MOTnews 26 (09/11/2001)

BREAD at the MOT The MOT has started a new project on baking bread in other cultures. We are not only looking for more information about bread itself, but primarily about the technical aspect of baking bread and the ovens used for this purpose. If you specialise in baking bread, or you know someone who knows more about ovens and bread baking in other countries (anywhere outside our own region), then contact the MOT (info@mot.be) and help us create a whole series of interesting new activities for the public focusing on bread.

TRUE OR FALSE

In Belgium too, ketchup is a very popular sauce to put on chips and all sort of other dishes, but it is a typical American product invented by a certain Mr Heinz, whom we still know from the famous ketchup brand.

ANSWER to TRUE or FALSE in MOT News 24 (19/10/2001)

Almost all older people still talk about "those really hard winters" that we no longer experience, but much earlier on it seems to have been even colder. Many 16th century paintings depict snowy landscapes, and the tableaus, including those by Brueghel, showing children and adults getting ready to go sledging and skating are past counting. Was it really colder in the past?

TRUE

On the basis of a whole series of numerical data that you would not immediately expect (e.g. data on wine years or grain harvests and information on certain water courses on which tolls were levied freezing over) we have a fairly accurate idea of the climate in the past, and in the 16th century a minor ice age did indeed affect this region.

SAY WHAT? In this MOT-news item we try to explain proverbs and sayings that have their roots in our technical history. Similar proverbs are found in different languages, but each language has it's own typical sayings. Therefore we do not translate this item in English.

KIDS news: something to tell your children this evening DO YOU SPONGE YOURSELF DOWN? Perhaps you use a sponge to soap yourself down, rather than a flannel, or perhaps your mother cleans with a sponge? Most people now use artificial sponges, in all sorts of colours and shapes, but real, natural sponges are also still used. You can recognise a natural sponge by its rugged shape, rather than the neat square or oval shapes of an artificial sponge. Did you know that this natural sponge is really the skeleton of a marine animal? Sponges are the lowest form of multicellular creatures. They are gathered and the soft parts are allowed to rot away, and then after abundant rinsing and kneading the skeleton remains, which we use for spring-cleaning, among other things. Sponge collecting dates right back to the Ancient Greeks, and these days they are still caught in places like the Mediterranean and the Antilles.