HistoryTech History
Portable, precise time then created a new problem on land.
Every town still set its clocks by its own noon, so a railway timetable had to reconcile hundreds of slightly different presents.
Source
This fact is written from the English Wikipedia article it links to, so you can check every word in one tap. Fact Drop rates that source 4 out of 5 for credibility, and the rating travels with the fact on the back of its card in the app.
Keep digging
This fact is part of the pack The Longitude Problem. Read the pack
More history facts
History facts have a way of rearranging your timeline. Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the building of the pyramids, mammoths were alive while the Great Pyramid went up, and the shortest war on record lasted 38 minutes. These are the ones that make you check the date twice, each with its source attached.
- Railway companies imposed standard time before any government did.
- In 1707 a British fleet ran onto the Isles of Scilly and as many as two thousand men drowned.
- Coal tar had until then been a nuisance left over from making gas for streetlights.
- Parliament put up a fortune for a solution.
- The ice trade was then killed by the machine that replaced it.
- Cleopatra is closer to the Moon landing than the pyramids.