Indiana. In 1929 the Auburn plant introduced the Cord L-29, the first successful front-wheel drive car.

The Tokyo-based Jidosha-Seizo Kabushiki-Kaisha took on a new name June 1, 1934: The Nissan Motor Company.

In 1941, more than three million cars were manufactured in the United States. Only 139 civilian automobiles were made during the entire Second World War due to an intense shift to wartime production. Ford turned out one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes for 24 hours a day.

The first Land Rover made by the Rover company went on display at the Amsterdam Motor Show on April 30, 1948.  It was designed by a farmer and intended for agricultural use.

Land Rover Series I hardtop during the Norwegian Land-Rover Club's 30th anniversary in Evje, Norway

Early Land Rover models were made from both steel and aluminium, due to the rationing of steel and post-war abundance of aluminium, which had been used to make aircraft.

58 million motor vehicles were produced and sold during the 1950s by American manufacturers for a nation of 180 million.

In 1959, Volvo invented the 3-point seat belt, then gave free license to all other car manufacturers to use it.

Lotus cars were initially sold as car kits which the buyer has to assemble themselves. This was done to save up on purchase tax. It wasn't until the late 1960's that they set up a factory and actually started manufacturing the whole vehicle and sold them.

Lexus is a Japanese brand but, paradoxically, Japan wasn’t the first country where these cars were sold. The premium Toyota division was launched in 1989 in the US, but it didn’t go on sale in Japan until 2005.

The Lexus brand name has no specific meaning and simply denotes a luxurious and technological image.

Toyota is the largest automobile manufacturer (by production) ahead of the Volkswagen Group and General Motors. In 2012 Toyota became the world's first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles in a year.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a regulation in 2014 that every newly manufactured vehicle sold in the US is required to be equipped with a backup camera as a standard feature. It came into effect on May 1, 2018. The regulation requires all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds to have a rearview monitoring system that allows the driver to see a 10-foot by 20-foot zone directly behind the vehicle when in reverse gear. The requirement was implemented to address the growing problem of backover accidents, which can cause serious injuries and fatalities, particularly among children and the elderly.

Most US states require car manufacturers to sell through the dealers. Even if your order directly from the factory, the order must go through the dealer. This dealer distribution system adds around 30% to the price of the vehicles in America.

Source The Independent

Factory

The world’s first factory was Cromford Mill, a five-storey cotton mill in the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire, England. It was built in 1771 by Richard Arkwright, the father of the factory system. Arkwright then built homes for the textile workers, making Cromford the first company town.

Charles Macintosh patented the waterproof cloth he used to make raincoats in 1823. Macintosh was anxious to protect the secret of his new material so he chose Highland workers to work in his Glasgow factory as they spoke only Gaelic.

Fired by evangelical zeal, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, was instrumental in introducing Parliamentary Acts to alleviate the hard lot of factory workers, many of them children, who had been forced to work long hours in severe working conditions since the beginning of the British Industrial Revolution. In 1833 he championed the Factory Act, which limited teenage children to working no more than 12 hours a day. Eleven years later, the 1844 Factory Act  restricted female workers to a 12-hour day; children between 8 -13 years were limited to 6.5 hours. Shaftesbury finally achieved his objective of the ten-hour work day for adult factory workers when the 1847 Ten Hours Act was passed by parliament.

Carding, roving, and drawing in a Manchester cotton mill c. 1834

America’s first large pasta factory was built in Brooklyn, New York in 1848 by a Frenchman who would spread out his spaghetti strands on the roof to dry in the sunshine.

Joseph C. Gayetty of New York City invented the first factory-produced toilet paper in 1857. He had his name printed on each sheet.

In Victorian England, Colman's of Norwich, famous for its mustard, set up the world’s first factory canteen in 1868. They charged 3d or 4d for a hot meat dinner.

During his time in Switzerland, Lenin lived at a crowded house at Spiegelgasse, Zurich. A nearby sausage factory emitted such an unpleasant whiff that the future communist leader retreated to the Central library as often as possible.

Licensing laws in England and Wales have changed little since 1915, when they were tightened to stop factory workers turning up drunk and harming the war effort.

In 1920 Guglielmo Marconi's Chelmsford factory was the location of the first officially publicised sound broadcasts in the UK, one of them featuring Dame Nellie Melba.

The Ford River Rouge Complex is a 1,100-acre automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the Rouge River. Construction began in 1917, and when it was completed in 1928 it had become the largest integrated factory in the world.

