Modern English, the language most widely spoken around the world, is one result of the French Norman invasion of England in 1066.

Buddhist religious texts, scrolls and books were printed in China in 800 AD by the invention of letters and figures on wooden blocks. In the year 1000, that changed to movable type with letters on ceramic blocks. Printing did not come to the West until John Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type in 1456.

Islamic astronomers in the 9th and 10th centuries calculated fairly accurately the size of the round earth (diameter 6,500 miles, circumference 20,400 miles), the length of a solar year, equinoxes, a degree of meridian and accurate determinations of longitude and latitude at a time when the West followed a flat earth ideology. The telescope and the astrolabe, forerunner of the sextant, were invented during the Islamic period of enlightenment.

Hamid ibn Avicenna (born 980 AD), one of the greatest philosophers and physicians of the medieval Silk Road age, wrote Canons of Medicine, a book dedicated to the treatment of more than 300 known diseases, medicines, the study of human anatomy and surgical techniques. At that time, medieval European healers used bleeding, leeches, magic potions and incantations as medical practices.

Archeological evidence indicates the area known today as the Ukraine is where man first mounted horses for war and agriculture.

The number zero founded by an ancient culture in the Indus valley is a philosophical expression of the great Ohm, the empty sound of space and time. It is the basis of all mathematics.

The slang "letting the cat out of the bag" comes from 17th and 18th century British naval punishment procedures of taking a whip called a ‘cat’ out of a silk bag to administer punishment upon seamen.