In England a couple needed to ask Parliment for a divorce up until the 1850’s. Even after that divorce was rare. In 1913 there were only 577 divorces in all of England and Wales.

(The Great Courses – The Industrial Revolution)

The term Immaculate Conception refers to the doctrine on the birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Since she was to be the one chosen to bring Jesus into the world her birth was also a miracle since she was born without the sin nature.

(The Great Courses – The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History)

British seamen did not have a set of standard uniforms until 1857. Up until that time seamen wore whatever they had.

(The Great Courses – The Industrial Revolution)

In the early 20th century physicists reading the spectrum lines from the sun thought that the sun was made mostly of iron which made sense because iron is the ultimate output from the reactions occurring in the sun. However one young student named Cecilia Payne read the spectrum differently and hypothesized that the spectrum really showed that the sun was mostly hydrogen. Because she was a woman she was completely shut down by the male establishment and even after she was proven to be right she never received the proper recognition for her findings.

(Book – E=mc2: a biography of the worlds most famous equation : David Bodanis)

Portions of a wooden ships hull had to be made from oak trees that had grown and divided in certain angles. Centuries of forestry taught people how to make trees grow in these ways to allow for the harvesting of trees with these characteristics.

(The Great Courses – The Industrial Revolution)