The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch

by Lewis Dartnell

  * The landmasses in the northern hemisphere extend much closer to the pole than in the southern hemisphere—Newcastle, Moscow, and Edmonton are far closer to the pole, and so receive less winter light, than anywhere on the southern continents of Africa, Australia, or South America.

  * And more than six thousand years ago South American inhabitants discovered how to explosively evert the kernels of particular varieties—now the basis of a billion-dollar cinema-focused market in the US alone.

  * The first can openers did not appear until the 1860s, fifty years after the French army began issuing canned food. Soldiers were expected to open their rations with a chisel, or their bayonet, and it was only once cans became widespread among the civilian population that the opener was needed.