Beginning in Havana in 1865 workers in Cuban cigar factories employed 'lectores' to read to them while they worked. The reading materials were often literary or political, ranging from socialists newspapers to Shakespearean plays - sometimes leading to clashes with anti-communist factory owners.

On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza building in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,129 people and injuring around 2,500. The eight-story commercial premises housed a garment factory which exported clothing to US and European companies. It was the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history.

 By rijans - Flickr: Dhaka Savar Building Collapse,Wikipedia Commons

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

A factory in Qiaotou, a dusty town in Zhejiang Province, China manufactures an astonishing 80 per cent of the world's zippers, churning out 124,000 miles of zip each year.

Clothes Manufacturer

The sportswear company Champion was established in 1919 by the Feinbloom Brothers as "Knickerbocker Knitting Company." They pioneered the production of sweatshirts after developing a process that allowed the use of thicker materials such as French Terry cotton. Then, in 1930, Champion sewed the first hood onto a sweatshirt to keep workers in upstate New York warm, thus also pioneering the hoodie. 

Champion store in Hong Kong. By Rouardsiam 002 

Giuliana Benetton having began to design and manufacture her own small range of sweaters which her brother sold to local shops, built their own factory in 1965 and then opened her first shops. This was followed by an expanding export business with 6400 outlets in almost 100 countries.

The Benetton company, the largest knitwear company in the world, is still controlled by members of the Benetton family.

The English clothing manufacturer Burberry which started in 1856 in Basingstoke in South East England, gained its famous beige, red and black identity at the beginning of  the 20th century. By the 1920s its trenchcoat, which was originally made for The Great War soldiers, had become the company’s mainstay.

Only 2% of the clothing sold in America is made in America.

An estimated 98% of fashion workers around the world aren't paid a living wage.

The fashion industry is the second most pollutant industry after the oil industry.

The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity's carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of the world's water supply.

Sources Sanvt

Brewery

A brewery is a facility where beer is produced through the brewing process. The brewing process involves the fermentation of ingredients such as malted barley, water, hops, and yeast to produce beer. Breweries come in various sizes, from small craft breweries to large industrial facilities.

Eldridge Pope brewery, Dorchester. Copyright Nigel Mykura 

The basic steps in the brewing process typically include malting (where barley is germinated and dried), mashing (where malted barley is mixed with water to convert starches into sugars), boiling (hops are added for flavor and aroma, and the liquid is sterilized), fermenting (yeast is added to the cooled liquid to convert sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide), conditioning (allowing the beer to mature and develop flavors), and packaging (bottling or kegging the finished beer).

Breweries can vary in the types of beer they produce, the scale of production, and the level of automation. Some breweries focus on traditional or specialty beers, while others may produce a wide range of styles to cater to different tastes. The craft beer movement has also led to the emergence of numerous small and independent breweries, each with its unique approach to brewing and beer styles.

HISTORY

A recipe for brewing beer from loaves of multigrain bread mixed with honey dates to approximately 4,000 years ago from ancient Mesopotamia, and is the oldest surviving beer recipe in the world.

The use of hops was unknown to Ancient Egyptians as was the process of carbonation. To a modern-day beer drinker, an Egyptian brew would taste more like a fruit drink.

The Weihenstephan brewery in Freising, Bavaria has been brewing beer since 1040. It is thought to be the world’s oldest brewery. The brewery claims to have been the first to use hops to flavor beer.

The origins of InBev, the world’s biggest brewer date back to 1366 at the Den Hoorn brewery in Leuven, Belgium.

Heinrich Knaust wrote the first extensive book on brewing in Germany in 1573. He described in detail about 150 different beers and called the “noble Hamburg beer the queen of all other wheat beers.”

The first commercial brewery in the New World opened in New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1612 after colonists advertised in London newspapers for experienced brewers.

Harvard University, founded in 1636, ran its own brewery in colonial times and doled out cider and beer to students at every meal.

Shepherd Neame is believed to be the oldest brewery in Britain. It was founded in 1698 by the mayor of Faversham, Captain Richard Marsh. It remains a family business with a Neame still on the board.

In 1708, Sébastien Artois became head brewer at the Den Hoorn brewery in Leuven. Artois purchased the brewery and gave his name to it in 1717, as Brouwerij Artois. Stella Artois was first brewed by the Artois Brewery in 1926.

