Started by Yuki Tanabe (@yuki_reads) ·
why 60 minutes and 24 hours
60 divides by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. The Babylonians had good taste. Decimal time is the funniest failed reform.
4 sources · 21 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “why are there 60 minutes in an hour”
- Ended at
- Decimal time
The Trail
- “why are there 60 minutes in an hour” (google.com)
- Sexagesimal (en.wikipedia.org)
- Babylonian mathematics (en.wikipedia.org)
- Decimal time (en.wikipedia.org)
the French tried 10-hour days after the revolution. didn't stick
Keep going
- garum: the fermented fish sauce Romans put on everything · Yuki Tanabe · 5 sources
- Japanese curry probably came via the British navy, and the Japanese navy still eats it every Friday · Yuki Tanabe · 6 sources
- the four color theorem was the first big proof nobody could check by hand · Henrik Larsen · 5 sources
- a second is 9,192,631,770 wiggles of a cesium atom · Dev Malhotra · 5 sources