When Arthur Guinness founded his brewery in 1759, he signed a 9000 year lease at an unused brewery in Dublin. By 1886 it became the largest brewery in the world.

Samuel Whitbread (1720-1796) created the first purpose-built mass-production brewery in the United Kingdom — quickly becoming a household name across the country. He used his wealth to become an MP for Bedford, going on to campaign for the abolition of slavery and the introduction of a minimum wage. When he died on June 11, 1796, the Gentleman's Magazine claimed that he was "worth over a million pounds".

William Bass founded the Bass brewery in Burton-upon-Trent, England in 1777. In the 19th century the company developed a thriving export trade with its India Pale Ale; there are even two bottles on the bar of the Folies Bergère in Manet's famous painting.

D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc., located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, is widely recognized as the oldest operating brewery in the United States. Founded in 1829, the brewery has been continuously brewing beer for nearly two centuries and is currently operated by the 5th generation of the Yuengling family.

The founder of Heineken, Gerard Heineken, was 22 years old when he took over De Hooiberg, a brewery that had been around since the 17th century, on February 16, 1864. Gerard Heineken didn’t let his lack of knowledge about the brewing industry, dissuade him from showing interest in purchasing it. Despite his lack of industry knowledge, Gerard went on to create a very successful business. The first Heineken brand beer was brewed in 1873.

After working in a Denver brewery, the German immigrant Adolph Coors founded the Adolph Coors Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873. He claimed the lager he was brewing took its flavor from the pure water of the Rocky Mountains.

American beer is generally bland because 19th-century brewers were trying to convince Prohibition supporters that beer was a healthier and cleaner drink than whiskey and other liquors.

The Australian Foster's Group Limited was founded in Melbourne in 1888 by American brothers William and Ralph Foster, who happened to own a refrigeration plant. Their new beer, Foster’s Lager, was produced in an American style with refrigeration, a lagering process and bottling.

In 1890, the Polish-born British entrepreneur Henry Lowenfeld (1859–1931) built the Kops Brewery, the United Kingdom's first brewer of non-alcoholic beer on an eight-acre site in Townmead Road, Fulham, London. A blue plaque on the building reads, "Kops brewed non-alcoholic ales and stouts on an eight-acre site and exported its products throughout the British Empire".

For many years the world’s second largest brewer, SABMiller started in 1895 as South African Breweries The firm operates today in 80 countries and sells 73.5 billion bottles a year. Top brands include Fosters and Miller. On October 10, 2016 SABMiller was acquired by AB InBev.

During Prohibition, Pabst Brewing Company stopped making beer and switched to cheese production, selling more than 8 million pounds of Pabst-ett Cheese. When Prohibition ended, the company went back to selling beer, and the cheese line was sold to Kraft.

The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose namesake beer, Schlitz was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous." Schlitz first became the largest beer producer in the US in 1902 and enjoyed that status at several points during the first half of the 20th century, exchanging the title with Anheuser-Busch multiple times during the 1950s. However, they started messing with the ingredients to cut costs and the plant was closed less than 30 years later.

Home-brewing beer or wine with an ABV greater than 0.5% was illegal in the US until 1978 when President Jimmy Carter deregulated home-brewing. This led to the craft beer industry the country knows today.

In 2004, Belgian brewer Interbrew and Brazilian rival Ambev merged in a deal valued at $11.2 billion, forming InBev, which became the world's largest brewer at the time. This merger had a significant impact on the global brewing industry, consolidating power and reshaping the landscape.

In 2008, InBev further expanded its empire by acquiring Anheuser-Busch, forming the current brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev).

During a world-wide hop shortage in 2008, Sam Adams brewing company sold craft brewers their hops at cost to keep them in business.

FUN BREWERY FACTS

InBev sells 174 billion bottles a year, including Stella Artois, Budweiser, Corona and Bass.

Stella Artois brewery in Leuven

Vermont has the most craft breweries of all the states in the United States with approximately 15.5 breweries per 100,000 adults over 21, according to a 2022 report by Statista.

Great Leap Brewing, Beijing's first microbrewery, makes beers with distinctly Chinese flavoring adjuncts such as Sichuan pepper and tiěguānyīn oolong tea.

A herd of forty-five thirsty, rambunctious elephants stampeded into a brewery in Midnapore, India, where they smashed vats and slurped up beer in a bender that went on for two days.

Including the amount needed to grow the ingredients, it takes around 20 gallons of water to make one pint of beer.

Source Daily Mail